Chiratae, Nvidia Execs -backed Minus Zero Unveils India's 1st Autonomous Car zPod

Bengaluru-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup Minus Zero has just unveiled India's first autonomous/ driverless car — z-Pod.

With z-Pod, Minus Zero achieved fully autonomous driving using only cameras. The young startup dubbed its cutting-edge AI technology — 'Nature-Inspired AI'. The startup's proprietary technology is less dependent on extensive data and costly sensors like LIDAR, and is tailored to Indian roads.

Forget driving, it's time for an extraordinary journey.
Introducing our z-Pod, where the car becomes an immersive experience. Discover the future of mobility with our visionary design...#zpod #autonomousvehicles #minuszero #ai4good #launch #ai #selfdrivingcar #technology… pic.twitter.com/5yEqYEmmgl

— Minus Zero (@teamminuszero) June 5, 2023

Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys and TCM Sundaram Founder and Vice Chairman of Chiratae Ventures take the first ride in the Z Pod.

Founded in 2021, by Gagandeep Reehal and Gursimran Kalra, Minus Zero raised $1.7 million in seed round funding in May 2021, which was led by Chiratae Ventures, JITO Angel Network, a few senior executives from chipmaker NVIDIA and Uber competitor – Lyft.

Experience the cutting-edge technology that's set to revolutionize the way we travel...
Say goodbye to conventional driving and hello to the world of autonomy✨😁💥#autonomousvehicles #minuszero #ai4good #launch #ai #selfdrivingcar #technology #robotics #zday #Makeinindia… pic.twitter.com/maGZ2zYVx8

— Minus Zero (@teamminuszero) June 5, 2023

z-Pod do not have a steering wheel and the strategically-placed high-resolution cameras help the car in analysing driving conditions, which includes traffic.

The surroundings of the autonomous vehicle are captured in a camera-sensor suite which is shared with the AI system embedded in it. In turn, the information is processed by the AI through images to help zPod control its speed, avoid obstacles, and stop.

The startup claimed that the self-driven car can be scaled up to "Level 5" autonomy, which is the ultimate level of autonomy for driver-less vehicles , where the driver does not have to be in control at all during travel, and the vehicle can handle any road condition, type of weather, and no longer be bound to geo-fenced locations.

With z-Pod, Minus Zero has achieved an industry breakthrough in autonomous vehicles sector by bringing down the cost of vehicle from R&D to production by eliminating the usage of high-cost technologies & apparatus. It also minimized the use of large data for training the AI model.

The startup has earlier developed an autonomous three-wheeler prototype for Indian roads. It used an AI that can extract 3D information from a 2D camera image with comparable accuracy.

In the e-Rickshaw, Minus Zero installed eight 2D cameras function as the ‘eyes of the vehicle’ and gather data, the radars and ultrasonics work as backup data collectors in case one or more cameras fail.

Cropin Raises ₹ 113 Cr Funding from ABC Impact, Chiratae Ventures, Google, and JSR Corporation

New funding to accelerate efforts to bring intelligent agriculture to a third of the world's cultivable land by 2025 and increase adoption of Cropin Cloud, the world's first industry cloud for agriculture

Cropin, the global agritech pioneer that has built the world's first industry cloud for agriculture, has secured INR 113 crores in funding from new investors Google and JSR Corporation, as well as existing investors ABC Impact and Chiratae Ventures. The funds will aid in expanding Cropin Cloud, the company's recently launched intelligent agriculture cloud platform, to cater to the growing demand for digitization and predictive intelligence in the global agriculture sector.

Cropin Cloud, launched in September 2022, has quickly become a leading platform in the digital transformation of agriculture. With the support of this funding round, Cropin will be able to further invest in its go-to-market efforts and expand the platform's capabilities, including developing next-generation predictive intelligence solutionsq through Cropin AI Labs. The goal of Cropin AI Labs is to bring predictive intelligence to every acre of the world’s cultivable land. In addition, Cropin plans to expand its business presence in new regions and industries, focusing on creating solutions that promote sustainable agriculture practices and address global food security challenges on a large scale.

Today, the global food system faces significant challenges, including climate change, food insecurity, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical tensions, highlighting its structural vulnerabilities. Governments and businesses in the agriculture and food sectors are seeking ways to increase productivity, efficiency, and income to meet domestic demand and reduce food waste. Cropin, with its strategic technology solutions, is well-equipped to help governments, development agencies, and agri-food businesses transform and create a secure and sustainable food value chain.

Commenting on the investment, Krishna Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Cropin said, "Since its founding in 2010, Cropin has been dedicated to improving the intelligence of food production and maximizing value for all stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem. By making farms and harvests traceable, predictable, and sustainable, Cropin aims to transform how food is grown. The involvement of new strategic investors like Google and JSR Corporation, and the support of our existing investors, demonstrates confidence in our mission and impact. We are excited to partner with global technology innovators like Google, which further validates our capabilities and solidifies our position as a leader in the digitalization of global agriculture”.

Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer at ABC Impact, said, “We are pleased that Cropin’s efforts to address global food challenges through technology continue to gain traction. Our continued support alongside new investors underscores the commitment and dedication of the Cropin team in delivering impactful outcomes through their work.”

Commenting on the development, Sudhir Sethi, Founder and Chairman Chiratae Ventures India Advisors, said, “What we liked the most about Cropin is their quest for innovation, passion for solving critical global challenges and leveraging technology to transform the fundamental fabric of agriculture. I am a firm believer in technology start-ups defining new business and revenue models, innovating new products, pioneering cutting-edge technology developments, and discovering new markets for growth. Cropin has always embodied these values, and they are poised to be the largest Agritech company globally with its cloud-based, SaaS business model. This investment underlines our strong belief in their growth and the impact they deliver to co-create a truly sustainable global agri-food ecosystem.”

About Cropin

Cropin is a global agtech company that was founded in 2010. The company has developed Cropin Cloud, the world's first industry cloud for agriculture, which helps various stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem make informed decisions that increase farming efficiency, improve productivity, manage risk and environmental changes, and enhance sustainability through the use of digital technologies and predictive intelligence. Cropin has partnered with more than 250 B2B customers and has digitized 16 million acres of farmland, benefiting over 7 million farmers. The company has shaped a global 'Ag-intelligence' movement, with a crop knowledge graph of over 500 crops and 10,000 crop varieties in 92 countries that powers Cropin Cloud. Cropin Cloud's intelligence platform has already provided predictive intelligence for over 200 million acres of farmland worldwide.

