Desi GIF Search Platform GIFSKEY Raises $1 Mn Seed Funding from Kalaari Capital's Kstart, Others

Hyderabad, Telangana-based GIFSKEY, a search platform for Indian/ Swadeshi GIFs & Stickers, raised $1 million in a seed round led by Kalaari Capital's seed fund Kstart. Its existing investor Whiteboard Capital along with WEH Ventures, AngelList, and Touchstone also contributed to the round.

The startup will utilize the fresh funds for business development activities and enhancing technology on its platform.

Revant Bhate, Partner at Kstart, said, "GIFSKEY has created a strong niche in the vernacular content market. The traction and partnerships that Mahesh, Manan and Varun have achieved over the past year is impressive and we are excited to work with them to create a product to serve the next billion vernacular Indian internet users."

Founded in 2017, by Mahesh Gogineni, Manan Maheshwari and Varun MS, GIFSKEY is a search platform for 'Desi' GIFs & Stickers that are searchable in 8 Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada and Gujarati and also languages such as Hinglish, Tinglish, English etc.

Prior to GIFSKEY its co-founders Mahesh and Manan have had co-founded an another dot-com startup called Zapluk, which got acquired by Quikr in August 2016. Zapluk is an on-demand solution lets book appointments with stylists in real time.

Popular GIF search engine such as Giphy or even Google do not focus on Indian localized content and Indian languages. GIFSKEY solves this problem for Indian users who are looking for regional content that is searchable in regional languages. GIFSKEY allows you to type in indic fonts and get search results that are tailored based on language. For example, one can type हीरो to get Bollywood based hero GIFs or type హీరో to get Tollywood based hero GIFs.

The gif search platform claims to have an average of 100 million impressions a month currently and partnerships with 30 apps, including Dailyhunt, Xploree keyboard and APUS, and is in talks with other major content players and keyboards for the same.

source - Yourstory.com

Top Image Via - telanganatoday.com

Kstart Invests in Vernacular.ai, Multilingual AI Platform for Businesses

Kstart Capital, a unique seed program by one of India’s leading Venture Capital firms Kalaari Capital, has invested an undisclosed amount in Vernacular.ai recently. The company is founded by 3 IIT Roorkee graduates, Sourabh Gupta, Akshay Deshraj and Manoj Sarda.

“Our vision is to create a broad-based engagement platform for a billion Indians using AI to address needs of people who can be reached only through vernacular languages. In a country of more than 1.3 billion people, only about 150 million can understand English. For others, Internet is largely inaccessible. We are building India specific products to solve this problem. We are delighted to be supported by Kstart and to see them share our vision", commented Sourabh Gupta, CEO, Vernacular.ai.

Vernacular.ai has been working with financial institutions on interesting use-cases resulting in scalable ways to increase business, reduce operational expenditure and enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction. Businesses in India are struggling to engage with their multi- lingual customers digitally. By 2020, India will have more than 500 million mobile Internet users who don’t use english.

“The challenges of Indian languages are very different from English. Transliteration in different scripts, identification of context for each language and wide usage of a hybrid combination of multiple languages are complex NLP problems. We are developing our own in-house technology to solve this problem in collaboration with leading industry and academia”, noted Akshay Deshraj, CTO Vernacular.ai.

Vernacular.ai launched a B2C product earlier this year called Aisha - India’s first personal assistant in Hindi Language for people living in Tier-2 & Tier-3 areas. The product saw strong traction with 50 thousand users exchanging over a million messages in a short period.

“Vernacular.ai marks the success of our EIR program, and the first to convert to a portfolio company. The founders have scaled up their business rapidly by being resourceful and also shown the resilience to keep evolving their approach to solving this problem. We see this as a huge untapped opportunity and are excited about the future possibilities to create impact”, adds Muthiah Venkateswaran, Partner, Kstart Capital.

Sumit Jain, Partner, Kalaari Capital, who joins the board of the company observed, “There is a significant opportunity for Indian AI startups to solve India specific problems both for businesses and consumers. We are confident that Vernacular.ai will become the engagement partner of choice for businesses that want to leverage AI to solve for core issues. We wish the founder's great success in this journey”.

Fintech Platform Perpule Raises $650K from Kstart and Others

Kstart Capital, a Kalaari Capital initiative, has invested in Perpule. Kstart led the $650,000 round that also saw participation from Venture Highway and Raghunandan G, co- founder of TaxiForSure.

Perpule aims to provide an enjoyable queue-less experience for people wherever they go. They have started with solving the problem of queues at retail stores like HyperCITY, etc. and are doing it in 3 cities Bangalore, Mumbai & Noida. Their vision is to enhance the shopping experience of customers in-store, by making it more engaging and personal. The smartphone-based software solution can be scaled across various retail outlets and provides retailers deep insights about their customers allowing them to create personalized real-time campaigns. Perpule is founded by Abhinav Pathak, Saketh BSV, and Yogesh Ghaturle.

“Our vision is to ensure waiting in queues is a thing of the past. With improved systems, we are saving customer's time, ensuring no one ever stands in queues and thus improving the overall experience. We have started by enabling self-checkouts via our mobile app at various retail stores such as HyperCITY and are grateful to them for their support and really appreciate their commitment to customer experience. We are honored to be supported by Kstart and really happy to see them appreciate and share our vision." said Abhinav Pathak, CEO Perpule.

The founders firmly believe in this motto, which is what inspired them to start Perpule. Abhinav Pathak, a graduate from National Institute of Technology Karnataka worked at Goldman Sachs before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey. Saketh BSV, a graduate from IIT Madras had also worked at Goldman Sachs, which is where the two of them got acquainted. Yogesh Ghaturle is a final year graduate student at National Institute of Technology Karnataka.

