T-Hub and Hyderabad Angels Partner to Drive Venture Investment Opportunities for Startups

• The partnership aims to provide technology-driven startup companies access to capital, mentorship, and guidance.
• Hyderabad Angels’ commitment to supporting the rapidly growing Indian startup ecosystem, especially Hyderabad, and T-Hub’s innovative prowess, will further strengthen the innovation ecosystem in India.

T-Hub, which leads India’s innovation ecosystem, today announced its partnership with Hyderabad Angels, the Leading angel Investors in Hyderabad, for more than a decade and also in India. With this collaborative partnership, T-Hub and Hyderabad Angels aim to drive innovation and venture investment opportunities for technology startups in the country.

Through its vast network, Hyderabad Angels will provide access to investment opportunities from India, the USA, the UK, Singapore, Dubai, and UAE, among other countries, to the startups. It will also have a presence at the new facility of T-Hub, the world’s largest innovation campus, creating substantial synergies between Hyderabad Angels and T-Hub stakeholders, especially the startups. The collaboration paves the way for the technology-driven startup with growth opportunities and global exposure.

MSR (Mahankali Srinivas Rao), CEO of T-Hub, said, “Our various collaborations with ecosystem enablers continue to expand the more we learn about our entrepreneurs’ requirements. Joining forces with Hyderabad Angels elevates our value proposition, and we look forward to creating an impact together for our startup community. This will play a key role in providing the startups with access to cutting-edge technology, mentorship, funding avenues and tools they require to accelerate their innovation agendas.”

The partnership will empower T-Hub entrepreneurs to scale globally enduring homegrown technology startups with access to capital, mentorship, and guidance from the Hyderabad Angels. In addition, this will enable T-Hub to introduce Hyderabad Angels to its tech innovation ecosystem and facilitate exclusive meetings with startups and other stakeholders.

Rajesh Manthena, Chairman of Hyderabad Angels, said, “Hyderabad Angels have successfully invested in 60+ startups till date and works very closely with companies and their founders to improve their chances of success and extend their market access. We are very excited about this collaboration with T-Hub as we are sure this can really add tremendous benefit to the startup ecosystem.”

T-Hub’s programs have been successfully scaling startups in partnership with a robust ecosystem of partners. T-Hub, to date, has impacted over 2000 startups through various programs and initiatives, has over 600 global and national corporate partners and has provided 2000 mentor connects to help the startup scale. T-Hub will continue to drive collaboration between startups and leading innovation ecosystems worldwide, providing global market-access opportunities to startups.

T-Hub (Technology Hub) is an innovation hub and ecosystem enabler. Based out of Hyderabad, India, T-Hub leads India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem and is the world’s largest innovation campus. Over the six years, T-Hub has pivoted around the 6Ms (Mentorship, Money, Market Access, Motivation, Mindset, Manpower) and 2Ps (Partnerships & Policy advisory) framework with a mission of driving results and collaboration for entrepreneurs’ success. It has delivered 100+ innovation programs so far, creating an impact for startups, corporations, and other innovation ecosystem stakeholders. Since inception, it has provided over 2000 national and international startups with access to better technology, talent, mentors, customers, corporates, investors, and government agencies.

Hyderabad Angels (HA) is a decade-old Angel network in India that invests in early-stage companies and believes in Fostering the Entrepreneurs to build their startup and growth in various stakeholders in the startup ecosystem. HA provides Innovative business ideas and entrepreneurs with capital, mentorship, and guidance. HA members are leading venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who, with their financial and commercial acumen, are committed to providing support to the rapidly growing Indian startup ecosystem. HA has investments in 60+ startups till date with 12 + Exits as of date with a high growth IRR. It has 100-plus members from diverse backgrounds with strong operational experience to scale and creates value for companies. In addition, HA works closely with other early-stage VCs, Accelerators, and Incubators. HA believes in thinking like a VC invest like an Angel in fostering entrepreneurship in the Indian startup ecosystem, which is a win-win for both Angels Investors and Startup Founders.

AI-powered Video Platform Toch Raises Funds from Angels Networks, HNIs Including Former Zee CFO

Mumbai-based start-up Vogueme Technologies has raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A funding round led by investors from Hyderabad Angels, Mumbai Angels and other high net worth individuals (HNIs) including former Zee Entertainment CFO Mihir Modi and Swastik Bihani, Head of Products & GM, India at PayPal.