Drone Delivery Tech Company Skye Air Mobility Raises $1.7 Mn to Fuel its Growth, Led by Chiratae Ventures

Skye Air Mobility raises ~USD 1.7 million to fuel its growth, led by Chiratae Ventures

To scale its drone delivery operations

Skye Air Mobility, India’s leading drone delivery technology company, announced the completion of its Seed Round, of ~ USD 1.7 million, led by Chiratae Ventures. The round also saw participation from Lead Angels, O2 Angels, Agility Ventures, Lets Venture and several marquee investors including Rajeev Chitrabhanu, Ankit Nagori, Varun Alagh, Gautam Badalia, Ayush Lohia and others.

India is an attractive market for drone start-ups as the country is very progressive with respect to the integration of drones into everyday life. 2021 has been a promising year for UAVs as it created an optimistic environment with the introduction of new drone rules and PLI scheme. The Indian drone delivery industry potential stands at USD 18 Billion (in first and last mile segments) and further growing at an exceptional growth rate. 

Skye Air has witnessed phenomenal growth in the last few months with addition of numerous clients and partnership with State Governments to expand the business. The company is currently operating in 8 cities across the country and plans to expand to 16 cities in the next 24 months. 

The investment will be used with a focus on bringing greater efficiency to different verticals by allowing faster deliveries, reduction in carbon emission, reduced cost, and increased accessibility to locations that are difficult to reach by road or where there is no connectivity at all. Businesses across various industries have begun to see the benefits of incorporating drones into their operations, such as cost savings, time savings, and technological break throughs.

"This investment comes at a time when we are intensifying our efforts to expand our services and collaborations in the Indian market. We are convinced that the new funding will facilitate our team to open untouched channels, allowing us to bring drone delivery services to more customers in India and beyond. We also believe the investment, which is so far the largest in the delivery focused drone segment, is testament to the fact that Skye Air is leading the way of drone delivery technology in the country with its proprietary SaaS technology.

Mr. Ankit Kumar, CEO–Sky Air Mobility

It is also noteworthy to mention, At Skye Air, our core aim is to enable change, bring the much-needed disruption in the first & last mile logistics industry to move faster and more efficiently. Skye Air is proactively working in the healthcare, quick commerce and ecommerce verticals enabling solutions for faster and cost-effective deliveries, and with the new round of funding we aim to make drone delivery as a mainstream solution.” says Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air Mobility. 

"We are excited to partner with Skye Air Mobility to disrupt the first & last mile logistics in an efficient and climate-friendly manner, beginning with the Healthcare domain and expanding into other sectors with its logistics and SaaS solutions” said Mandeep Julka, Vice President - Investments, Chiratae Ventures. 

Only a handful of companies in the much-hyped drone ecosystem actually have a robust scalable solution and necessary domain knowledge. We saw that Skye Air was exceptional on both these accounts, and which drove our investment decision said Sushanto Mitra, CEO & Founder, Lead Angels

O2 Angel Network, investment bankers backed a Deep-Tech focused angel network, identified Skye Air as a category creator within the drone ecosystem. We were impressed with team domain knowledge and experience. Thus, O2 Angel found Skye Air to be a perfect partner for its new age Angel investors with the visionary founders; said Rajesh Ranjan, Founder, O2 Angel Network.

“Drone delivery is increasingly gaining ground across logistics providers to tackle inefficiencies in last mile delivery and is expected to grow at more than 50% CAGR over the next six years. We believe Skye Air has a head start in the same and is poised to be a leader in the industry” said Dhianu Das, Founder, Agility Ventures.

About Skye Air:

Skye Air is the India’s leading drone delivery company with bases in Hyderabad and Gurgaon. The company is focused on streamlining drone deliveries as a mainstream logistics solution for healthcare, ecommerce, quick commerce, agri-commodity and other industries. Skye Air has completed over 2200+ BVLOS flight delivering over 720,000 packages of products covering an aerial distance of 11800+ Kms.

The company is marking its monopoly in 8 cities across India working with clients like Flipkart, Dunzo, Swiggy, Redcliffe Labs, Aster Healthcare, Blue Dart, Cure Foods and many others. The mission of the company is to enable faster, sustainable, cost-effective and efficient deliveries across verticals and bring in rightful impact to reduce TAT for its clients.

The company has also conducted World’s longest BVLOS medicine delivery flight with Flipkart Health of 104 kms between Baruipur and Medinipur in West Bengal delivering medicines reducing the delivery time by ~80% compared to conventional means.

Using its drone delivery technology, the company has penetrated various urban, semi- urban, and remote areas of the country.

Chiratae Ventures Leads $3 Mn Funding Round in Artium Academy, An Online Music Academy

The online music learning and community platform has raised this round from Chiratae Ventures and a clutch of early-stage investors and HNI’s.

Artium Academy, an online music learning and community platform that powers tech-led, performance-based learning and engagement has raised $3.0 million from Chiratae Ventures, amongst the earliest tech-focused venture capital firms in the Indian ecosystem

Other early-stage investors like Anicut Capital, Jet Synthesis and Whiteboard Capital as well as several high-profile entrepreneurs like Madhusudhan R (Co-founder, M2P Finance), Priyamvada Balaji (Executive Director – Lucas Indian Service), Varun Alagh (Co-founder, Mamaearth), Piyush Shah (Co-Founder, InMobi Group), Vikas Dosala (Co-founder, Fraazo) have also participated in this round of funding for Artium Academy.

Co-founded by Ashish Joshi, Vivek Raicha and Nithya Sudhir, Artium Academy offers gold standard in Music Education using modern pedagogy combined with technology to deliver elevated learning and performing experience to learners.

“Our vision is to make music learning more relevant, participative, and engaging where a user can take the journey of a learner to a performer to a potential influencer with our music tech platform. We are building AI based assessment and prescription tools to aide efficient learning and performing, thereby offering qualitative pedagogy to the learners globally, said Mr. Ashish Joshi, Founder and CEO. 

“Chiratae’s Consumer Tech report talks about passion creators, and we see a significant opportunity in the passion / extracurricular learning space. We believe that performance arts for Indians living here and abroad is a significant addressable market which has no age limits as well. Artium’s depth of pedagogy combined with tech-first approach to build a scalable learning and performance platform stands out from other extracurricular horizontal platforms.” said Anoop N Menon, Principal and Consumer Tech-lead of Chiratae Ventures.

“We are delighted to receive support from a strong investor group led by Chiratae Ventures. This capital will help us accelerate our plans to develop new offerings and expand into newer markets, especially to the diaspora population outside of India. It will also allow us to invest in product and content led organic channels for learner acquisition.” Added Mr. Vivek Raicha, Co-founder of Artium Academy.

Artium offers music lessons and courses from India’s best delivered online platform in the form of 1:1 live classes. These courses are designed and certified by Music Maestros such as Sonu Nigam, KS Chithra, Shubha Mudgal, Aruna Sairam, Louis Banks, Gino Banks, Raju Singh and Aneesh Pradhan who’ve joined Artium as faculty heads for various courses. India’s leading voice expert Ananth Vaidyanathan has joined as Chief of Pedagogy of the Academy.

