Ex-Ola Advisor led Vans Group partners with Successroute

Will Strengthen its corporate finance practice for Startups and SMEs

Vans Group (Vans Investments and Vans Skilling), founded by former Ola Advisor Dr. Srinivas Chunduru, today announced that the company has signed a partnership agreement with Successroute India Financial Advisors LLP to strengthen its offerings in the startup and SME segment.

Vans Skilling & Advisory partners with organizations in their growth journeys through its unique "Interim model" (Meraki) and "Academy model" (recruit, train and deploy) and co-owns the outcome of business through rigour in execution. The partnership with Successroute will further enhance the company’s advisory services in the areas of Distressed Assets Restructuring, M&A, Fund Raising, Due Diligence & Entry Strategies and Corporate Finance solutions.

Vans group has recently signed with Crowdera, a Singapore based fintech company as Chief Advisor- Strategic Alliances and Strategic Advisors with Snackamor, a leading health food company.

Dr. Srinivas Chunduru, Founder of Vans Group said, “We are pleased to welcome Nitika Agarwal and Rahul Choudhry from Successroute as partners and subject matter experts for this vertical. With their vast experience in the areas of corporate finance, especially fund raising, restructuring and M&A, we have strengthened our offerings to our clients especially in the startup and SME segment.”

"We are particularly fascinated by an opportunity to partner and contribute to the vision of Vans Group of creating a complete eco-system, enabling Startups and SME's to accelerate their growth phase. Our partnership will complement the ecosystem and services being offered by Vans Group", said Rahul Choudhry, Partner at Successroute.

Vans Group is founded by Dr. Srinivas Chunduru (Dr. Srini), who has previously served two decades at the Piramal Group in various leadership positions including Group CHRO, business head and Executive Director at Piramal housing finance. In his last stint, he was a Senior Advisor for ride-hailing company Ola and has played the role of interim group CHRO and CEO of Ola Skilling (OSPL).

About Vans Group

Vans Group consists of Vans Investments and VANS Skilling & Advisory, a boutique firm that focusses on helping companies scale.

Vans Investments, prop fund, which focuses on investments in pre-IPO, new age internet consumer and Fintech companies.

VANS Skilling partners with organizations in its journey through its unique "Interim model" and co-owns the outcome through rigour in execution. It has served clients in FMCG, Housing Finance, Chemicals, consumer electrical, manufacturing and New age internet companies over the last few years. VANS through this model has played a pivotal role as "Interim" (CHRO, CFO, CEO) for its clients. VANS is supported by its state of the art research and knowledge centre in Mumbai

 About Successroute

Successroute India Financial Advisors LLP (“Successroute”) is a venture started by professionals having extensive investment banking, consulting and financial advisory experience.

The founders and the team have worked successfully with numerous Indian and overseas clients including the government, multilateral and donor agencies as well as banks and financial institutions, large corporate groups, SMEs and startups on transactions involving varying degrees of complexities.

Successroute has the capability to provide one stop, end to end capability to  address the varied requirements of a complex transaction. Our seamless delivery coupled with the complete involvement of our senior team  keeps you ahead in your business.  At Successroute, we  are mindful of the value proposition of transactions  under consideration  and  in this context, assist you in identifying the core issues and help you focus on these and address the concerns thereof.

Ex-Flipkart Execs' App Personalization Platform Hansel.io Raises $4 Mn from Vertex Ventures

Bangalore-based Hansel Software Pvt. Ltd, which own & operates mobile app personalization platform Hansel.io, has raised $4 million (Rs 27.5 crore) in a new funding round led by Vertex Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings.

Hansel's existing investors IDG Ventures India and Endiya Partners also participated in this funding round. The startup will use the freshly raised funds to expand its operations to international markets and acquire new talent into its team.

The startup had earlier raised undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding led by Tracxn's angel network TracxnSyndicate as well as from Tracxn Labs and angels including Mekin Maheshwari and Rajesh Sawhney among others, in February 2016. This was followed by $1.35 Mn funding from IDG Ventures and Endiya Partners, in January 2017.

Founded in 2015 by ex-Flipkart executives - Varun Ramamurthy, Parminder Singh and Mudit Mathur, Hansel.io has developed a toolkit for mobile developers that helps them automatically reproduce issues and allows developers to fix crashes at run-time besides communicating customer issues on their app at run-time.