The startup will use the funds raised to enhance technology, scale their team and operations.

Founded in 2016 by Vinayak Shrivastav, Alok Patil and Saket Dandotia, Toch is world's first video interactive shoppable platform that allows users to purchase and view information right while watching the content. The platform optimises the video content, to add clickable hotspots, or 'tags', to any moving person or object in video adding an unexplored consumer experience he is not purview to currently.

The artificial intelligence (AI) video platform of Toch auto-detects objects, people, emotions, locations, scenes and activities in a video in real time and automates the meta-tagging process to enable monetisation.

Rathnakar Samavedam Portfolio Manager with Hyderabad Angels said, “With live commerce becoming the centre in the country, Toch has positioned itself as a platform to enable the new-age live discovery solution for users. The founders have the vision that excites us and our members believe Vinayak and team are building a disruptive technology in the media and commerce space.”

"Our growth roadmap in the media-tech sector has expanded over the last year and also our vision for a live commerce experience. We have automated the decade-old meta-tagging opportunity and look to keep growing our revenues by 4x this year. Toch is currently enabling meta-tagging for live sporting events, live shows and library-based content for streaming platforms and is venturing into broadcasting meta-tagging simultaneously,” Founder and CEO, Vinayak Shrivastav said.

“While the platform is gearing up for a rebranded launch in the Live commerce category before the end of Q3. The current round will be used to grow our market traction,” Shrivastav added.

“Toch’s technology is already powering leading media companies in the digital media revolution that the country is currently witnessing,” said Mihir Modi.

Hyperlocal News Platform PublicVibe (formerly NewsDistill) Raises Funds from IAN, Anthill and Hyderabad Angels

Hyderabad-based PublicVibe (formerly NewsDistill), a vernacular hyperlocal community news platform, has it raised an undisclosed amount in a funding led by Indian Angel Network (IAN) with participation from Anthill Ventures and Hyderabad Angels.

Bikky Khosla and Prashant Pahade from IAN will be joining the board of PublicVibe.

PublicVibe, which plans to launch a hyperlocal advertisement network in support of small businesses, will use the freshly raised capital in scaling its platform in one of the vernacular languages and to optimise its AI infrastructure for scaling up.

Launched in 2015 by Narasimha Reddy, PublicVibe serves instant hyper local news so that people aware of whats happening around them and involve to make a difference. Its mobile app connect people in a locality, bring awareness and it can also lead to resolution of local problems.

PublicVibe is also the winner of NASSCOM and Facebook's top 10 startups in India to create social impact and the product that can touch people lives at all levels in India.

Prior to the latest funding, PublicVibe had raised $100,000 in seed funding in September 2016. In that round, noted investors and technology leaders contributed to the funding and those include Mr. Narasimhan Ganesh, Senior Director, Box.com, Mr. Ramana Thumu, Vice President – eBay, and Mr. Sudhir Mallem - Uber.

Growing Vernacular Content Consumption

In a report published in March last year by IAMAI and Kantar IMRB, it was revealed that 205 million new internet users would come online if content is available in Indian vernacular languages, which will be key motivation of using internet for people who are not using it.

In January, Mumbai-based Agrahyah Technologies announced the launch of Aawaz.com, an audio on demand platform with 100% professionally generated content in Indian vernacular languages.

Last November, Vokal launched Video Questions & Answers (Q&A) in vernacular languages making it as the first product in India to be bring such a feature to vernacular Internet users.

In July last year, Vokal, a peer-to-peer (P2P) knowledge-sharing platform in Indian Languages, had raised $5 million in a Series A round of funding led by China’s Shunwei Capital and 500 startups.

Source - The Hans India

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.

Hyderabad Based Food Startup HealthSutra Raises Funding From Ankur Capital and Hyderabad Angels

Early stage venture capital fund, Ankur Capital, along with Hyderabad Angels, has invested an undisclosed amount into FountainHead Foods, the company behind Health Sutra – an emerging brand focused on the nutritious food segment with millet based products.

High in fibre, protein, rich in micro nutrients and low in fat, millets are highly nutritious and delicious wonder grains indigenous to India. With a fast growing ‘naturally healthy’ foods segment estimated at Rs 22,000 crores (2016), the trend towards a ‘return to traditional, healthier foods’ is clearly gathering momentum and Health Sutra, which has developed a basket of affordable, tasty and high quality products is well positioned to dominate this segment.

