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]

AI Driven HealthTech Startup HealthPlix Raises $3Mn from Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India

HealthPlix, a Bengaluru based healthtech firm that assists doctors digitally, has raised $3 Million from IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital in its Series A round. It was co-founded by Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Sandeep Gudibanda and Prasad Basavaraj.

HealthPlix will utilise the funds to further strengthen its technology to assist doctors better and expand its team and services in other geographical markets. It is a first of its kind healthcare technology that brings transformative change in the way diseases are treated in the Indian outpatient care.

While making the announcement, Sandeep Gudibanda, Co-Founder & CEO of HealthPlix said, “Population level health problems can be better managed if digital tools assist doctors at the time of treating their patients. Our goal at HealthPlix is to drive better Health Outcomes by enabling widespread adoption of our platform.

HealthPlix software is lot more than just an EMR. Its assistive-AI goes 4 levels deep: It adapts to doctors’ specialty, their practice preference, patient's disease and the stage of the disease.”

“We are happy to have gained valuable support from the leading investors - IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital. The fundraise will help us to enhance clinical experiences for patients & doctors and thereby create a platform which will revolutionize the Indian healthcare ecosystem.” Sandeep Gudibanda added.

Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Co-Founder, HealthPlix said, “In India, 90% of care is delivered in an outpatient setting i.e. clinics and hospital OPDs. That's our target segment. We are trying to empower doctors and hospitals digitally by eliminating the conventional pen & paper prescriptions and shift to new age EMR.

Additionally, our focus is to improve patient compliance by helping doctors give prescriptions in the languages patients understand. Today, 60% of our prescriptions is vernacular; solving for rural healthcare is imperative when solving for India. Goal is to drive India Healthy!”

Affirming the investments, Mandar Dandekar, Principal, Kalaari Capital said, “India has a very low doctor to patient ratio and would need to quadruple the number of doctors in the next 10 years to serve the growing population. Since it is impossible to quadruple, the next best thing is to improve the productivity and efficiency of doctors. HealthPlix team has been able to leverage their deep domain expertise in their AI driven EMR which significantly enhances doctor efficiency leading to better patient health outcomes.”

Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director, IDG Ventures India said, “Evidence based care & Prevention of Medical Errors is a $21 Billion market globally and more importantly saves millions of lives! HealthPlix's Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software for Hospitals and Clinics is driven by assistive-AI led Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system to assist doctors on various diseases and protocols. This can help doctors treat patients better and faster! It truly empowers the doctors in real time.”

HealthPlix is a healthtech platform that helps doctors increase their efficiency and productivity by digitally assisting them in their Clinics and Hospital OPDs. Further, the software allows the doctors to give prescriptions in more than 18 languages which significantly helps in attaining better patient compliance to treatment.

More than 1.2 million unique patients are treated by doctors in 150 cities across 20 states using HealthPlix EMR. Uniquely for HealthPlix, 60% of their user base is in tier 2, tier 3 towns and beyond.

[Top Image - HealthPlix Founders [L-to-R ] Prasad Basavaraj, Sandeep Gudibanda and Raghuraj Sunderraju.

Recent Activity in Health Tech Segment

Earlier this month, NetApp Inc., a Fortune 500 American multinational storage and data management company, announced that it is launching a new programme that will enable product-ready startups, particularly for those focusing on fintech and healthtech, to work with it on an ongoing basis.

In June, New Delhi-based healthcare technology startup Navia Life Care Pvt. has raised $100,000 in a a bridge round of funding from existing investor Benori Ventures, a Gurgaon-based Venture Capital & Private Equity firm led by research major Evalueserve’s former chief operating officer Ashish Gupta.

In May, India urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to invest in health and fintech startups in the country, to help improve the quality of life in Asia while sharpening focus on infrastructure lending by ensuring loan disbursals within a year of request.

Prior to that, Mumbai-based i3systems, a healthcare machine learning product company raised $1 million from Unitus Ventures, a marquee impact investment firm.

AI Driven HealthTech Startup HealthPlix Raises $3Mn from Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India

HealthPlix, a Bengaluru based healthtech firm that assists doctors digitally, has raised $3 Million from IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital in its Series A round. It was co-founded by Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Sandeep Gudibanda and Prasad Basavaraj.

HealthPlix will utilise the funds to further strengthen its technology to assist doctors better and expand its team and services in other geographical markets. It is a first of its kind healthcare technology that brings transformative change in the way diseases are treated in the Indian outpatient care.

