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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source - Economic Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source - Economic Times

Augmented Reality Startup Play Shifu Raises Funding In A Round Led By IDG Ventures

Bengaluru based augmented reality-enabled interactive educational games startup Play Shifu, has raised funding in a pre-Series A round led by IDG Ventures and IDFC-Parampara Fund. The startup however did not revealed the amount of funding raised in the round.

MobilizAR Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of Play Shifu, will use the freshly raised funds to extend its reach, globally, and to strengthen its technology and design team.

Founded in 2016 by by Stanford and IIT Kharagpur alumni Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, Play Shifu is an educational startup that makes augmented-reality based games for children between the ages of two and 10 years.

“We strongly believe in technologies that bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, specifically for early-learning. The tremendous global response for Shifu Orboot, the smart globe, has given us a major boost in the ed-tech space,” said Goyal in a statement.

The news was first reported in VCCircle.

The startup sells its AR-based games across several online and offline channels throughout India including Amazon, Flipkart, Hamleys, Babyoye to name a few. The startup most recently forayed into the US through Amazon.

Jatin Desai, general partner at IDFC-Parampara Fund, said Play Shifu was one of the very few Indian startups to have been able to commercialise augmented and virtual reality-based products successfully and sell to customers globally.

“The success of Play Shifu’s Orboot product on Kickstarter in such a short time with limited resources speaks highly of the team’s domain knowledge and market opportunity,” said IDG Ventures India Advisors director Karthik Prabhakar.

India is seeing a ramp up in augmented reality and virtual reality startup segment as just last week Kalpnik Technologies, a virtual reality-driven spiritual startup, had raised $500,000 in a seed round from a group of angels at funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts.

Last month, another VR & AR startup GridRaster has a raised $2 million in seed funding from a group of venture capital firms, which included Exfinity Ventures, Lumia Capital, Pipeline Capital, NexStar Partners, Unshackled Ventures and Explorer Group.

Prior to this, in May, Chymera VR Inc, a virtual reality advertising platform, had secured funding from a clutch of angel investors, including People Group founder and chief executive Anupam Mittal, Airbnb’s global expansion head Varsha Rao, Google executive Surojit Chatterjee, and HHC Holdings chairman Nirav Choksi. The investment was made through the LetsVenture platform.

In March, virtual reality startup ShilpMIS Technologies had raised an undisclosed amount through IvyCamp Ventures.

Augmented Reality Startup Play Shifu Raises Funding In A Round Led By IDG Ventures

Bengaluru based augmented reality-enabled interactive educational games startup Play Shifu, has raised funding in a pre-Series A round led by IDG Ventures and IDFC-Parampara Fund. The startup however did not revealed the amount of funding raised in the round.

MobilizAR Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of Play Shifu, will use the freshly raised funds to extend its reach, globally, and to strengthen its technology and design team.

Founded in 2016 by by Stanford and IIT Kharagpur alumni Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, Play Shifu is an educational startup that makes augmented-reality based games for children between the ages of two and 10 years.

“We strongly believe in technologies that bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, specifically for early-learning. The tremendous global response for Shifu Orboot, the smart globe, has given us a major boost in the ed-tech space,” said Goyal in a statement.

The news was first reported in VCCircle.

The startup sells its AR-based games across several online and offline channels throughout India including Amazon, Flipkart, Hamleys, Babyoye to name a few. The startup most recently forayed into the US through Amazon.

Jatin Desai, general partner at IDFC-Parampara Fund, said Play Shifu was one of the very few Indian startups to have been able to commercialise augmented and virtual reality-based products successfully and sell to customers globally.

“The success of Play Shifu’s Orboot product on Kickstarter in such a short time with limited resources speaks highly of the team’s domain knowledge and market opportunity,” said IDG Ventures India Advisors director Karthik Prabhakar.

India is seeing a ramp up in augmented reality and virtual reality startup segment as just last week Kalpnik Technologies, a virtual reality-driven spiritual startup, had raised $500,000 in a seed round from a group of angels at funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts.

Last month, another VR & AR startup GridRaster has a raised $2 million in seed funding from a group of venture capital firms, which included Exfinity Ventures, Lumia Capital, Pipeline Capital, NexStar Partners, Unshackled Ventures and Explorer Group.

Prior to this, in May, Chymera VR Inc, a virtual reality advertising platform, had secured funding from a clutch of angel investors, including People Group founder and chief executive Anupam Mittal, Airbnb’s global expansion head Varsha Rao, Google executive Surojit Chatterjee, and HHC Holdings chairman Nirav Choksi. The investment was made through the LetsVenture platform.