Artium’s AI enabled practice studio supplements in-person learning and tracks improvement followed by regular online performances within the Artium community of learners, teachers and maestros that makes the learner feel like a star.

Artium recently tied up with Warner Music India and Global Music Junction (GMJ) to create original music content with its maestro’s, teachers, and learners under its brand Artium Originals.

About Artium Academy

Artium Academy is India’s leading online music learning and community platform that offers lessons and courses from India’s best in the form of Live 1:1 online classes, Live and interactive Masterclasses by Music Maestro’s, and a vast library of recorded content. Its performance-based courses for both vocals and instruments are designed and certified by legends such as Sonu Nigam, K S Chithra, Shubha Mudgal, Aruna Sairam, Louis Banks, Raju Singh, Gino Banks, Aneesh Pradhan and Ananth Vaidyanathan who’ve all come together to form Artium’s Academic Board.

The company delivers these courses online using its proprietary tech that includes its own video conferencing facility, AI enabled practice studio embedded with learning tools and a performance platform that drives social and community engagement. The Company already has hundreds of certified teachers and thousands of paid learners from across the World.

For more information, please visit https://artiumacademy.com/

Metaverse and AR Builder Platform Metadome (formerly Adloid) Raises $4 Mn From Chiratae Ventures, Lenskart and Others

From the Left Prashant Sinha, Co-founder & CRO, Shorya Mahajan Co-Founder, COO and Kanav CEO & Founder, Metadome

Chiratae Ventures, with Lenskart and others, Invest $4M in Adloid, a Metaverse and AR builder platform for creators and brands

Chiratae Ventures (Formerly IDG Ventures, India), and Lenskart Vision Fund invests $4 million as part of Adloid’s pre-series-A funding, to fuel the next level of growth and product evolution. The round also saw participation from Easemytrip Co-founder Prashant Pitti, Seeders, and 100x Entrepreneur.

With this round, Adloid is rebranding to Metadome, a metaverse that will provide the no-code infrastructure to millions of creators & brands to build immersive experiences for the virtual world. The company will be expanding its product and tech teams and inviting the creator community to build a metaverse which can host 1 Billion experiences a day by 2023. It also plans to strengthen it’s customer success and delivery in North America & other geographies to support its enterprise offerings.

Metadome Metaverse

With an increasing acceptance of the virtual world, the concept of Metaverse is gaining traction among businesses and individuals. It promises to be far more immersive, interactive, and collaborative than what the internet has accomplished so far with web 2.0. Metadome is built for all virtual experiences, that allows people to create, experience, collaborate, learn, play, work, and trade virtual goods & estates, and much more.

Speaking about the development, CEO & Founder, Kanav Singla said, "With Metadome, our vision is to build a new world so satisfying where people would want to live in it and not be forced to come. It resonates with our team's life mission of solving the inherent problems of the real & virtual world. We are using our existing expertise in augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and computer vision to build a one-one mapping of the real world and creating an experience of life beyond the real world”.

Metadome, formerly Adloid, started in 2016 as one of the early players in augmented reality globally with focus of bringing life-like AR experiences to all smartphones, and has since evolved as the category leader across multiple industries with patents on compression techniques to enable the scale, empowering 30M+ AR experiences and creating a library of 100k+ 3D assets. Over the last few years, they have identified key problems in the AR/VR space and the focus has been on achieving photorealistic rendering quality and enabling that experience across the entire network of smartphones. Our dedicated team of tech, product, and design experts are working towards the shared mission of hosting 1 Billion experiences in Metadome by 2023.

Co-Founder & CRO, Prashant Sinha said, "Metadome will provide businesses newer ways of engaging their customers. The Metaverse is a persistent virtual world and shopping will be driven by 3D and Augmented Reality. The brands that work with us will be able to represent their entire portfolio and to allow Metaverse participants to truly engage with their products. For individuals and creators, the possibilities are enormous, as they will be able to interact, collaborate, learn, play, work, create, trade, transact and buy virtual goods."

Metadome is already empowering brands with AR deployments across automobile, home-decor, beauty & accessories, and consumer electronics, working with industry leaders like Hewlett Packard(HP), Tata Motors(parent company- Jaguar Land Rover), Hero MotoCorp (largest 2-wheeler OEM globally), Asian Paints, Titan Eyeplus, Royal Enfield, Cardekho and more, to create immersive 3D & AR experiences for their customers. The company has witnessed a bootstrapped journey so far and growing organically by 3x YoY.

TCM Sundaram, Founder & Vice Chairman - Chiratae Ventures said, “ We are excited by the vision the team has to enable real life like immersive experiences in the metaverse. The technology they are building continues to make strides as they add marquee names to their clientele across sectors. We believe Metadome (formerly Adloid), has the power to fundamentally change how customers interact with brands, helping brands build engaging life-like experiences. As investors, we are elated to partner with the Metadome team, who is working to bring augmented reality experiences to your smartphones & other future displays.

Co-Founder & COO, Shorya Mahajan said, “The funding will add fuel to Metadome’s research and development efforts for enhancing the core competencies. We plan to add 60+ people in our tech/product team to an existing team of 90 and we are inviting bright talents to join our mission of hosting 1 Billion experiences in Metadome by 2023."

Metadome is uniquely positioned since it has already created a sector-agnostic way of engaging users through Augmented Reality and has deep insights from empowering 30M+ AR experiences globally.

India’s Future Technology DNA will be Shaped by SaaS – Say Chiratae, Zinnov

Image - thesoftwarereport.com

Over the last two decades, the Indian SaaS space has undergone a transformational evolution across dimensions of products, use cases, market, customers, talent, and funding. The landscape has metamorphosed and matured to bring about a chromosomal change in the Indian technology ecosystem and is poised to provide a massive boost to the Indian economy in terms of growth and employment rates. 

The Chiratae-Zinnov study titled, “Indian SaaS Revolution: Rising Trillion Dollar Global Opportunity,” explores the factors driving this explosive growth, the surge of unicorns in the space, and also where the industry is heading in the next five years.

• Explosive Growth of SaaS in India
  
  The Indian SaaS industry has witnessed an unprecedented bull run in the last five years. The 5X explosive revenue growth and the 2X growth in the number of SaaS companies have been built on the track record of the SaaS industry being highly capital efficient as compared to any other industry. The numbers tell the story – the capital required for B2B SaaS to reach unicorn status is half that of B2C start-ups in India, and the revenue per employee for SaaS companies stands at twice that in the IT Services industry. The growth continues unabated at a pace of ~51% CAGR, making the possibility of it becoming a trillion-dollar-valued industry by 2030, a strong reality. This aggressive growth will create 200K+ new jobs over the next five years, with the total talent employed by the Indian SaaS industry expected to grow by 5X in the same time frame.
  