While making the announcement, Sandeep Gudibanda, Co-Founder & CEO of HealthPlix said, “Population level health problems can be better managed if digital tools assist doctors at the time of treating their patients. Our goal at HealthPlix is to drive better Health Outcomes by enabling widespread adoption of our platform.

HealthPlix software is lot more than just an EMR. Its assistive-AI goes 4 levels deep: It adapts to doctors’ specialty, their practice preference, patient's disease and the stage of the disease.”

“We are happy to have gained valuable support from the leading investors - IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital. The fundraise will help us to enhance clinical experiences for patients & doctors and thereby create a platform which will revolutionize the Indian healthcare ecosystem.” Sandeep Gudibanda added.

Raghuraj Sunder Raju, Co-Founder, HealthPlix said, “In India, 90% of care is delivered in an outpatient setting i.e. clinics and hospital OPDs. That's our target segment. We are trying to empower doctors and hospitals digitally by eliminating the conventional pen & paper prescriptions and shift to new age EMR.

Additionally, our focus is to improve patient compliance by helping doctors give prescriptions in the languages patients understand. Today, 60% of our prescriptions is vernacular; solving for rural healthcare is imperative when solving for India. Goal is to drive India Healthy!”

Affirming the investments, Mandar Dandekar, Principal, Kalaari Capital said, “India has a very low doctor to patient ratio and would need to quadruple the number of doctors in the next 10 years to serve the growing population. Since it is impossible to quadruple, the next best thing is to improve the productivity and efficiency of doctors. HealthPlix team has been able to leverage their deep domain expertise in their AI driven EMR which significantly enhances doctor efficiency leading to better patient health outcomes.”

Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director, IDG Ventures India said, “Evidence based care & Prevention of Medical Errors is a $21 Billion market globally and more importantly saves millions of lives! HealthPlix's Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software for Hospitals and Clinics is driven by assistive-AI led Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system to assist doctors on various diseases and protocols. This can help doctors treat patients better and faster! It truly empowers the doctors in real time.”

HealthPlix is a healthtech platform that helps doctors increase their efficiency and productivity by digitally assisting them in their Clinics and Hospital OPDs. Further, the software allows the doctors to give prescriptions in more than 18 languages which significantly helps in attaining better patient compliance to treatment.

More than 1.2 million unique patients are treated by doctors in 150 cities across 20 states using HealthPlix EMR. Uniquely for HealthPlix, 60% of their user base is in tier 2, tier 3 towns and beyond.

[Top Image - HealthPlix Founders [L-to-R ] Prasad Basavaraj, Sandeep Gudibanda and Raghuraj Sunderraju.

Recent Activity in Health Tech Segment

Earlier this month, NetApp Inc., a Fortune 500 American multinational storage and data management company, announced that it is launching a new programme that will enable product-ready startups, particularly for those focusing on fintech and healthtech, to work with it on an ongoing basis.

In June, New Delhi-based healthcare technology startup Navia Life Care Pvt. has raised $100,000 in a a bridge round of funding from existing investor Benori Ventures, a Gurgaon-based Venture Capital & Private Equity firm led by research major Evalueserve’s former chief operating officer Ashish Gupta.

In May, India urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to invest in health and fintech startups in the country, to help improve the quality of life in Asia while sharpening focus on infrastructure lending by ensuring loan disbursals within a year of request.

Prior to that, Mumbai-based i3systems, a healthcare machine learning product company raised $1 million from Unitus Ventures, a marquee impact investment firm.

India's First Companion Robot Maker Emotix Raises $2 Mn from IDG Ventures India, YourNest

Mumbai-based robot making startup Emotix has raised $2 million in a funding round led by venture capital firms IDG Ventures India and YourNest. The startup has created India’s first personal companion robot, Miko, which has the capability of engaging, educating, and entertaining a child the Indian way.

Founded in October 2014 by three IIT-Bombay alumni -- Sneh Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar & Chintan Raikar, Emotix is creator of India’s first companion robot Miko, and is a technology driven company focused at developing emotionally intelligent systems in verticals of Robotics, Internet of things and Artificial Intelligence.

The funds raised will be used for new product development and research in the area of consumer robotics focussed on emotional and artificial intelligence. The funds will also be used for creating new consumer robot products that the company will roll out in the coming years.

The startup unveiled the Miko prototype at recent CES 2018, a global electronics event. The startup is going to address one of Miko's limitations with the refresh, which is called Miko Plus. While Miko requires you to use a smartphone to issue commands to the robot, Miko Plus will allow you to issue voice commands directly, with no smartphone involved.