In March, virtual reality startup ShilpMIS Technologies had raised an undisclosed amount through IvyCamp Ventures.

RentoMojo Secures $10 Mn in Series B Funding From Bain Capital Ventures, Renaud Laplanche, Others

Consumer leasing company, RentoMojo has raised $10 million in Series B from Bain Capital Ventures and Renaud Laplanche. Existing investors Accel Partners and IDG Ventures also participated. Salil Deshpande, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures, who appears on the Forbes Midas List of the 100 best-performing venture investors for the 5th year in a row, and was a Series A investor in Lending Club, joins RentoMojo’s board. Renaud Laplanche, co-founder and CEO of Upgrade, the founder and ex-CEO of Lending Club also joins RentoMojo’s board.

The company plans to use freshly infused funds to further strengthen the product, finish building a stellar leadership team, and expand into new categories and geographies.

Commenting on the development, Deshpande said, “In India’s credit-constrained economy, RentoMojo has built a defensible beachhead in multiple categories in an underserved sector in the subscription economy, with a capital-efficient two-sided marketplace, no balance-sheet risk and network effects at scale.”

Founded by IIT alumnus Geetansh Bamania, Gautam Adukia, Achal Mittal, and Ajay Nain, RentoMojo is a first-of-its-kind consumer product leasing business that raises lease-capital from financial institutions for products rented to consumers for long-term periods, typically 18 months. Prior to this financing, RentoMojo had raised a total of $7 million in Seed and Series A from Accel Partners and IDG Ventures.

“In the last ten years, I’ve met more than a hundred companies implementing some variation of marketplaces for credit, lease, or rental in some region of the world. RentoMojo is hands down the most impressive I've seen in terms of clarity of vision and business model, early execution that already generates amazing economic returns and a pretty straight path to making it a very big business capable of changing the lives of millions of people,” Laplanche said.

Since its inception in 2014 RentoMojo has expanded to Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad, with more than 25,000 subscribers on the platform. It is founded with a vision to provide credit infrastructure that evolves and adapts to people’s changing lifestyles. They currently offer leases for furniture, appliances, and bikes, with new categories coming.

“India is credit-constrained. We have consumer lending, but not consumer leasing. We believe that the leasing value-proposition is stronger than lending, especially for today's youth which opts to pay as they use, rather than buying. Innovation is at the core of everything we do. Salil’s and Renaud's faith in us has further boosted our confidence that we are creating something very valuable. I urge folks looking to do something innovative in this sector to join us in creating a proposition that has never existed before,” said Geetansh Bamania, CEO and Founder, RentoMojo.

Bain Capital Ventures has helped launch and commercialise more than 200 companies since its founding in 2000. With $3.6 billion under management, the firm focuses on a mix of early- and growth-stage investments across enterprise software, infrastructure software, fintech, and industries being transformed by data. In the last 12 months, the firm had three exits over $1 billion — Jet.com (Walmart), Blue Coat Systems (Symantec) and SquareTrade (Allstate). Recent new and follow-on investments include Signifyd, Frame, Sendgrid, Redis Labs, OpenFin, Sysdig, Roofstock, DocuSign and Tealium.

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.

Mobile Social Gaming Company PlaySimple Gets $4M from SAIF Partners & IDG Ventures

SAIF Partners, the leading venture capital firm with over $4B under management, along with IDG Ventures have announced a Series A funding deal with PlaySimple, a mobile social gaming company. PlaySimple has secured $4 million from the venture capital firms and plans to infuse the fresh funds in expanding its team and developing new mobile titles that are targeted at global audiences across various casual gaming genres.

PlaySimple, in early 2015, had raised a total of $500,000 in its seed round from IDG Ventures. The mobile social gaming company was incepted in 2014 by four founders - Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy, Suraj Nalin and Siddhanth Jain. PlaySimple delivers addictive and engaging mobile games in the trivia, word and puzzle categories. The start-up successfully made it into the Google Launchpad Accelerator Program that empowers founders with unique ideas and guides start-ups through mentorship and equity-free support. Till date, PlaySimple has released two games, GuessUp and WordTrek which have garnered over 10 million downloads on Android and iOS.

Mayank Khanduja, Principal at SAIF Partners, said, “Gaming is a huge market internationally and a very competitive one. We have known the PlaySimple team for over a year and have been amazed by the growth they have got in a very short period of time. Their approach is quite unique and we have a high confidence in their success.”