  Factors such as sticky revenue stream, high capital efficiency, ease of scalability, resilient business models, and the evolving consumer demand have made enterprise SaaS a highly attractive avenue for companies and entrepreneurs alike. A formidable combination of resident unicorns such as Freshworks, Postman, Uniphore, Druva, etc., and non-resident unicorns such as Zscaler, Nutanix, Automation Anywhere, etc., are putting the stake in the ground for India’s role in shaping the local and global SaaS narrative.
• Enterprise SaaS: An Entrepreneur’s Paradise
  
  Indian founders and entrepreneurs are trailblazing alongside their global counterparts and have created billion-dollar SaaS companies that are giving tech giants stiff competition. Of the 51 unicorns in India, 10 are from the SaaS space, with 4 joining the coveted unicorn club in 2021 alone. This propulsion of start-ups into the unicorn club has been accelerated by global Venture Capital (VC) investments, especially in the last decade. The study highlights that global VCs have been at the forefront of capitalizing on the rising trillion-dollar Indian SaaS opportunity, with VC investments surging 10X in the last 10 years. Investments to the tune of USD 6 Bn have been made in Indian SaaS companies so far, with ~USD 4 Bn coming in the last 3 years alone. With more than 600 global VCs actively investing in the Indian SaaS industry, the stage is set for many more unicorns to emerge over the next few years.
• The PERFECT storm fueling the Indian SaaS Revolution
  
  SaaS companies are innovating and building new product segments, which are differentiated by the confluence of technologies being leveraged. There are nearly half a million skilled product managers working on these globally competitive SaaS products that leverage new-age customer-centric product design to build enterprise-grade products.
  
  The Indian SaaS space is the epicenter of a major SaaS revolution, with Indian SaaS players poised to fulfill 19% of the global SaaS demand by 2025. The global SaaS market is estimated to reach a massive USD 400 Bn by 2025, and this will firmly position Indian SaaS companies as major players on the global stage. World-class products and platforms, rising interest from global VCs, and a vast pool of digitally skilled technology talent have put Indian SaaS companies on a decidedly firm footing.

“It’s no secret that the future of business and scale is SaaS driven, more so in the post-pandemic landscape. What’s interesting however is how quickly Indian companies have set a global benchmark for the industry. The exponential growth unlocked in the last 5 years is a testament to how capital efficient the Indian SaaS industry is. As an early investor in the Indian SaaS ecosystem, we are stoked about the ground-breaking progress our companies have made and are excited to unlock what the future holds in the form of newer industry milestones and innovations,” says, – Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director & Head of SaaS, Chiratae Ventures.

“India is uniquely positioned to capitalize on and propel the SaaS revolution to even greater heights, thanks to a convergence of factors such as – product leadership, entrepreneurs paying it forward, going global from inception, massive capital infusion, conducive ecosystem enablers, and skilled new-age talent advantage. The soaring valuations that we witnessed even at the height of the pandemic, the revenue per employee compared to that in IT Services (2X in the last 2 years), and the rise in median revenue – stand testament to the potential that SaaS as an industry holds, even beyond the pandemic. SaaS entrepreneurs have demonstrated strong business vision and strategy, strengthened with a robust GTM and Sales strategy, creating a virtuous flywheel of innovation on the global stage, from India.” – Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov.

About Chiratae

Launched in 2006, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors (formerly IDG Ventures India) is India’s leading technology Venture Capital funds advisor. The funds advised by Chiratae Ventures India Advisors collectively have close to $900 M under management and 100+ investee companies across Consumer Media & Tech, Cloud/Software, Health-tech, and Fin-tech. Notable portfolio companies include Bounce, Cure.fit, FirstCry, Flipkart, Forus, GoMechanic, Lenskart, Manthan, Myntra (acquired by Flipkart), NestAway, Newgen (NSE: NEWGEN), PlaySimple, PolicyBazaar, Rentomojo, Unbxd, and Uniphore among others. To date, the fund has recorded 2 IPOs, 38 exits, and 4 Unicorns. www.chiratae.com


About Zinnov

Founded in 2002, Zinnov is a global management and strategy consulting firm, with a presence in Santa Clara, Houston, Chicago, Bangalore, Gurgaon, and Paris. Over the past 19 years, Zinnov has successfully consulted with over 250+ Fortune 500 enterprises to develop actionable insights to help them accelerate value creation – across dimensions of both revenue and optimization. With core expertise in Digital Engineering, Digital Transformation, Innovation, and Outsourcing Advisory, Zinnov assists clients by:

• Advising global PE firms in asset shortlisting and target evaluation, commercial due diligence, and value creation;
• Structuring and implementing Digital Transformation levers enabled by technologies like AI/ML, Cloud, IoT, and RPA;
• Helping global companies outline and drive their open innovation programs, design and operate accelerator programs, and enable collaboration with start-ups across specific use cases and predefined outcomes;
• Enabling global companies to develop and optimize a global engineering footprint through center setups, and technology and functional accelerators to achieve higher R&D efficiencies, innovation, and productivity;
• Growing revenue for companies’ products and services in newer markets through account intelligence, market-entry, and market expansion advisory.

With their team of experienced consultants, subject matter experts, and research professionals, Zinnov serves clients from across multiple industry verticals including Enterprise Software, Hi-Tech, BFSI, Healthcare, Automotive, Retail, and Telecom in the US, Europe, Japan, and India.

For more information, visit http://zinnov.com.

Chiratae Ventures Announces Chiratae Sonic: An Industry 1st Initiative To Enable Quicker Access To Capital for Founders

• Unprecedented 48 hours seed fund approval for investments less than or equal to $500,000
• The first phase of applications under Chiratae Sonic is open for 30 days starting July 7th, 2021
• Making fund-raise more seamless and accessible for founders through the templated application form and a dedicated website for the initiative (https://sonic.chiratae.com/)
• AWS to offer credits up to USD $100,000 per eligible startup through the AWS Activate program
• Chiratae Sonic is the 8th seed investment program rolled out by Chiratae

Bangalore, 07 July 2021: Chiratae Ventures, India’s leading Venture Capital advisory firm today announced their landmark seed initiative Chiratae Sonic to accelerate and democratize the fund-raise process for founders. The initiative guarantees a 48 hours turnaround time on seed fund requests/pitches for investments less than or equal to $500,000. Chiratae has also introduced an application form and a dedicated website (https://sonic.chiratae.com/) to make the process even simpler for early-stage founders. Aligned to Chiratae’s commitment to empowering the homegrown startup ecosystem, the initiative aims to enable quicker access to capital for founders and help them prioritize innovation. The initiative will be rolled out in phases, with the first phase going live today and Chiratae is accepting applications under Chiratae Sonic for the next 30 days.