The startup was founded by Sai Krishna Popuri, an IIT Delhi Alumnus. After working for 6 years, Popuri chose to return to his roots, having grown up in Narsaraopet of Guntur district, with farmers and agriculture being an integral part of his childhood and founded the company in July 2013. Currently, Health Sutra products are available in over 600 stores in AP and Telangana.

Health Sutra was started with the aim of bringing India’s traditional foods back on the table for Indians. While Indians are increasingly becoming more health conscious and are looking for ways to embrace a healthier lifestyle, healthy foods need not mean Oats, quinoa etc. which are imported and are not native to India. Eating grains like Jowar, Bajra, and Ragi, indigenous to our country and more suited to our climate and bodies, helps one get fit and stay active.

Health Sutra offers the nutritional goodness of climate smart millet grains like Jowar in a tasty, convenient way – ready-to-cook mini-meals as well as ready-to-eat snacks. These products are gluten free, free from preservatives and artificial ingredients, and have resonated well with the target audience. Part of the reason for their popularity is that these products have re-imagined traditional food in an interesting way e.g. Jowar pops, popped and naturally flavoured jowar grains, are a delicious and guilt-free way to satiate 4 o’clock hunger pangs.

All the grains are sourced from local farmers and transformed into delicious array of food products through Health Sutra’s own technology.

Speaking about the investment, Ms. Rema Subramanian, Managing Partner and co-founder, Ankur Capital, says “We are very excited about this investment – not only does it bring low cost nutritious food to the average customer it also encourages the cultivation of a climate smart crop that is much better suited for semi-arid areas. Sai and his team have developed an exciting array of ready to eat and ready to cook products and we look forward to being part of the journey as they grow the brand.”

This sentiment is echoed by Mr. Sai Krishna Popuri, founder and CEO, Health Sutra. He says, “Millets are smart foods – they are good for the consumer, good for the planet and good for the farmer. Health Sutra products bring back the goodness of these traditional nutritional powerhouses to the consumers in a modern form. They are the naturally healthy way to stay fit. Our technology ensures that modern products can be made from these ancient grains. Skip Oats – Go Desi. Let’s Millet.”.

Currently, Health Sutra products are available in over 600 stores across AP and Telangana. The company will use the money to expand its distribution, build its brand and introduce more products.

Ankur Capital, an early stage venture capital fund, has invested in 9 companies across sectors like agriculture, healthcare, education and other areas with potential to create large scale impact. Many of its portfolio companies have gone ahead to raise subsequent rounds of capital. The VC Fund provide capital upto INR 5cr and participate in larger rounds.

Data Science Company Realbox Data Analytics Gets $300K in Pre-Series A Funding Led by Hyderabad Angels

Realbox Data Analytics, a data science company, has raised pre-series A round of funding of amount $300K led by Hyderabad Angels. Alok Mittal, ex-MD, Canaan Partners, Dharamveer Singh Chouhan, Zostel CEO. Shubranshu Pani, Director JLL and vCommission also participated in this round. Pledging to create an analytical eco system for offline businesses, Realbox plans to invests the funds in developing the concept of “smart store” that would holistically cater to growth of businesses.

Realbox Data Analytics uses business intelligence and predictive analysis tools to help offline businesses increase revenues and decrease risk. Their signature product, Pulse, provides decision- makers business summaries and key performance metrics on their mobile devices in real time, helping them remain agile and in control of their businesses.

“Our mission is to make offline businesses INTELLIGENT. With the investment on board and enhanced capacity, in addition to large corporate clients that we currently serve, we are targeting to introduce “Smart Store” to over 5000 outlets including movie theaters, retail & hospitality businesses in next 18 months” says RealBox Founder, CEO Saurabh Moody, a Microsoft alumnus and a data scientist, who has worked with retail giants like Target, Toys R Us, USPS, in the past. He also published a patent in the field of profiling customers and creating personalized experiences in a fully automated way. Saurabh along with his co-founders, brother Arjun Sudhanshu and Preksha Kaparwan incorporated Real Box Data Analytics Private Limited in April, 2015.

“While we are growing as a company, we believe in constantly upgrading and providing the best experience to our existing customers. Our flagship product “PULSE” which is an intelligent business dashboard can be installed on top of any existing POS enabling businesses to use data analytics without changing their existing technology. This proprietary technology is capable of connecting to any business management software (POS - Point of sales) and can generate real time actionable insights thereby helping the management in better decision making. It can be remotely installed and needs no hardware or software support from third party. It’s a self-sustainable eco system which works on any device.” shared Realbox co-founder and CMO Preksha.