Karthik Prabhakar, Director and Head - Fundraising at IDG Ventures India, said, “Although gaming is considered be a hit-and-miss business, PlaySimple's formula on building games and their highly data driven/analytical approach have allowed them to be successful. We believe that PlaySimple will emerge as one of the big product companies outside India. IDGVI has increased the investment in the company and will be working with them very closely to scale their business."

Siddharth Jain, Co-Founder at PlaySimple, said, “PlaySimple makes highly addictive games for the global casual gaming audience. Our rigorous data-driven approach has delivered strong results so far, and has the potential to make us a dominant player in the global casual gaming space. We’ve grown fast so far with a small but a sharp team; we’re actively recruiting top notch talent across engineering, design, analytics and product management functions to fuel our growth over the next couple of years."

As smartphone technology continues to evolve and emerge as the preferred platform for gaming, surpassing other content delivery platforms, PlaySimple is poised to become one of the most sought-after mobile social gaming companies going forward. With an ever-growing consumer appetite for mobile gaming content and the fresh round of funds, the company is set to further cement its rising popularity amongst gaming aficionados.

Bizongo Raises $3M in Series A Round from IDG Ventures and Accel Partners

B2B packaging marketplace Bizongo has announced a $3M Series A round of funding from IDG Ventures and existing investor Accel Partners.

Bizongo is based out of Mumbai, and was established by IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi alumni in 2015. Bizongo is the sole online B2B marketplace in the $17Bn+ complex packaging industry in India. Bizongo currently deals in products such as boxes, containers, pouches, bags etc which is frequently required in several industries such Food & Hospitality, FMCG, Retail & Wholesale, Ecommerce and several others. The company has served more than 3000 businesses in the last year. Bizongo platform aims to make business procurement an efficient and hassle-free process. Custom packaging and branding options are also available on the platform itself. Unbranded nature of products, lack of pricing standardization and heavy supply side fragmentation further ensures that Bizongo is able to add value through its online platform with very clear and transparent product listings.

The company plans to use the funds raised in expanding its seller base, building automation and improving its supply chain. The company also wants to expand its talent pool especially in the technology and operations domains.

Bizongo is also looking to partner with large corporates especially in retail and manufacturing and handle their procurement process end-to-end. “We are really excited to see what the future holds for us” says Founder and CEO, Aniket Deb.

“A B2B purchase is distinctly different from a consumer purchase. Businesses purchasing from us trust our in-depth catalogue, quality, on-time delivery and ease of purchase – and not just best price. The best part of our business is that we get over 50% of our monthly revenues from repeat customers.” revealed Aniket.

“We partnered with Bizongo in mid-2015 in their seed round. Bizongo has grown 100x in the last one year and has become a great example of a modern B2B commerce marketplace, that leverages technology to make business more convenient – in a very complex vertical that is packaging” – Prayank Swaroop, Principal, Accel.

“Packaging forms a very fundamental element of almost all business. With over 28,000 vendors in India the supply chain is extremely fragmented, IDGVI is very excited to partner with this team to build the largest platform for packaging materials in the country “ said Ranjith Menon Executive Director, IDG Ventures India.

Online Fashion Rental Portal Flyrobe Raises Rs 35 Cr Led by IDG, GREE Ventures & Sequoia India

Mumbai-based online fashion rental portal Flyrobe has raised Rs 35 crore in its second round of funding led by IDG Ventures, with the participation of Tokyo-based GREE Ventures and existing investor Sequoia India. The other investors who participated in the round include Paytm's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Stanhope Capital chairman Leon Seynave. Till now, the startup has raised a total of $7 million funding.

Flyrobe aims to utilize the raised funding to expand to five more cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, as well as to strengthen its technology, product and business teams, as reported by ET. Flyrobe is currently operational in Delhi and Mumbai.

"We want to build the country's largest virtual wardrobe which women can rely whenever they have an occasion," said Shreya Mishra, 27, CEO and cofounder at Flyrobe.

Omapal Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs Flyrobe, was founded by IIT Bombay alumni Shreya Mishra, along with Pranay Surana and Tushar Saxena, it is an on-demand apparel rental platform that provides premium designer wear and branded outfits and accessories on rent at 10-15% of the retail price from for upto eight days.

On the supply side, the company is partnering with designers and brands to list their merchandise on a revenue sharing model. Also, it expects to grow 4-5 times, and triple its designer roster to 150 by March 2017.