Chiratae Sonic is the 8th seed investment program rolled out by Chiratae in line with their efforts to empower and support early-stage ventures.

Commenting on the initiative, Sudhir Sethi, Founder & Chairman, said, "As an entrepreneur-first VC, our focus has always been on prioritizing the success of our portfolio businesses. We are constantly on the lookout for ways to make our relationship more efficient and productive. One of the biggest challenges an early-stage entrepreneur faces is the tedious and time-consuming process behind raising capital. We believe innovation needs to be at the core of why and how founders interact with investors. By solving and simplifying the ‘how’ of that conversation Chiratae Sonic strives to empower founders to focus on innovation above all."

In addition to the promise of rapid decision-making for investments via Chiratae Sonic, the initiative entails standard investment terms for equity investments. Diligence for all investments under the initiative will be completed rapidly and remotely with trusted partners. Chiratae remains focused on investing in startups with technology at the core, irrespective of end-use application in dynamic industries like Consumer Tech, Enterprise Tech/SaaS, FinTech, Health-Tech, Deep-Tech, Ed-Tech, and Agri-Tech among others.

In addition to capital, Chiratae also offers its portfolio businesses access to the expertise and insights from its Global Advisory Board and India Advisory Council. Chiratae Venture’s Global Advisory Board has Mr. Ratan Tata - Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan – Co-founder of Infosys, Mr. Bruno E. Raschle - Founder, Managing Director, and Non-Executive Vice Chairman of Schroder, and Mr. Manish Choksi - Non-Executive Vice Chairman of Asian Paints and Dr. Andreas Hettich, Chair, Hettich Group Advisory Board with the additional support of Dr. Ferzaan Engineer - Co-founder and Chairman of Cytecare Hospitals from the India Advisory Council of Chiratae.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a key collaborator in the Sonic program and will offer credits up to USD $100,000 per eligible startup through the AWS Activate program, which provides resources like AWS credits, business mentorship, and technical support to help early-stage founders build and scale successful businesses.

About Chiratae Ventures

Launched in 2006, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors (formerly IDG Ventures India) is India’s leading technology Venture Capital funds advisor. The funds advised by Chiratae Ventures India Advisors collectively have close to $900 M under management and 99 investee companies across Consumer Media & Tech, Cloud/Software, Health-tech, and Fin-tech. Notable portfolio companies include Bounce, Cure.fit, FirstCry, Flipkart, Forus, Lenskart, Manthan, Myntra (acquired by Flipkart), NestAway, Newgen (NSE: NEWGEN), PlaySimple, PolicyBazaar, Rentomojo, Unbxd, and Uniphore among others.

US Based AI Marketing Cloud Startup Pyxis Raises $7 Million in Series A Funding

Pyxis is a unique AI-led marketing cloud start-up headquartered in the US with an office in Bengaluru, India. The start-up has several innovative tools that provide a robust platform for creative automation and actionable marketing research analytics. Started in 2017 by 3 BITS Pilani dropouts; Shubham Mishra serving as Chief Executive Officer, Vrushali Prasade serving as Chief Technology Officer, and Harikrishna Valiyath serving as Chief Business Officer, the start-up has developed an AI-based marketing cloud to automate creative management and generation at scale, along with detailed insights.

Pyxis Founding Team - Harikrishna Valiyath, Vrushali Prasade and Shubham Mishra

In September 2020, the start-up raised $7 million in a Series A funding round led by Chiratae Ventures, Pi Ventures along with their existing investor Exfinity Venture Partners. Talking about the funding, the Founders said, "Our creative AI actions have increased by more than 500% in the last year. We plan to use the funding to expand our global presence and strengthen our Artificial Intelligence capabilities. In addition to that, we also want to start rolling out our integrated predictive marketing ecosystem which equips enterprises with self - serving social, creative and digital ads intelligence." 

Today, Pyxis competes with leading MarTech players in the digital marketing and creative automation space. Some of the key players in the segment include Sprinklr, Celtra and Bynder. With more than 50 clients which includes prominent brands such as HDFC Bank, Bajaj Auto, Tata AIG, BookMyShow, and upcoming start-ups like Swiggy, Livspace, Cure.fit, MPL and MamaEarth, the start-up's unique services have piqued the interest of numerous other investors.

According to their new Board Member and Executive Director at Chiratae Ventures, Venkatesh Peddi, "The Pyxis team has leveraged AI in extremely innovative ways to address some very vexing problems faced by marketing teams universally. We believe, as the marketing function evolves in the modern age, solutions like Pyxis will become indispensable tools." Co-founder and CEO, Shubham Mishra concluded by sharing the vision for the start-up, "We envision Pyxis gamifying artificial intelligence for digital marketers, allowing them to significantly accelerate growth with the help of laser sharp insights."

About Pyxis

Pyxis is an AI marketing cloud company with a comprehensive portfolio of products catering to the overall marketing mix. With the objective of redefining marketing with Artificial Intelligence, the Pyxis Marketing Cloud takes a data-driven approach to ensure the best outcomes using novel marketing APIs.

Uniphore Raises $51 Mn in Series C Funding led by March Capital Partners, Others

Chennai headquartered Uniphore, the global conversational AI technology company, is gaining momentum and announced today it raised $51M in Series C funding led by March Capital Partners, with participation from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures), Sistema Asia, CXO Fund, ITP, Iron Pillar, Patni Family, plus other investors. The new round of funding is Uniphore’s largest to date and marks one of the most substantial funding rounds in the conversational AI sector.

Uniphore will use the funds to accelerate its go-to-market in North America, invest in research and development for the next wave of innovation on its platform and grow its talented employee base globally.

“Today’s announcement of our Series C funding represents a major milestone for Uniphore and the Conversational AI market as a whole. This funding will accelerate our vision to redefine customer service through AI-enabled Conversational Service Automation (CSA). We have always been strong innovators, and our global customers continue to rely on our solutions to help them deliver exceptional customer service. With this new round of funding, we will be able to accelerate our global expansion and better serve our customers by developing and delivering innovative CSA solutions to more organizations around the world,” said Umesh Sachdev, CEO and Cofounder, Uniphore.

Sumant Mandal, Managing Director of March Capital Partners, added: “Uniphore recognized early on that the customer service industry had fundamental limitations which were not being addressed. Brands were not building meaningful relationships with their customers because they were simply reacting, rather than being proactive. Uniphore’s conversational AI technology is changing the way brands are serving and engaging with their customers. Uniphore’s unique technology enables a proactive approach by recognizing the true intent of customer calls and predicting what is coming next.

Uniphore is not only anticipating what the future of customer service will be – they are leading the charge, and we look forward to working closely with them as they continue to innovate. We are excited to be part of the journey of a world-class team building globally competitive products at Uniphore.”