“Pulse” has been successfully deployed across various clients such as movie theater giant PVR Director’s Cut and Australia’s biggest juice chain JOOST among many others. It has helped clients track and monitor thereby facilitating growth. Pulse is currently in use across Movie Theaters, Retail Businesses, Restaurants and Hotels.

“Our mission is to make offline businesses intelligent. With the investment on board and enhanced capacity, in addition to large corporate clients that we currently serve, we would also like to cater to more and more medium and small offline stores/businesses helping them grow. Given its ease of use and affordability, Pulse would transform all small and large business into smart stores” says Realbox Founder and CEO Saurabh Moody.

Gurgaon Based Food Ordering Startup Twigly Raises $600K in Seed Funding

Gurgaon-based food ordering startup Twigly has raised $600,000 in seed funding from Bengaluru-based Tracxn Labs, Hyderabad Angels, Freecharge founder Kunal Shah and Flipkart vice-president (engineering) Gaurav Bhalotia, among others. The company is looking to expand its kitchen-on-cloud business to Delhi and Bengaluru during the next 6-10 months. Also, the startup will use the money to expand into new cities and towards building a food brand that will be made available in supermarkets and online platforms.

Twigly, inspired by US-based Sprig, was founded in August 2015 by Sonal Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi. the company is currently in the process of creating back-end infrastructure to manufacture its private label products. You can expect its products to be available in places such as Godrej Nature’s Basket and Le Marche within the next six months, as per LiveMint report.

Twigly works on an online kitchen model where the food is made at a central kitchen and shipped to customers directly. The menu is limited and changes on a weekly basis. The company runs two kitchens in Gurgaon and delivers close to 150 orders a day and targeting to serve about 1,000 orders a day in the next three quarters. The company’s foray into packaged food category is expected to further boost sales.

“We aim to scale the business to $100 million in sales in the next seven to eight years,” according to Minhas. Twigly, which went live seven months ago, has a customer base of 6,000 people and currently has a 50-member team.

In November last year, Twigly raised $200,000 from angel investors, including Amit Gupta, co-founder of InMobi, Mukul Singhal of SAIF Partners, TracxnLabs, an incubator backed by Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, and Deepak Singh of Anzy Careers.

Other players operating in the space include TinyOwl which merged with logistics firm RoadRunnr (Carthero Technologies Pvt. Ltd) in May to start a new entity called Runnr to stay afloat. Internet-first kitchen Spoonjoy and restaurant aggregator Dazo, which had marquee investors Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal, Google India chief Rajan Anandan and Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, have shut down their shop in October after failing to raise substantial funds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thrillophilia gets Angel Investment of 200K USD from Hyderabad Angels

Thrillophilia, a Bangalore based startup has received an angel investment of 200,000 USD. Hyderabad Angels, iLabs Venture Capital Fund, Navlok Ventures and Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (IIM-A) have decided to buy an undisclosed amount of stake in one of the largest travel curators of the country -Thrillophilia. The startup has divested an undisclosed stake in an angel funding round for an amount more than 200,000 USD to Hyderabad Angels.

Instituted in 2010 Hyderabad Angels is one of the youngest though one of a fastest growing angel networks in India, established as a not for profit company that encourage high growth companies to get picked from angel investors for investments.

Thrillophilia is a 3-year-old startup into adventure travel space growing at 200% per year. Now the online portal has moved to a marketplace model of unique activities, experiences and things to do in India. These could be like snorkeling with elephants, bamboo rafting in Kerala, local village tour in deserts near Jaisalmer, royal walk in old city of Mysore, a week-long horse safari tour in Chambal valley or sea kayaking expeditions in Goa.

With more than 400 activity-based tours and 1,000 off-beat travel experiences on the portal -Thrillophilia, the startup plans to organize the tour and travel sector by curating these local activity providers and bringing them online on a marketplace dedicated to activities and things to do in the travel segment.In the last 3 years, Thrillophilia has served more than 50,000 travellers and 500+ corporate clients

The online portal, Thrillophilia.com was launched in August 2009 and the company has grown at an average rate of 200 percent per year. Headquartered in Bangalore, the company has its presence in 72 cities and alliances with 450 regional service providers. Thrillophilia curates and plans adventure and activity trips for corporate houses, international travellers and individuals throughout the country.