The startup has its flagship toolkit called Hansel's Experience Lake, which allows developers to manage live apps at run-time, with a quick integration process without a code change. With access controls, workflows, and code-free personalization built in, business teams can orchestrate personalized user experiences with enormous speed, at scale, without disrupting engineering roadmap.

On Hansel's funding, Piyush Kharbanda, Executive Director at Vertex Ventures said to e27.com, “Historically, companies have struggled to emulate the rapid pace with which the top four tech giants test and personalize product experiences. Hansel’s technology helps its customers drive new product experiences without getting bottlenecked at code,”

Vertex Ventures invests in early-stage technology companies in Southeast Asia and India across enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet. Its Indian portfolio companies include Noida-based SaaS startup Hotelogix, IoT analytics startup Flutura, omni-channel order management firm Ace Turtle, and Cloudcherry, a customer experience management SaaS firm, among others.

Besides Vertex Venture, an another investment firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings, InnoVen Capital, has invested $875,000 in Flintobox, a Chennai-based educational start-up focusing on activity-based learning for kids.

Source - e27.com

[top Image - Hansel.io Team | Via - Iamwire.com]

Ex-Flipkart Execs' App Personalization Platform Hansel.io Raises $4 Mn from Vertex Ventures

Bangalore-based Hansel Software Pvt. Ltd, which own & operates mobile app personalization platform Hansel.io, has raised $4 million (Rs 27.5 crore) in a new funding round led by Vertex Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings.

Hansel's existing investors IDG Ventures India and Endiya Partners also participated in this funding round. The startup will use the freshly raised funds to expand its operations to international markets and acquire new talent into its team.

The startup had earlier raised undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding led by Tracxn's angel network TracxnSyndicate as well as from Tracxn Labs and angels including Mekin Maheshwari and Rajesh Sawhney among others, in February 2016. This was followed by $1.35 Mn funding from IDG Ventures and Endiya Partners, in January 2017.

Founded in 2015 by ex-Flipkart executives - Varun Ramamurthy, Parminder Singh and Mudit Mathur, Hansel.io has developed a toolkit for mobile developers that helps them automatically reproduce issues and allows developers to fix crashes at run-time besides communicating customer issues on their app at run-time.

The startup has its flagship toolkit called Hansel's Experience Lake, which allows developers to manage live apps at run-time, with a quick integration process without a code change. With access controls, workflows, and code-free personalization built in, business teams can orchestrate personalized user experiences with enormous speed, at scale, without disrupting engineering roadmap.

On Hansel's funding, Piyush Kharbanda, Executive Director at Vertex Ventures said to e27.com, “Historically, companies have struggled to emulate the rapid pace with which the top four tech giants test and personalize product experiences. Hansel’s technology helps its customers drive new product experiences without getting bottlenecked at code,”

Vertex Ventures invests in early-stage technology companies in Southeast Asia and India across enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet. Its Indian portfolio companies include Noida-based SaaS startup Hotelogix, IoT analytics startup Flutura, omni-channel order management firm Ace Turtle, and Cloudcherry, a customer experience management SaaS firm, among others.

Besides Vertex Venture, an another investment firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings, InnoVen Capital, has invested $875,000 in Flintobox, a Chennai-based educational start-up focusing on activity-based learning for kids.

Source - e27.com

[top Image - Hansel.io Team | Via - Iamwire.com]

Ex-Googler's Learning App OckyPocky Raises Angel Funding from ah! Ventures

Gurgaon-based WhizKidz Media Pvt Limited, which owns and runs OckyPocky, a learning app for pre-school kids, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel investment through ah! Ventures, a startup-focused growth catalyst firm.

Founded by Amit Agrawal, an ex-Googler who was earlier heading YouTube Content Operations of South & South-East Asia, OckyPocky will use the freshly raised capital to expand the user base by growing its outreach into tier 2 and tier 3 cities, along with exploring the NRI market for kids with cultural connect to India through a Hindi learning curriculum. It also plans to scale its operations and strengthen its technology platform.