Flyrobe competes with players like Bangalore based Flont, Delhi based Swishlist, Stage3, Mumbai based Blinge and Chennai-based HiFlame14 among others.

eCommerce Service Provider Unbxd Raises Series B Round of Funding

Unbxd Inc., which helps eCommerce companies by providing them with search, navigation, product recommendations, merchandizing and analytics solutions, has raised its Series B round of funding. The funding was led by entities advised and managed by Nirvana Venture Advisors, along with existing investors including IDG Ventures, Inventus Capital, and Indian Angel Network. The company had raised $2 million in a Series A funding in 2013.

Unbxd was founded in 2011 by Pavan Sondur and Prashant Kumar. The company aims to utilize the raised funding to improve its product, accelerate sales growth and expand its sales and marketing team. It plans to increase its employee count to more than 100 people over the three months from 55 now.

Unbxd provides eCommerce product discovery software services and helps companies solve search and other queries for almost 200 million eCommerce visitors in a day. 85% of the companies Unbxd services are outside India, primarily North America.

“Our relevancy engine and machine learning models have consistently delivered value to some of the biggest eCommerce sites in the world. Had Unbxd been a standalone eCommerce site, we would be the biggest eCommerce company in India in terms of volume of traffic and GMV served,” said Prashant Kumar.

Image Source: ShutterStock

IFC Leads Rs. 400 Cr Investment in Lenskart

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is investing Rs. 171 Crores in Indian eyewear company Lenskart, to help the company expand access to high-quality and affordable eye-care products in tier-3, tier-4 cities. IFC was the lead investor for the Rs. 400 crore Series D investment round which also saw participation from TPG Growth, Adveq Management and IDG Ventures. In addition, Ratan Tata and Kris Gopalakrishnan (co-founder of Infosys) invested in their personal capacity as part of this round. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to this transaction.

Lenskart is into assembly, manufacturing, wholesale distribution and supply of high quality eyewear products, such as eyeglasses, power sunglasses and contact lenses. Company plans to utilize the funds for strengthening its technology, supply chain, lens manufacturing, and expanding reach of its high-quality eyewear products across 400 cities.

“This investment will support a rapidly growing market leader in the Internet sector, while meeting a significant gap in the Indian eye care market,” said Pravan Malhotra, IFC’s co-lead for Global Internet Investments and lead for VC investments in South and Southeast Asia. As part of this investment, he will join Lenskart’s Board of Directors.

Lenskart has adopted a unique omni-channel approach thereby making eyewear truly accessible by making it available on desktop, mobile, hypermarkets, high streets, malls, hospitals and now even at home. The company conducts over 1,500 eye exams daily through its home eye exam service which it intends to make available for every home in urban and rural India.

Lenskart has been relentless about its focus on customer centricity. The company has built a strong leadership team, all of who work with the single mission of ‘creating enthusiastically satisfied customers all the time’. It has roped in professional stalwarts from retail, marketing and digital industries to head the respective divisions. The company will continue hiring great talent, particularly in technology.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Mobile Marketing Platform Vserv Raises US$15M In Funding From Maverick Capital & IDG Ventures

Mumbai-based mobile marketing platform startup Vserv has secured US$15 million in funding from US-based Maverick Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investor IDG Ventures. The total amount of funding it has raised till date has reached to $18 million. This includes its first round of funding of $3 million from IDG Ventures India, in July 2011.

The startup will use the funds in its sales, engineering and data analytics areas.

Founded in 2010, by Dippak Khurana and Ashay Padwa, VServ is currently provides marketers, telcos, app developers and various data partners with solutions to enable relevant ads, drive user engagement and increase ROI on mobile ads among others. Vserv’s flagship platform AudiencePro ties together data from multiple sources, such as offline and online marketers, telecom operators, mobile app developers and other third-party sources.

In November last year, Vserv launched an e-commerce-focused re-targeting product Vserv Smart RT, which allows advertisers/brands to re-target desktop users on mobile sites & apps, and re-target mobile site users on third-party apps.

Vserv claims that it interacts with over 500 million unique user profiles and has data on over 50% of the mobile internet users across emerging markets, including India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia among others.

Vserv's flagship AppWrapper platform has also won Best App Monetization Platform award at Mobby's and mBillionth Award South Asia. Vserv's AudiencePro™ has won the Best Audience Targeting Platform award at Mobby's. Vserv has also won silver and bronze awards for its mobile marketing campaigns at IAMAI, Mobby's, MMA Smarties and CIDCA.

Vserv is backed by IDG Ventures & Epiphany Ventures. The company has a global footprint with offices across USA, UK, South Africa, India, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines & Vietnam.