John Chambers, CEO and founder of JC2 Ventures, and an active advisor to Uniphore, who picked up a 10% stake in Uniphore in 2017, welcomed the funding: “Uniphore’s continued success is a testament to the company’s ability to foresee the next market transition and evolve the business model based on that insight promptly. Uniphore’s innovative conversational AI solutions address the growing needs of businesses to provide personalized customer experiences more efficiently and effectively. I believe Umesh and his team are well positioned to revolutionize the customer service industry while continuing to expand the market share. I echo March Capital’s sentiment that the future is extremely bright for Uniphore.”

Most recently, Uniphore CEO Umesh Sachdev moved to Silicon Valley to expand the company’s reach in North America. The move has paved the way for several strategic new hires. Annie Weckesser, veteran of Cisco and NIO, joined as Chief Marketing and People Officer in April. Additionally, in May, Jafar Syed, joined as Chief Strategy & Growth Officer from NTT Data, and in June, Karen Smith, former executive at Directly and Convergys, started with Uniphore as Chief Revenue Officer.

Additionally, Mary Ann Bianco joined as Chief Customer Officer after leading customer success for Oracle’s Cloud SaaS applications business. In July, Ashwin Chalapathy joined as Managing Director in India and Senior Vice President, Services, Asia Pacific. In 2018, the company experienced 300% year-over-year growth and the year prior, Uniphore had an exciting Series B round with participation by various existing and new investors including IDG Ventures, IIFL and JC2 Ventures. Some of Uniphore’s customers include BNP Paribas, NTT Data, and PNB MetLife.

Augmented Reality Startup PlayShifu Raises $7 Mn from Chiratae, Inventus Capital and Bharat Innovation Fund

PlayShifu, the award-winning technology startup, announced today a $7 million Series A round of funding led by Chiratae (formerly IDG Ventures India), Inventus Capital and Bharat Innovation Fund (BIF). Existing investor, IDFC-Parampara Fund also participated. A pioneer in the field of creating highly engaging and immersive AR experiences for children that encourage early STEM skills, PlayShifu has an aggressive strategic plan in place to expand on its tech prowess with this round of funding.

With $8.5 million raised to date, the company’s primary focus will remain tech innovation, continued research on unique phygital interactions and new product developments. PlayShifu also plans to update current products significantly and expand the diverse retail presence from 15 countries to 30+ countries in 2020 and beyond.

"We are extremely excited to have investors who are highly focused on consumer tech, on board in our journey to make early learning fun and accessible to children around the world," said Vivek Goyal, CEO, and Co-Founder of Playshifu. "We have an exhaustive product pipeline, an incessantly creative and passionate team of innovators, and now, the right partners to make an extremely positive impact on the educational foundations of generations to come."

PlayShifu's first flagship product, Shifu Orboot (Top Image), is an AR-based globe that promises an adventure around the world. The user base has crossed 250,000 kids worldwide, but that’s not all. Orboot has seen unprecedented engagement among 4-8-year-olds. While the best of the children's apps/ toys retain approximately 8% of kids after the first month, Orboot boasts more than 40% of kids retained in the second month! In other words, the amount of time spent on the app, thanks in large part to the breadth and depth of learning, has resulted in an impressive frequency of play, and month-after-month retention equal to 4-5 times that of kids-app category benchmarks.

In less than a year, teachers and technology integrators from hundreds of schools in the US, Europe, India discovered PlayShifu and experimented with adopting the innovative products in their tech-friendly classrooms. Today, more than 65% of these schools use Orboot every week in their classes. With Orboot 2.0 launching soon (student profiles and progress tracking, teachers' portal, detailed lesson plans), this engagement will only increase from here, as PlayShifu prepares to expand its reach in schools by 10x this year.

The newest addition, Shifu Plugo, combines the charm of classic physical consoles with new-age digital interactions. Helping kids conquer STEM skills with super-fun characters, captivating storylines, and enriching tactile play, Plugo will soon replace tons of toys in your kid's toy box.

[caption id="attachment_132293" align="aligncenter" width="3741"] Shifu Plugo[/caption]

The physical consoles bring alive the alphabet, math, engineering, music, steering, and more. With two consoles available today, PlayShifu plans to introduce four more by the end of 2019. PlayShifu's global appeal is evident from the fact that they have managed a deep-rooted retail presence in key markets and countries around the world, including the US, Canada, UK, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Hong Kong, South Africa, Middle East, and Japan.

"We are experiencing incredible demand from international markets across the world, purely due to the reason that our innovative products make early learning agnostic to markets and languages. Our products make an instant connection with kids and parents alike," added Dinesh Advani, Co-Founder, and COO. "We now have the tools at our disposal to execute against an even more impactful retail strategy and presence, while we continue to strengthen our position as the segment leader and disruptor in the early learning space."

Founded in 2016, PlayShifu has offices in Bay Area and Bangalore, India. The co-founders Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, graduates of Stanford GSB and IIT Kharagpur, are two dads who juggle toddlers, tech, and toys in their daily lives. They are revolutionizing the toy industry by creating groundbreaking AR experiences with a passionate pack at PlayShifu. For more information, visit the website at www.PlayShifu.com.

[caption id="attachment_132292" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Vivek (L) & Dinesh (R) at Spielwarenmesse 2019[/caption]

"PlayShifu is targeting the multi-billion dollar augmented reality industry with its unique proposition of an enriching learning environment for kids coupled with fun. Vivek and Dinesh, along with their team, have built a solid product roadmap to capture a significant market share in this segment in the US and European regions. Having backed the team early on, this round of funding will boost the product line and offer more such engaging and immersive experiences for their audience," said Karthik Prabhakar, Executive Director at Chiratae (formerly IDG Ventures India).

“We were sold on the innovative concepts PlayShifu have developed in terms of physical interactions as well as digital gameplay, both for their existing products and what they have in store,” said Rutvik Doshi, Managing Director of Inventus Capital. “The user community they have built and the high engagement their products see, prove that they have cracked the code for a delightful user experience unseen in the space,” he added.

"We strongly believe in the capability of Indian entrepreneurs to develop highly innovative products and solutions for the global market, and PlayShifu fits squarely. With their expertise in computer vision, AR technology stack, game & toy design, and storytelling, the PlayShifu team has orchestrated a magical experience through phygital smart-toys for the vast 'early learning' market, quickly making inroads in US, Europe, India, and Japan,” said Som Pal Choudhury, Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund commenting on the investment.

Cure.fit raises $120 Mn in Funding led by Existing Investors

Health and fitness start-up cure.fit announced today that it has raised $120 million in the series D round of equity and debt funding. Led by Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures), Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital & Oaktree Capital; the new investors Epiq Capital, Unilever Ventures, Innoven Capital and Kotak Mahindra Bank joined the 4th round of funding for the three year old start-up. The fresh investment will fund cure.fit’s expansion plans in India and globally.