The app was conceived and launched in 2015 and claims to be India's first personalized learning app for pre-school kids. The app uses artificial intelligence, speech recognition and vernacular languages to create a magical experience for Indian kids all over the world.

"OckyPocky’s mission is to change the way over 160 million preschool kids learn, starting at age 2. Language is a key skill they start learning, but many of them in Tier II and Tier III towns lack access especially to early-stage English language learning solutions. Existing internet content is often unsafe for them. We aim to change this with OckyPocky,” said Amit Agrawal.

The startup was also part of the first cohort of impact investor Gray Matters Capital's mobile ed-tech accelerator programme GMC Calibrator, launched in April this year.

A very similar app (Vernacular) called Vokal, which is a peer-to-peer (P2P) knowledge-sharing platform in Indian languages, has raised $5 million in funding led by China’s Shunwei Capital and 500 startups.

Also Read - BYJU’S Launches Parent Connect App, Offers Real Time Update On Child's Learning Progress

ah! Ventures, a startup focused growth catalyst, provides a platform for investors and entrepreneurs to create growth opportunities for both. It was founded by Abhijeet Kumar and Harshad Lahoti in 2015. Some of its successful investments include FreightBazaar, crypto assets trading platform Unocoin, news and media platform Inc42, among many others.

In May this year, ah! Ventures had participated in Pre-Series A round of funding of FreightBazaar, a Hyderabad-based startup which that connects Truck suppliers with Truck users online.

Earlier this month, an another kids learning startup, Flintobox raised $875,000 from InnoVen Capital, a venture debt and specialty lending firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings.

Prior to that, an early childhood learning startup, Magic Crate raised an undisclosed amount in its third round of institutional funding led by Fireside Ventures.

[Top Image - GMC Impact@Twitter]

Ex-Googler's Learning App OckyPocky Raises Angel Funding from ah! Ventures

Gurgaon-based WhizKidz Media Pvt Limited, which owns and runs OckyPocky, a learning app for pre-school kids, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel investment through ah! Ventures, a startup-focused growth catalyst firm.

Founded by Amit Agrawal, an ex-Googler who was earlier heading YouTube Content Operations of South & South-East Asia, OckyPocky will use the freshly raised capital to expand the user base by growing its outreach into tier 2 and tier 3 cities, along with exploring the NRI market for kids with cultural connect to India through a Hindi learning curriculum. It also plans to scale its operations and strengthen its technology platform.

The app was conceived and launched in 2015 and claims to be India's first personalized learning app for pre-school kids. The app uses artificial intelligence, speech recognition and vernacular languages to create a magical experience for Indian kids all over the world.

"OckyPocky’s mission is to change the way over 160 million preschool kids learn, starting at age 2. Language is a key skill they start learning, but many of them in Tier II and Tier III towns lack access especially to early-stage English language learning solutions. Existing internet content is often unsafe for them. We aim to change this with OckyPocky,” said Amit Agrawal.

The startup was also part of the first cohort of impact investor Gray Matters Capital's mobile ed-tech accelerator programme GMC Calibrator, launched in April this year.

A very similar app (Vernacular) called Vokal, which is a peer-to-peer (P2P) knowledge-sharing platform in Indian languages, has raised $5 million in funding led by China’s Shunwei Capital and 500 startups.

Also Read - BYJU’S Launches Parent Connect App, Offers Real Time Update On Child's Learning Progress

ah! Ventures, a startup focused growth catalyst, provides a platform for investors and entrepreneurs to create growth opportunities for both. It was founded by Abhijeet Kumar and Harshad Lahoti in 2015. Some of its successful investments include FreightBazaar, crypto assets trading platform Unocoin, news and media platform Inc42, among many others.

In May this year, ah! Ventures had participated in Pre-Series A round of funding of FreightBazaar, a Hyderabad-based startup which that connects Truck suppliers with Truck users online.

Earlier this month, an another kids learning startup, Flintobox raised $875,000 from InnoVen Capital, a venture debt and specialty lending firm backed by Singapore's Temasek Holdings.

Prior to that, an early childhood learning startup, Magic Crate raised an undisclosed amount in its third round of institutional funding led by Fireside Ventures.