Priced at Rs.19,000, Miko is an emotionally intelligent robot capable of engaging, educating and entertaining. Designed for children above the ages of five, this pint-sized package has access to a wide pool of knowledge which it conveys to a child in a conversational manner.

“Over the past two-and-a-half years, we have created a hardware product for consumers specifically focusing on children from the age of 5 to their teenage years. The robot Miko has a conversation and can teach them about diverse things from flowers to cars,” Sneh Vaswani, cofounder of Emotix said.

The startup claim to have seen an equal amount of traction from parents in tier-II and -III cities, as well as from those in the metros. “Besides a consistent growth rate in sales, we surpass some of the best AI conversational stacks globally, by clocking 37 times the average session duration with our user as compared to industry peers,” added Vaswani.

The above news was first reported in Economic Times.

To recall, in December, H-Bots Robotics, a Hyderabad-based robotics startup, has unveiled world’s first smart policing robot. The robot is developed by the startup is fully 'Made in India', using all the components sourced from within the country.

In April 2017, a Chennai based startup had launched a a food serving robot and soon after a Mall robot was also launched by an another Indian startup.

Recent Robotic Startups Fundings

In February, Chennai-based Planys Technologies, an IIT-Madras incubated marine robotics startup that provides under-water inspection and survey solutions using custom-built submersible drones, has raised ₹14 Cr Series A round from Kris Gopalakrishnan along with investors who participated in this round including Pratithi Investment Trust, MEMG (Manipal Education and Medical Group) Family Office, and some HNIs including S Gopal, former director of Chemplast Sanmar.

In the same month, Kerala-based GenRobotic, along with three other startups, has raised funding from Unicorn India Ventures.

IDG Ventures Collaborates With Unilever, AWS For 2017 Innovation Program

Tech-focused venture capital firm IDG Ventures India (IDGVI) has launched the 2017 Innovation Program, #IDGIP2017 to reach out to mushrooming startups across its core sectors of consumer tech, software, healthtech and fintech products space. This program shall be applicable to startups looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds between $0.5 million to $5.0 million.

Commenting on the development, Sudhir Sethi, Founder Chairman, IDG Ventures India said, “After the very successful 2016 Innovation Program, the 2017 edition expects to reach out to over 1,000 companies in the next 2 months and partner with/invest in select start-ups from Fund 3 to grow with IDG Ventures India’s unique growth platform. IDG Ventures will view early-stage Seed and Series A startups in this Program who are uniquely disruptive and are innovative leaders in the market”.

For the program, IDGVI will be collaborating with Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL), the Indian affiliate of Seattle-headquartered Amazon Web Services, Inc.

UV has a strategic relationship with IDGVI as an investor and will evaluate companies as part of this program for potential co-investments. Also, the shortlisted companies will receive technology mentorship from the AISPL team and value-added benefits like AWS credits, premium business support and GTM connects.

Who Can Apply?

Startups, preferably less than three years old looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds between $0.5 million to $5.0 million of funding are encouraged to apply. Applications for the IDGVI Innovators Program are open from June 8 and close on June 26. The shortlisted startups will meet the IDGVI team in Bengaluru on 6 and 7July, where they will present to senior team members of IDG Ventures India and Unilever Ventures. Selected startups will then progress to the funding track while all the shortlisted companies can participate in mentoring sessions by AISPL and Unilever Ventures’ team on all aspects related to starting up.

As the most active tech-focused VC, IDGVI has run successful sector programs in 2016 that focused on consumer-tech and software. The 2016 program saw close to 1,000 applications from startups and via this program, IDGVI invested in six companies – Little Black Book, Flyrobe, Active.ai, Pipecandy, Hansel.io and Infisecure. Investment size varied from $0.5 million to $3.0million depending on the stage of each of the selected companies.

One can apply for the current programme here.

FinTech Startup EarlySalary Raises $4M in Series A from IDG Ventures India & DHFL

EarlySalary, India’s FinTech startup to offer Salary Advances and Instant Cash Loans has announced its Series A funding of $4 Million from IDG Ventures India (IDGVI) and Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd (DHFL).

The company focuses on helping young working professionals get Instant Loans and Salary Advances in minutes and is fast becoming the first line of credit to young working Indians. More than 80% of its customer base is in their first career roles and most of them are new to credit and are first time borrowers. Over the past year, EarlySalary developed its Underwriting System which is a self-learning Algo Based Decisioning System. The System in real time reviews Social Media and Credit Bureau data of customers and helps approve the loan for them.