Other investors who also contributed to the round include Kris Gopalkrishnan Family Office and Bruno Rachelle Family Office.

Founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, cure.fit, one of India’s highest funded start-ups, has built the world's first integrated health platform that brings together all aspects of healthy lifestyle on one platform. With over 2 million downloads, cure.fit has built an innovative tech platform to manage every day health and built an offline fulfilment network for all its services.

With presence in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR region, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and the recent foray into Dubai, cure.fit’s innovative and holistic approach has been adopted by over 500K active subscribers across various offerings with strong cross usage between services. Cure.fit has over 180 cult.fit centres, 35 mind.fit centres and aims to grow this to over 800 centres by 2020. Eat.fit is servicing over 35K meals/day now and doubling every 3 months.

Mukesh Bansal commented, "Health habits of consumers has changed over the past few years and the need for new tech driven approach is a need for a much better consumer experience. cure.fit has created a unique platform and category to help meet this demand and to become the go to destination for all health needs for India. Leveraging deep tech and strong on-ground network, we aspire to service over 100 million consumers over next 10 years”.

“Accel continues to be a strong supporter of cure.fit since their inception. The team has identified a unique customer value proposition (exemplified by best in class NPS) across the health & wellness sector, in a rapidly expanding market. We therefore really appreciate the opportunity to lead another round of investment in the company!”, said Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel.

Sudhir Sethi, Founder & Chairman of Chiratae Ventures, added “cure.fit in its last 3 years blazed to India’s dominant Fitness and Health Tech Player. Now with the Dubai operations, it’s well poised to take the unique offering to international markets. Another Indian Consumer Brand going global".

“We are proud of our continued association with cure.fit. The leadership team has set high standards to serve customers and deliver great products”, said Vani Kola, Managing Director at Kalaari Capital.

“cure.Fit has emerged as one of the largest and fastest growing health & wellness integrated platform in Asia. Combining seamlessly online and offline experiences, cure.fit technology has created an intelligent, personalised and versatile health companion that takes a holistic approach to physical and mental wellbeing. We are excited on the opportunity to work with the cure.fit team”, said Pawan Chaturvedi, Investment Director at Unilever Ventures.

Home Essentials Rental Platform RentoMojo Raises $11 Mn from Accel, Chiratae

Bangalore-based home furniture and appliance rental startup RentoMojo is raising about US$11 million (Rs 77.72 crore) in a Series C funding round led by existing investors Accel India, and Chiratae Venture.

According to the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) sourced by paper.vc, the Bengaluru-based startup will also see capital infusion from Bain Capital Ventures and Japanese investor GMO Venture Partners.

Accel is subscribing to 3,000 Series C cumulative convertible preference shares (CCPS) of RentoMojo, each at a premium of Rs 92707.42 equating to Rs 27.84 crore while Chiratae via IDG Ventures India Fund II, III will be allotted 2,424 Series C CCPS for an investment of about Rs 22.5 crore. Its trust will acquire 576 shares by investing Rs 5.34 crore.

Meanwhile, Bain Capital is subscribing to a total of 1,500 CCPS for an investment of Rs 13.9 crore, and GMO is pumping in about Rs 6.9 crore by subscribing to the company’s 740 shares.

It is to be noted that Cumulative Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) means that after certain period of time these shares will be converted into equity capital of the company, i.e. Rentomojo in this case. It is different from debt funding where Debt must be paid back regardless of the company's financial situation

Frech entrepreneur Renauld Laplanche, who's also existing investor in Rentomojo, is also taking part in the funding in his personal capacity. Laplanche is the co-founder and CEO of the debt refinancing company, Upgrade.

Prior to this round of funding, Rentomojo last raised $10 million in Series B, in July 2017, from Bain Capital Ventures and Renaud Laplanche along with contributions from Accel Partners and Chiratae Venture (then known as IDG Ventures). Prior to that, the startup had raised $5 million in Series A from IDG Ventures and Accel Partners, India, in July 2016.

In May 2017, Rentomojo had raised unkkown amount in debt financing from IntelleGrow. In 2016. it received $50,000 in non-equity based assistance from Google Launchpad Accelerator.

RentoMojo has raised a total of $28 Mn in funding over seven rounds including the latest one.

Founded by IIT-Madras alumni - Geetansh Bamania, Gautam Adukia, Achal Mittal, and Ajay Nain, RentoMojo is a first-of-its-kind consumer product leasing business that raises lease-capital from financial institutions for products rented to consumers for long-term periods, typically 18 months.

AgriTech Startup CropIn Raises $8 Mn from Chiratae Ventures and Others

CropIn Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd., an agriculture technology startup, has raised INR 58 crores ($8 million) in a Series B financing from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund (London and Seattle). With this investment, CropIn has raised a total funding of $12 million till date.

The fresh funding will scale CropIn’s ‘SmartFarm’ technology platform in India and globally to expand its reach from 3 million acres across 2 million farmers to more than 10 million actively monitored acres across 7 million farmers. With this capital infusion and its increasingly rich data-set, the Company will further develop its machine-learning-based ‘SmartRisk’ platform to achieve unprecedented levels of plot-level crop detection and yield prediction.

Headquartered in Bengaluru with 180+ customers across 29 countries, CropIn enables businesses in the agriculture-ecosystem to adopt a data-driven approach through its ground-to-cloud technology platform. It thus empowers agribusinesses to ‘grow more with less’, and drive initiatives around Digitization, Traceability, Predictability, Sustainability and Compliance. CropIn's client portfolio includes many large global agribusinesses, banks, government bodies and development agencies. Through its product platform, CropIn addresses a global market of digital-based agriculture services that is estimated to hit $4.5 billion by 2020.

The company’s initial product, SmartFarm, is a highly customizable mobile app and web interface for farm management deployed across agribusinesses’ own field agents allowing for business-to-business-to-farmer plot-level farm management. Because data is collected and curated by agribusiness employees active at the plot-level and scrubbed for any inconsistencies by CropIn, there is high-confidence that the information accurately reflects what is happening on the farm representing “ground-truth” data. CropIn then builds on this data to enhance traceability and monitoring for its agribusiness clients through various software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

“To feed the 9.7 billion people in the world in 2050, agriculture efficiency must increase by 35% - 70% and technology is the key. India’s rich mix of farming practices and small landholdings provide a massive data set to inform our models. Further, as a SaaS company, geography has never been a limiting factor for expanding our customer base. We are currently active in 29 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and in select European markets. As ground-truth information from these geographies continues to fill our data lake, it provides insights that create a paradigm shift in the agriculture ecosystem globally", says CropIn Founder & CEO Krishna Kumar.