[Top Image - GMC Impact@Twitter]

How Flipkart Become Launchpad for Many Startups and Its Ex-Employees Spawned New Ventures

India’s unicorns club including Flipkart, Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, Naukri, Ola and more is playing major role in shaping and strengthening of the Indian start-up ecosystem by producing a new startups army. Ex-employees of these companies have spawned more than 700 start-ups till date. According to Tracxn, a venture and startup data tracker firm, there are a number of notable ventures founded by the former employees of India’s unicorns. Numerous of these startups have succeeded to create big firms and contributing in shaping the Indian start-up ecosystem. They are succeeding the way of Infosys and Wipro which provide a strong support system to their employees to found startups. Remarkably, Infosys has created 867 companies and Wipro created 685 companies till date and most of them are serving in the Indian software services space.

Indian unicorns, in which Flipkart, in particular is responsible for creating many other entrepreneurs who left them to establish their own ventures. Prior to starting up, the experience and knowledge they gained during working in these companies nurtured their entrepreneurial spirit and helped in building a successful business. Let’s have a look on few startup names which are formed from former employees of Flipkart.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal founded Flipkart in 2007, when they were working for Amazon. They left the job to start their own venture in the form of Flipkart.com. Following the footsteps of Bansals’, a number of their employees, who left since its incorporation, have founded more than 60-70 start-ups.

Notable Startups from Ex-Employees-turned-Entrepreneurs of Flipkart

[caption id="attachment_115910" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Pic Credit - Nishant@Flickr[/caption]

Two of Flipkart’s ex-employees -- Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori left to launch CureFit, a healthcare and fitness venture. This is Mukesh Bansal’s 2nd venture at entrepreneurship after Myntra, which merged to Flipkart in 2014. Like Bansal’s and Nagori’s, an increasing number of employees of Flipkart are taking path of entrepreneurship to give wings to their own ideas and thoughts.

Akshay Lal co-founded Playment a micro task crowd sourcing platform in 2015. It has tied up with existing e-commerce players including Flipkart, Paytm, Myntra to help them in assigning their tasks through crowd sourcing. It offers data collection, tagging, testing, analysis, algorithm training and market research services to e-commerce companies.

Another Flipkart’s ex-employee Arpit Dave co­-founded food ordering startup Runnr with an aim to become one among leading on-demand hyper local delivery carrier in the country. Its key team members also include ex-Amazon and ex-Ola employees. Ex- employees’ trio- Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta and Sujeet Kumar founded Udaan, as an effective mode to connect wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers and traders of different categories.

Sameer Nigam quit Flipkart’s head of product job to start PhonePe an Internet venture to carry payment segment. The startup eventually got acquired by Flipkart, last year in April.

Working with Flipkart motivated Preeti Jain to start InLogg - a logistic company. Like them, Flipkart nurtured entrepreneurial thoughts of other employees too and about 50-60 of them now have their own ventures. Not only Flipkart’s former employees quit to starting their ventures but other unicorns too fed their employees minds to move toward entrepreneurship. Likewise, startups include; Urban Ladder, Housejoy and lots others which were started by the people who was hungry to learn more and desired for growth by exploring right market opportunities.

A High Rate of Shutdowns

Of course, the number of startups founded by ex-employees of unicorn startups has increased but many of these ventures have shut down shops within 1 or 2 years of starting. The shut down rate of these startups is very high because of the Indian startup ecosystem challenges which makes difficult for startups to survive for a long run. Only handful startups succeed to stay alive in the challenging startup ecosystem. A couple of them are victims of stereotype working, unrealistic valuation and easy money that forced them shutting down early.

For few others, funding was a big problem. Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn said, "Less than 10% of start-ups manage to convince an institutional investor to invest capital in their companies. Less than 3% manage to reach Series B stage. So, building and scaling business is exceptionally hard. So we can continue to see a fair mix of successes and failures, and potentially success after multiple failed attempts."

Also Read -- Over 200 Startups Shut Down In 2016 which is 50% more than 2015

At last, despite the fact that many startups fail, this is great news that more number of startups founded by former employees of successful startups are witnessing the rapid growth and playing key role in countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. This leads to a highly competitive atmosphere, more innovations and improved technologies in the future.

[Top-Featured Image - Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay@Flickr ]