Targeted at young working professionals with a clear focus, - ‘1st line of Credit for young working Indians’, Akshay Mehrotra, Co-Founder & CEO commented ‘We are very excited to have IDG Ventures India and DHFL as Investors on Board and this combination and capital will provide the necessary growth impetus and management depth needed to accelerate growth and the innovation process at EarlySalary.

Ashish Goyal, Co-Founder & CFO further added, ‘As a team, we are focused on solving the problem of providing access to instant credit & cash for a short period of time and at a reasonable price all time anytime’.

Speaking on this occasion, Karthik Prabhakar, Director, IDG Ventures India Advisors said, ‘We believe FinTech firms are changing the way India will bank and EarlySalary’s capability of using Social Media based Underwriting decisioning will help many young working professionals get access to credit which is otherwise not possible. This over a period of time will create a wealth of information on credit-worthy customers, to offer more diverse products through partners’.

Commenting on the development, Harshil Mehta, CEO, DHFL said, “We see a potential opportunity in EarlySalary which is led by an enterprising and talented group of founding members. The financial technology space in India is at an exciting stage and is steadily making deep inroads into the BFSI industry supported by cutting edge technology. We look forward to a synergistic association that will enable us to leverage their technology solutions, and to working closely with the team as they scale up the business.”

The Series A capital will be primarily deployed in three particular areas, vizz:
1. Build leverage on capital deployed for building products and lending book
2. Expand team specifically in skill sets of machine learning.
3. Grow customer base and provide 200,000 loans in this FY

EarlySalary was co-founded by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal 18 months back and had raised Seed Funding from Ashok Agarwal of Transcorp International. Till date, the app has received 3,50,000+ downloads across its Android & iOS mobile app platform. The company has distributed 15,000+ loans to customers borrowing between Rs.8,000 to Rs.1,00,000 at a low cost of Rs.9 per Rs.10,000 per day. The company also partners with many large Corporates as well as SMEs across the country to give Salary Advances to employees.

Women-Focused Media Startup POPxo Raises Rs 20 Cr Led by IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital

POPxo, India’s largest digital community for women, today announced raising Rs 20 Crore ($3.1 million) in funding. The investment round was led by IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital with participation from GREE Ventures (Japan), Summit Media (Philippines), Atul Goel and Gurpreet Singh.

POPxo is a dynamic digital media platform attracting over 9 million loyal and engaged users every month. They largely access the platform on mobile devices across app and web. 80% of POPxo users are female (18-35), and over 70% of traffic comes from outside the top 5 cities. Since its launch in March 2014, POPxo has become the go-to fashion, beauty and lifestyle destination for women across the country. It runs India’s largest Influencer Network of bloggers as well as campus ambassadors across 200 campuses in India.

POPxo partners with leading consumer brands like Hindustan Unilever, Puma, Whisper, Tanishq, OPPO, L’Oreal, Reliance, Amazon and Jabong to amplify brand messaging to this key demographic through native advertising and large-scale influencer activations. Such partnerships have helped brands achieve high levels of target audience engagement, customer acquisition and transactions. POPxo has worked with over 175 brands.

POPxo Founder & CEO Priyanka Gill said, “It’s been a phenomenal journey. We've built a brand that millions of women love and engage with. Our platform allows them to connect with other women. It's a safe space where they can read, watch, shop and hangout. We focus on leveraging our large user base to generate transactions - beginning with affiliate ecommerce, across categories. This fundraise will help us deliver on the faith our audience, brand partners and investors have shown in POPxo.”

Vani Kola, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital said, “Young women in India are embracing the POPxo model that combines a digital community with content that empowers them. I am proud to see the progress made by the POPxo team as it has emerged as a leading company serving this market. Their new funding is a endorsement of the large opportunity to serve Indian women consumers.”

According to Karan Mohla, Partner - IDG Ventures India, "We are privileged to partner with a strong and international institutional investor base and an inspirational leader in Priyanka. Under her leadership, POPxo has become a dominant and enduring media brand and has created a platform for the largest and most engaged community of women in India."

IDG Ventures India and Axilor Ventures Launches Program To Attract New Age Startups

IDG Ventures India and Axilor Ventures, the accelerator run by former Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and S D Shibulal, have partnered to launch Frontier Tech Innovators Program or FTIP2017. With this, IDG and Axilor wants to invest and partner with new-age disruptive startups working on a deep tech innovations to help solve large-scale problems in India.

IDG and Axilor will be selecting disruptive startups in the areas of -

1. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications and content



2. Blockchain, Bitcoin and the decentralized internet



3. Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning used to transform healthcare, finance, retail and business operations


4. Drones, Space, Robotics and Autonomous vehicle technologies



5. Moonshots (ground-breaking idea) focused on solving India’s core problems related to healthcare, education and employment using deep technology.