At the back end, CropIn’s data lake amplifies this ground-truth data with local weather information and high-resolution satellite imagery, which form the foundation of machine learning. By analyzing and interpreting this data for the 265 crops with nearly 3,500 variants on its platform across billions of data points that grow every day, CropIn is building an agri-information highway that will detect patterns and predict the future of the crop highlighting the risk and opportunity for agri stakeholders. CropIn provides near-real-time actionable insights to agriculture processors, distributors, inputs providers, lenders and insurers through its connector APIs. Additionally, CropIn’s algorithms can establish historical performance of every pixel at farm and regional level.

“We fundamentally believe in the Founders’ vision of creating a global agri-tech leader, while partnering with multiple stakeholders including agri-businesses, farming companies, financial lending & insurance companies. The sheer impact of CropIn for their global customers across 29 countries based on the unique data sets captured by the platform, is staggering. The potential to revolutionize agriculture leveraging technology and machine learning has never been greater, and we believe Krishna and Kunal will continue to pioneer this industry for years ahead”, according to Karan Mohla, Executive Director, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors.

CropIn Technology is a leading "Full-Stack Agri-Tech"​ organization that provides SaaS solutions to agribusinesses globally. CropIn's product suite enables data-driven farming by connecting all the stakeholders in the agri-ecosystem. With the vision to "maximize per acre value"​ and the mission to "make every farm traceable"​, CropIn adds value by increasing efficiency, scaling productivity and strengthening sustainability across the board. CropIn utilizes cutting-edge technologies like Big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Remote Sensing to enable its clients to analyze and interpret data to derive real-time actionable insights on standing crop. CropIn has digitized over 3.1 million acres of farmland and enriched the lives of nearly 2.1 million farmers while managing 265 crops and 3,500 crop varieties on its platform. CropIn's footprint spans across 29 countries with a track record of carrying out the fastest and most successful technology implementations in the Agri-Tech space on a global scale. The SaaS solutions offered by CropIn are crop and location agnostic.

Fertility Healthcare Portal ElaWoman Raises $3 Mn in Funding Led by Chiratae Ventures (IDG Ventures India)

New Delhi-based fertility healthcare platform ElaWoman, has raised $3 million (~ Rs.22 crores) in series A funding round led by Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India), along with Alkemi Venture Partners, a healthcare and consumption focused early growth stage fund.

The startup will use the funds to boost its technology platform, along with expanding presence in non-metro cities and overseas in Asia Pacific countries.

Founded in 2016, by Ritu Singh, Aditya Kandoi and Yogesh Agarwal, ElaWoman provides a platform to connect patients to renowned fertility doctors, IVF centres, ART treatments, standard-transparent pricing, patient recommendations, holistic rating system and services.

The platform is said to use an AI-powered algorithm to match a patient with the doctor, based on the patient’s medical history, budget, and treatment needs. The platform also offers mobile app, Ela App, that allows fertility tracking, ovulation calculator and period tracking beside having community of 500,000+ users to share and discuss experiences with like-minded fertility users & couples globally.

“Infertility is a major social taboo in India which can be addressed with the help of technology. Furthermore, absence of independent advice and non-transparency in pricing for most fertility treatments including IVF and Surrogacy further widens the void. We aim to bridge this gap by building a transparent data-driven community where users can access independent and trusted advice and can connect with specialised experienced doctors specific to their fertility need," said Ritu Singh, CEO of Elawoman, who is also a co-founder of CareOnGo, a mobile chain of co-branded pharmacies that brings the fragmented micro-pharmacies in India under a single umbrella brand.

ElaWoman currently does over 2500 fertility consultations a month and has more than 250,000 monthly active users.

Ranjith Menon, Executive Director, Chiratae Ventures said, "Infertility is a very sensitive issue. The Asia-Pacific region alone has more than 70 million couples going through the challenges of infertility. This number is only expected to increase given the impact of stress and other lifestyle issues are having on conception. We are very happy to partner with the team at Elawoman who are putting together a platform to help couples deal with the challenges of infertility more effectively."

Last year, we featured a similar platform called InfertilityDost, which is an online platform that facilitates couples to brave infertility with support and knowledge. They hold hand, facilitate right guidance so that couples can take good decisions and stay away from misleading advertisements and fraud clinics, answer their queries by connecting them to experts.

According to a report by Allied Market Research, The India in vitro fertilisation (IVF) Services market was valued at $256.0 million in 2016, and is estimated to reach $829.5 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 18.2% from 2017-2023.

Source - Economic Times

Fertility Healthcare Portal ElaWoman Raises $3 Mn in Funding Led by Chiratae Ventures (IDG Ventures India)

New Delhi-based fertility healthcare platform ElaWoman, has raised $3 million (~ Rs.22 crores) in series A funding round led by Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India), along with Alkemi Venture Partners, a healthcare and consumption focused early growth stage fund.

The startup will use the funds to boost its technology platform, along with expanding presence in non-metro cities and overseas in Asia Pacific countries.

Founded in 2016, by Ritu Singh, Aditya Kandoi and Yogesh Agarwal, ElaWoman provides a platform to connect patients to renowned fertility doctors, IVF centres, ART treatments, standard-transparent pricing, patient recommendations, holistic rating system and services.

The platform is said to use an AI-powered algorithm to match a patient with the doctor, based on the patient’s medical history, budget, and treatment needs. The platform also offers mobile app, Ela App, that allows fertility tracking, ovulation calculator and period tracking beside having community of 500,000+ users to share and discuss experiences with like-minded fertility users & couples globally.

“Infertility is a major social taboo in India which can be addressed with the help of technology. Furthermore, absence of independent advice and non-transparency in pricing for most fertility treatments including IVF and Surrogacy further widens the void. We aim to bridge this gap by building a transparent data-driven community where users can access independent and trusted advice and can connect with specialised experienced doctors specific to their fertility need," said Ritu Singh, CEO of Elawoman, who is also a co-founder of CareOnGo, a mobile chain of co-branded pharmacies that brings the fragmented micro-pharmacies in India under a single umbrella brand.

ElaWoman currently does over 2500 fertility consultations a month and has more than 250,000 monthly active users.

Ranjith Menon, Executive Director, Chiratae Ventures said, "Infertility is a very sensitive issue. The Asia-Pacific region alone has more than 70 million couples going through the challenges of infertility. This number is only expected to increase given the impact of stress and other lifestyle issues are having on conception. We are very happy to partner with the team at Elawoman who are putting together a platform to help couples deal with the challenges of infertility more effectively."

Last year, we featured a similar platform called InfertilityDost, which is an online platform that facilitates couples to brave infertility with support and knowledge. They hold hand, facilitate right guidance so that couples can take good decisions and stay away from misleading advertisements and fraud clinics, answer their queries by connecting them to experts.

According to a report by Allied Market Research, The India in vitro fertilisation (IVF) Services market was valued at $256.0 million in 2016, and is estimated to reach $829.5 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 18.2% from 2017-2023.

Source - Economic Times