Mobile Startup Momoe Raises $1.2 Mn In Funding Led By IDG & Jungle Ventures

Bangalore-based mobile payment startup Momoe has raised $.12 million in funding round led by IDG ventures and Jungle ventures, with participation from India Quotient.

The newsly raised funds will be used to expand the team as Momoe plans to reach 500 merchant outlets in the next few months.

Momoe enables people to pay on their mobile phones. Momoe is a location aware smart phone app. People can pay on Momoe with their existing credit cards & debit cards. Momoe is accepted at restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores & apparel stores in India.

Unlike PayTM and Mobikwik, which facilitate cashless payments with a virtual wallet solution that stores a fixed amount of cash, Momoe's app works by using credit-card details which is very much similar to another Gurgaon-based mobile payment app called Ruplee with which one can pay using his credit or debit card.

Momoe was founded in 2014 by Utkarsh Biradar, Karthik Vaidyanathan, Ganesh Balakrishnan, Neelesh Bam and Aiman Ashraf who are mostly graduates of IITs and IIMs. "We are the early movers in the space," said CEO Utkarsh Biradar, 44, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, who expects the company to handle Rs 3,000 crore worth of transactions in the next 18 months.

Momoe app currently has a user base of over 3000 customers, and has crossed Rs 1 million in transactions. They plan to expand to other urban metros in India and abroad once they get to a 100-150 restaurants in Bangalore. The startup currently has five founding members and eight employees.

Bangalore-Based Edutech Startup SuperProfs Raised $3 Million From Kalaari & IDG Ventures India

Bangalore-based Edu-Tech startup SuperProfs.com has secured Rs 18 crore (about $3 million) in its Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India reports VCCircle. SuperProfs is an online platform that connects students preparing for various competitive exams with professors.

The funds will be used by startup to invest in R&D and mobile technology, as well as to expand product offerings and study material, add more courses to its platform, in addition to expanding operations across India.

Earlier in September 2012, the startups raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Indian Angel Network.

SuperProfs is operated by its parent company Aurus Network Pvt Ltd which was founded in 2010 by IIT Kanpur alumni Piyush Agrawal and Sujeet Kumar. The online startup connects best professors to students through its platform and make classrooms more accessible, opening up more learning possibilities for students and wider reach for professors.

SuperProfs, which claims over 25,000 registered users and 100 professors, partners with top professors from across India and broadcasts their live courses online by live transmission of HD quality videos at low bandwidth. Students can compare teachers based on teaching methodology, verified ratings and reviews. SuperProfs.com has partnered with professors from Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai for various competitive exams like CA, CS, CMA and GATE.

"Besides tier 1 cities, we are increasingly witnessing a significant number of students from tier 2 and 3 towns, who earlier could not prepare well for such exams due to a lack of good teachers in their city, adopting online exam preparation at SuperProfs.com. We are happy to have Kalaari and IDG as our partners in our mission to make quality education accessible to the masses," said Agrawal, co-founder of Aurus Networks.

Crowdfunding Platform LetsVenture Join Hands With IDG Ventures For Seed Fundings

Bangalore-based online fund-raising platform LetsVenture has joined hands with India-focused technology venture capital fund IDG Ventures India Advisors to discover and seed-fund early-age startups in India indicating the rise in interest among VC funding bodies for seed-funding early-age start-ups.

IDG Ventures will provide funds of around Rs.3 crore for seed-funding early-age startups via LetsVenture. As part of a seedcamp, which will run in Bangalore and Delhi this week, the fund will have a one-onone session with each of the 15 start-ups curated by LetsVenture

LetsVenture which enables startups looking to raise seed/angel money to create investment ready profiles online, and connect to accredited Investors. Once a startup has verbal commitments from investors, LestVenture help them in the funding closure process through our Commitment-to-Closure package.

Founded in 2013 by Sanjay Jha, Manish Singhal and Shanti Mohan, the platform has a network of 1,900 start-ups, with 725 investors from 19 countries, and has closed 17 rounds of funding in amounts ranging from Rs50 lakh to Rs5 crore.

Earlier in May this year LetsVenture got around $670K (Rs.4 crore) of funding from group of angel investors which includes - Manav Garg (co-founder, Eka Software), Naveen Tewari (co-founder, InMobi) , angel investor Rajan Anandan and Sharad Sharma who is co-founder of software product industry think tank iSpirt.