Who can Apply -

Young startups (preferably less than three years old) looking to raise seed or pre-series A round of funding in one of the above Tech areas can apply here till March 24.

With an India focus, these organisations are looking forward to ideas that can solve bigger problems of society in finance, business operation or healthcare delivery. “We are excited by the ambition of Indian entrepreneurs to build deep-tech solutions using frontier technologies to solve large problems in India and the world. Through this program, Axilor will continue to support and mentor path-breaking entrepreneurs,” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, chairman, Axilor Ventures.

IDG Ventures India is raising $200 million (Rs 1330.55 crore) in its third round to take its assets under management. Though the specific fund for FTIP is unknown, Sanat Rao, venture partner at IDG India, say typically 10 per cent of any fund is allocated towards seed funding.

Active.ai Raises $3M from Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India

Active.ai, a Singapore based fintech startup, using artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver virtual assistant banking services, announced today that it has raised $3 million in funding from IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital.

This investment will support the rapid growth of Active.ai to continuously advance its cutting edge platform and to build out advanced AI features, enabling an increasing roster of clients to deliver a superior and engaging banking experience.

Just imagine you are travelling and have lost your credit card, and you urgently need to reach your bank. What would you do? Would you call the bank’s call center and wait in an endless IVR? What ifyou are able to use your favorite messaging channel and send an “I lost my card” message to your bank? And your bank is able to converse with you intelligently using an automated virtual assistant, block your card and issue you a new one! Active.ai’s solution will allow financial services companies to offer compelling UX that will simplify engagement via messaging platforms customers’ access in their daily lives.

Speaking on the investment, Ravishankar, CEO and Co-Founder said, “Conversation is the new UX and with banks opening up APIs, a new era of digital business is emerging. We are moving from ‘Mobile First’ to ‘AI first’ and Active.ai is the platform facilitating banks to achieve that.”

"Active.ai is helping banks redefine their digital strategy for the future, bringing in automation and intelligent customer engagement to banking and payments. The company’s intelligent and built for banking technology uses advanced NLP and machine intelligence to enable customers have natural dialogues over messaging, voice or IOT devices,” added Shankar Narayanan, COO and Co-Founder.

Ravishankar, Shankar Narayanan and Parikshit Paspulati (CTO and Co-Founder), bring a wealth of expertise in banking and fintech, having founded companies in mobile banking, payments and working in startup teams of leading banks in Asia. In a short period of time the company has gained significant traction with banks across Asia, added revenue and built a team of experts in banking technology and AI.

“43% of worldwide mobile phone consumers with a bank account use mobile banking today. The new generation of banking customers are looking for easy, secure and seamless interaction with their financial services provider. IDG Ventures India believes that AI will completely transform the banking industry, and we are very excited to partner with Active.ai to build the world’s largest conversational banking platform,” said Sanat Rao, IDG Ventures.

Bala Srinivasa, Kalaari Capital notes "messaging based mobile banking has become a strategic imperative for banks globally to enhance consumer experience and lower customer engagement costs. Active.ai is poised to tap into this large market opportunity with its chat and AI powered mobile customer engagement solution. Kalaari is excited to back this founding team given their past track record, banking domain knowledge, and deep technology expertise."

CloudCherry Receives $6M in Series A Funding from Vertex Ventures, Cisco Investments & IDG Ventures India

Bangalore & Singapore headquartered CloudCherry, a SaaS-based Customer Experience Management platform, announced yesterday that it has raised their Series A Funding of $6M from Vertex Ventures, Cisco Investments and IDG Ventures India. This capital infusion will be used for CloudCherry’s global expansion, with a strong focus on the US, South East Asia and the Middle East. CloudCherry’s CEM platform is enjoying tremendous success in Asia already, with many leading brands using the platform to understand Customer Experience today. The product is also seeing exciting early wins in the North American markets and is set to welcome many more soon.

CloudCherry was founded in 2013 by Vinod Muthukrishnan, Vijay R Lakshmanan, Prem K Viswanath and Nagendra CL, with the support of angels Prof. Sriram Subramanian (late), Dr. Bala V Balachandran and Hariharan B. CloudCherry provides an industry-leading Omni-channel, SAAS based Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform that helps brands track, measure and improve Customer Experience and Delight. Currently, CloudCherry works with brands in various sectors like BFSI, Retail, e-Commerce, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Hospitality. Some of the company’s clients include prominent brands like World of Titan, HDFC Bank, Central, Voonik, Caratlane and several others.

The CloudCherry brand is owned by Customer Analytics Technologies Inc., based in Pleasanton, CA, with offices in Singapore, Bengaluru & Chennai.

Vinod Muthukrishnan, Co-founder & CEO of CloudCherry said, "We’re delighted to receive our Series A funding from globally recognized investors like Vertex Ventures, and a leading corporate investor like Cisco Investments who recognize the massive potential in the space of Customer Experience, and what our product offers. And of course, it’s great to have IDG Ventures India, who have played a tremendous role in getting us to where we are today. With this funding and their support, we are many steps closer to making our presence globally and becoming the name synonymous with Customer Experience!"

Ben Mathias, Managing Director and India Head of Vertex Ventures said, “We believe the next generation of global SaaS companies will be built out of India. CloudCherry is one such company that has been able to leverage India’s deep technology talent to build and sell products in a global market. Vinod, Vijay, Prem and Nagendra have done a tremendous job in building a solution that is driving significant ROI for many customers across the world.”

“When IDG Ventures first met CloudCherry, we knew that the potential they had was tremendous. And in no time, they’ve really made a mark in the market, not just in India but across several countries, with a product that we’ve seen growing leaps & bounds almost every day. In this round, global expansion is the focus, and with CX becoming an everyday topic of discussion in every organization, the timing can’t be any better. Wishing the team an amazing run ahead”, Said TC Meenakshi Sundaram, Founder & Managing Director of IDG Ventures India.

CloudCherry Raises $6M in Series A Funding from Vertex Ventures, Cisco Investments & IDG Ventures India

Customer Analytics Technologies Inc., owner of SaaS-based Customer Experience Management platform CloudCherry announced that it has raised their Series A Funding of $6M from Vertex Ventures, Cisco Investments and IDG Ventures India. This capital infusion will be used for CloudCherry’s global expansion, with a strong focus on the US, South East Asia and the Middle East. CloudCherry’s CEM platform is enjoying tremendous success in Asia already, with many leading brands using the platform to understand Customer Experience today. The product is also seeing exciting early wins in the North American markets and is set to welcome many more soon.

CloudCherry was founded by Vinod Muthukrishnan, Vijay R Lakshmanan, Prem K Viswanath and Nagendra CL, with the support of angels Prof. Sriram Subramanian (late), Dr. Bala V Balachandran and Hariharan B. CloudCherry provides an industry-leading Omni-channel, SAAS based Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform that helps brands track, measure and improve Customer Experience and Delight. Currently, CloudCherry works with brands in various sectors like BFSI, Retail, e-Commerce, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Hospitality. Some of the company’s clients include prominent brands like World of Titan, HDFC Bank, Central, Voonik, Caratlane and several others.

Vinod Muthukrishnan, Co-founder & CEO of CloudCherry said “We’re delighted to receive our Series A funding from globally recognized investors like Vertex Ventures, and a leading corporate investor like Cisco Investments who recognize the massive potential in the space of Customer Experience, and what our product offers. And of course, it’s great to have IDG Ventures India, who have played a tremendous role in getting us to where we are today. With this funding and their support, we are many steps closer to making our presence globally and becoming the name synonymous with Customer Experience!”

Ben Mathias, Managing Director and India Head of Vertex Ventures said “We believe the next generation of global SaaS companies will be built out of India. CloudCherry is one such company that has been able to leverage India’s deep technology talent to build and sell products in a global market. Vinod, Vijay, Prem and Nagendra have done a tremendous job in building a solution that is driving significant ROI for many customers across the world.”

“When IDG Ventures first met CloudCherry, we knew that the potential they had was tremendous. And in no time, they’ve really made a mark in the market, not just in India but across several countries, with a product that we’ve seen growing leaps & bounds almost every day. In this round, global expansion is the focus, and with CX becoming an everyday topic of discussion in every organization, the timing can’t be any better. Wishing the team an amazing run ahead” Said TC Meenakshi Sundaram, Founder & Managing Director of IDG Ventures India.

RentoMojo Raises $5M in Series A Round from Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India

RentoMojo, Indian online rental-solutions company headquartered in Bangalore, has announced its latest fund raise of $5 million in Series A from IDG Ventures and Accel Partners, India. The funds raised will be used to further strengthen the product and data driven structure within the company.

Since its inception in November 2014, RentoMojo has expanded to four cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune & Bangalore. Founded by IIT Alumni Geetansh Bamania, RentoMojo aims to create awareness about ‘renting’ and ‘access lifestyle’ as a concept in the consumer consideration set. The company is anchored on an asset-light and fintech model that makes it a scalable business venture in the startup ecosystem.