"We kept getting deals from incu bators, accelerators and platforms. However LetsVenture's deal flow and the quality of crowdfunded deals have been exceptional," said Karthik Prabhakar, senior associate at IDG Ventures, which will be looking to tie up with other platforms over the next 12-18 months.

Recruitment startup myNoticePeriod.com raises over Rs 2 cr in seed from IDG Ventures and others

Bangalore based recruitment startup myNoticePeriod.com announced that it has raised over 2 Crores in Seed Round funding, led by IDG Ventures India. Other investors include Prashant Kirtane, CTO and co-founder of travelmob.com, Shamsunder Talreja, owner of JetSet Capital, Raghu Krishnananda, former Yahoo engineering leader, and Ravi Gururaj of Frictionless Ventures.

Mynoticeperiod.com launched in December is incubated at Nasscom's 10000 Startup Warehouse has a database of over 32,000 job seekers serving their notice periods and 800 recruiters accessing the database. This is the fastest VC driven seed fund raise by a warehouse startup.

As part of the transaction, Venkatesh Peddi, Vice President, IDG Ventures India, will join the Board of Directors of myNoticePeriod.com. The company will use the fund to strengthen the team, scale up revenues and invest in deepening technology that will deliver even higher level of hiring efficiencies to customers.

"myNoticePeriod.com has revolutionalized how hiring is done. Our customers are able to identify and hire candidates 20x faster. This investment validates our strategy and will help us deliver greater value to our customers" says Manjunath (ex-Yahoo, IIMK), CEO of myNoticePeriod.com. "Our product allows a lean hiring team to pick ready to join candidates quickly. The portal serves jobseekers well because they get to choose the best offer" adds Abhijit Khasnis (ex-Yahoo, BITS), COO of myNoticePeriod.com. myNotiecPeriod.com's innovative approach also ensures better candidate matching through its patent-pending proprietary algorithm and captures unique information like jobseeker's best offer salary and title.

"We have recently started Seed Investment Program at IDG Ventures and MyNoticePeriod.com is one of the early investments from this program. For seed investments, we essentially look at strong teams, large market and disruptive ideas, and MyNoticePeriod.com met all the requirements. The team at myNoticePeriod.com has a path-breaking business model and we are pleased to support them in building a leading brand that stands for rapid hiring supported by differentiated technology" said Venkatesh Peddi, IDG Ventures.

"The myNoticePeriod.com team is extremely focussed and talented. They are going after a big market with an innovative offering which is resonating well with large customers. The early traction has been impressive and I look forward to helping them build up a substantial and profitable business" said Ravi Gururaj, who is now formally coming onboard as an advisor to the company.

MyNoticePeriod.com's service is free for job seekers, but there is a subscription fee for recruiters . Recruiters get the advantage of accessing the full database for Rs 10,000 a quarter and also have the option of paying Rs 5,000 for a one-month subscription.

The startup is looking to expand base to Europe because the waiting periods there extend up to six months and the startup has also filed a patent with the India Patent Office for their technology.

Big-data analytics startup Peel-Works got $2mn funding from IDG Ventures India and Inventus Capital Partners

Mumbai-based SaaS and big data analytics startup Peel-Works have got $2 million (about Rs 12 crore) in series-A of funding from IDG Ventures India and Inventus Capital Partner. Earlier in 2011, Indian Angel Network (IAN) had also invested a $1 million in Peel-Works.

"The two new key markets are the United States and south-east Asia, and we expect to have a present in these geographies in the next six to 12 months," said Sachin Chhabra, founder & CEO, Peel-Works.

Founded in 2010 by Sachin Chhabra, Peel-Works enables companies to keep tabs on people who close the sales cycle to check whether they are performing optimally. The start-up's cloud-based solution, called - 9Yards, gives companies analytics data on nine parameters to measure the performance of sales staff.

Another Peel-works' product called - Genius, analyses sales data, salesforce data and other relevant internal & external data to provide actionable insight on the employee performance, enabling companies to make quicker decision making.

The company has built a SaaS based Salesforce transformation and analytics platform that provides presence and performance management capabilities for companies with large extended salesforce.

This is also the second time that IDG Ventures and Inventus have joined hands to invest in a company. In October last year, both firm co-invested $2 million in Bangalore-based product recommendation platform Unbxd.

IDG Ventures is a global family of venture funds with approximately $3.6 billion under management. IDG Venture India has also been an investor in online companies such as Myntra, FirstCry.com, Yatra and Zivame.com. Inventus Capital partner on other hand had invested in Indian online startups such as - Dhingana, RedBus.in, PolicyBazaar.com and Vizury.