Commenting on the funding, Geetansh Bamania said, “The way access-economy is shaping up in our country, there is a need to generate awareness around this concept; we want our users to indulge in the benefits of curated, personalized lifestyle without actually owning it. Apart from the cities we are operating in currently, we plan to expand to two more cities in the coming quarter. We are growing at a breakneck pace of 30% MoM growth and we hope to continue on this growth trajectory.”

“We strongly believe that product-renting business has a huge potential in India given the growth in inter-city migrant population.  RentoMojo is capturing this market in an asset-light way, which we believe is the best approach to building a large scalable company.  We continue to remain very impressed with the team’s focus on building operational excellence using technology and are happy to back them in this exciting growth phase”, said, Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director, IDG Ventures India.

"By combining a wide selection of home-essentials along with a unique business model RentoMojo, is successfully transforming the lives of today’s millennials. The rental commerce market is growing in India and it is great to see this innovative startup at the forefront of this booming category. We are happy to have partnered with Rentomojo again and look forward to working with them as they continue to scale and offer value to a new generation of online consumers", said Prashanth Prakash, Accel Partners.

Prior to this, RentoMojo had raised $2 million in Pre-Series A from Accel Partners and IDG Ventures, India in November, 2015.

Image - Co-founders Ajay Nain & Geetansh Bamania

Little Black Book Raises $1.2M From IDG Ventures India and Indian Angel Network

Little Black Book, a media-tech enterprise based out of New Delhi, has raised $1.2 million from IDG Ventures India and Indian Angel Network. Reaching out to over 1 million users every month, Little Black Book is currently available in Delhi and Bangalore as a website and app, and gives a local audience the best things to do in their city across interests and locations.

Little Black Book (LBB) curates recommendations across categories, providing unique local discoveries in innovative formats. An evolution from existing listingbased models, LBB uses content as a medium to drive an engaged audience to local enterprises, places and experiences. They partner with local small to medium scale brands as well as large global brands looking to engage with a local audience including Coca Cola, Airbnb, HTC, Samsung, Nestle.

Founded by Suchita Salwan, an Economics graduate from Hindu College who has worked with Wizcraft and the BBC, and co-founded by Dhruv Mathur, a Carnegie Mellon graduate who has worked with Deloitte and on his own startup GetFBPay.in, Little Black Book has seen tremendous organic growth stemming from a strong product market fit. “We have proven that urban consumers want to move beyond traditional Yelp-esque listing and aggregator platforms; they seek more than just food and event discoveries. As a media-tech business, our north star has been driving not just monthly active users, but delivering a product that draws a highly engaged and sticky audience” says Suchita.

Karan Mohla, Executive Director and Head of Consumer Tech & Media at IDG Ventures says “LBB represents the type of new-age disruptive digital media company that we as venture investors are excited to partner with. LBB has created an immersive and engaged platform for consumers and brands across Delhi and Bangalore today and expanding that to five more cities in the near future. Suchita and Dhruv are the foundational cornerstones of this exciting company and have demonstrated great focus and passion to build out a strong technology platform.”

Little Black Book raised a seed round in May 2015, with prolific angels including Rajan Anandan (MD Google Asia), Sachin Bhatia (co-founder MakeMyTrip, TrulyMadly) and Niraj Singh (co-founder Outbox Ventures, Spinny) participating. In just about 8 months since, LBB has seen over 800% growth in monthly active users and over 600% growth in revenue.

The company’s vision is to connect urban consumers to the best things to do, for them, in their city. “We’re excited to build out a platform that intelligently recommends experiences that are suited to a unique users tastes and preferences. Personalization and user retention is our key focus with respect to product” adds Dhruv.

Rishabh Mehta, one of the lead investor in this round and IAN nominated Board Director has this to say- “What is interesting about LBB is that their unit economics is just brilliant. With a small team and minimal burn they have been able to build a pretty impressive brand image for themselves. Considering the fact that they have over 1 million users engaged across just 2 cities, now the potential is huge for scaling up not only in India but globally.”

IDG Ventures India Plans to Invest in Around 25 Consumer Tech Startups By the End of December

Venture capital firm IDG Ventures India Ltd has launched a programme, Digital Consumer Innovators Program, to find and invest in 15-25 new consumer-facing Internet startups. The VC firm is looking at mobile-first shopping apps, digital media startups, software providers for Internet companies and others and it will invest $500,000 to $1 million in early-stage deals as well as $3-$5 million in Series A deals.

Apart from providing funding, IDG will help the selected startups to hire and flesh out their strategies as well as startups will have access to IDG’s advisory panel that includes Mukesh Bansal, founder and ex-chief executive of online fashion retailer Myntra; former Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata; and Infosys Ltd co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.

In February, Kalaari Capital also launched a startup accelerator called Kstart, by earmarking $20 million for the programme over the next two years. IDG will raise its third fund of $200 million and plans to invest in about 45 startups from this fund over the next three years. Its portfolio includes Flipkart Ltd, Lenskart, Firstcry and Zivame among others.

A couple of days back, IDG Ventures India has led a $6 million series A investment round in Health and fitness app HealthifyMe, along with participation from Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures. Apart from this, Bangalore-based VC fund IDG Ventures India has also closed $150 million India fund. It expects to raise the entire money for its $200 million third fund called IDG Ventures India Fund III by the end of this year.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Fitness App HealthifyMe Bags $6M Funding from IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures

Health and fitness app HealthifyMe which is owned by Caeruz Ventures Pvt Ltd., has raised $6 million (Rs 40 crore) in its series A round of funding led by IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures. The raised funding will be used to further develop its digital coaching platform and to accelerate growth in India. With these funds the company plans to impact 5 million users and tie up with over 500 corporate and healthcabire partners.

The company had received a pre-series A funding in two rounds from mobile phone maker Micromax and a group of angel investors in 2015.

HealthifyMe was founded by Tushar Vashist and Sachin Shenoy, the app allows consumers to keep track of diet, plan workouts and ask health related questions to nutritionists and dieticians on the platform. The startup works in partnership with health institutes such as Medanta, Apollo and Manipal. Its app is available for Android and iOS users and enables users to keep a track of their calories, set personal fitness goals and measure progress.

The firm boasts of the world’s largest database of Indian foods and syncs with all leading wearables including Fitbit, YuFit, MiBand amongst others besides its own fitness band RIST™. As part of its subscription services, HealthifyMe connects users with elite nutritionists and trainers who review their progress, provide diet/fitness plans and work with the users to help them achieve their weight, fitness goals.

The startup also has a gamified, social platform that is being used by progressive Corporates to engage and reward employees for healthy behaviour. Unlike others in the space that are focused only on steps, HealthifyMe engages employees wholistically around healthy eating, running, weight, hydration etc as well. Given its mobile-first approach, the platform is cost efficient and massively scalable and has been used by PMC Sierra, Indegene, Unilever amongst others.

A couple of days back, Delhi-based fitness startup ClassVerse, a marketplace providing users access to fitness studios and classes, has shut down after operating for nearly 10 months of its operations & launch.

Rentomojo Raises $2 Mn In Pre Series A From Accel Partners and IDG Ventures

Rentomojo, Furnishing Solutions platform, headquartered in Bengaluru raised $2 million in Pre-Series A from Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India. Venkatesh Peddi from IDG Ventures India and Prashanth Prakash from Accel Partners join the board of Directors.

Rentomojo was founded in November 2014 by IIT Madras graduates Geetansh Bamania and Ajay Nain. The company had raised seed capital from London-based investors last year. Currently they operate in four cities: Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Pune. Categories on the platform include Appliances, Furniture, Packages, Kitchen and Home utility, as well as two wheelers.

The company lets users rent furniture and home furnishings for a minimum period of three months.Headquartered out of Bengaluru, it currently has more than 50 employees.

Speaking on the occasion, Geetansh Bamania, Co-founder and CEO, Rentomojo said, "With urbanization, increasing incomes and declining savings among the working professionals, we are witnessing the birth of Access Economy with the advent of Airbnb, Uber, Rentherunway and the likes. We want our users to get an access to a personalized lifestyle without actually owning it. We work as a marketplace and keep this business asset light."

"We are delighted to have Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India as our partners in our mission to provide convenient and affordable solutions. The funds will fuel our expansion across the country."

"Rentomojo has a grand vision. Both Geetansh and Ajay have demonstrated excellent execution focus and passion to build out a strong technology platform. Their platform is witnessing exponential growth and it is exciting to be part of this growth" said Venkatesh Peddi, Executive Director, IDG Ventures India Advisors.

"This is an India innovation, led by young entrepreneurs, built on the philosophy of experience without owning. We are confident that there is an incumbent market for the business, which would help accelerate the business," said Prashant Prakash, Accel Partners.

In India, IDG Ventures has invested in companies such as Flipkart, Yatra, Newgen, Brainbees (FirstCry.com), Vserv, Manthan Software, Valyoo (Lenskart.com), Ozone Media and Actoserba (Zivame.com).