“We are excited to support young entrepreneurs building innovative solutions like Perpule at Kstart. I am glad that we have been able to attract such visionary founders. Kstart remains committed to supporting disruptive ideas.” says Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital.

“The problem of queues has been present for a long time now and shoppers will welcome a solution that is scalable across sectors and segments.

Perpule’s team seems to be on the right path and I can foresee their model adding value to its clients right from the start. There is enormous potential for their solution as more and more retailers are converting to the organized segment. The data generated by the system provides a great opportunity for analytics by deriving metrics which were unimaginable till now”, says Samir Sood, Founder, Venture Highway, which is advised by Neeraj Arora, the Global Business Head of WhatsApp.

Kstart Invests in Clinical Imaging Solution, Advenio and Rental Marketplace GuaRented

Kstart, a unique seed program by India’s leading VC firm Kalaari Capital, has invested $100,000 in Advenio Technosys and $500,000 in GuaRented.

Advenio aims to provide artificial intelligence, deep learning, and machine learning-based computer assisted detection (CADx) for diagnostic clinical imaging. Their vision is to bring equitable healthcare to the masses. The smartphone-based software solution can be scaled across various healthcare specialties, and drastically reduces the cost of diagnostics. Advenio, founded by Mausumi Acharyya, is the winner of the #StartupGirlsChallenge conducted by Kstart last quarter.

Mausumi Acharyya, Founder & CEO, has a PhD in Medical Imaging from the University of Pennsylvania, and was previously a lead engineer at GE and senior member of Technical Staff at Siemens. Advenio has received grants from such respected industry bodies as BIRAC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and IIM A. They were recently in the news for making it to the global finals of Start Tel Aviv, and will join founders from 22 other nations at the event.

“Our vision is to apply next-generation machine intelligence techniques to create disruptive, affordable & consistent point-of-care diagnostic solutions for healthcare delivery systems, especially in low/middle income countries, thus enabling better healthcare outcomes through early detection and management of diseases. We are excited to be supported by Kstart in accomplishing this vision” said Mausumi Acharyya, CEO Advenio Technosys.

GuaRented is a rental marketplace that caters to the fast growing community of people not looking to own things, either due to financial constraints or simply because they are constantly on the move and desire an asset-light lifestyle. Committed to the ‘asset-light’ approach, the company themselves have structured their business on minimal inventory ownership. Instead, a crowdsourcing model has allowed them to invite individuals to bear ownership of the appliances, while they manage the operations and rentals. The idea has the potential to disrupt the ownership model for home appliances in India and other segments subsequently – especially optimizing unit economics by renting used appliances.

“A lot of people are eventually going to shift from buying to renting in the future. The change has already started. We aim to create an affordable and dependable service for such people. At the same time, we are creating a whole new asset class for individuals to invest their money in.” said Harshwardhan Raikwar, Founder & CEO, GuaRented.

“The commitment that the Kstart team have towards the success of their portfolio companies is unparalleled. Even before investing in us, they started working hands-on in helping us solve even the most basic problems. They are more entrepreneurs than investors, which is what differentiates them from the others. We are looking forward to their continuous support” added Abhimanyu Dixit, Founder & CTO, GuaRented

“We are excited to support disruptive solutions like Advenio and GuaRented at Kstart. I am glad that we have been able to attract such a diverse set of companies, in such a short span of time. ” says Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital.

Kstart Invests in Cloud Security Startup ParaBlu

Kstart, a unique seed program by India’s leading VC firm Kalaari Capital, has invested $500,000 in ParaBlu, a cloud security startup.

ParaBlu, founded by Anand Prahlad and Ananda Rao Ladi, provides intelligent Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) enabled Cloud Security solutions for Enterprises enabling them to store business assets safely on the cloud.

Focused on preserving privacy, security and confidentiality of data, ParaBlu’s technology is pre-integrated with a range of cloud data management applications they’ve developed, which are designed to protect data that flows out of a company’s networks into the public cloud, thereby enabling easy adoption for enterprises.

“We’re very pleased to be a part of Kstart”, said Anand Prahlad, President & CEO, ParaBlu. “ParaBlu was founded with the singular vision of being the security vendor of choice for all enterprise data outside the firewall.  The promise of that is already evident in our customer wins so far, and the investment from Kstart will help accelerate the realization of that vision.  The experience and mentorship the Kstart team brings with them are without doubt among the best in the industry, and we’re excited to be able to take advantage of it,” added Prahlad who previously was MD & Head of McAfee’s India Center.

“Our solutions enable enterprises to become less dependent on in-house storage and adopt cloud with confidence. The association with Kstart will help us in expanding our product portfolio for global markets and I feel very excited about it” says Ananda Rao Ladi, EVP of Engineering and Support and ParaBlu.

“ParaBlu has a very strong team with deep understanding of the cloud security space. As cloud usage continues to increase within enterprises, there is tremendous opportunity ahead for ParaBlu’s unique product” says Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital.

Kstart, a Kalaari Capital initiative, is a unique seed program designed to empower next generation startups and accelerate disruptive ideas to become market-leading companies. Its singular focus is to enable visionary founders to build game-changing businesses by combining all key factors necessary for startup success.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Kalaari Capital Accelerator Kstart Invests $500K Each in Three Startups - Active.ai, Affordplan and Indee

Kalaari Capital accelerator Kstart has invested $500,000 each in three startups in healthcare, financial services and online video content management. Kstart is a unique seed program designed for the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs, picked out the following start-ups from out a pool of 400 applications : Active.ai, Affordplan and Indee.

Active.ai provides a tech platform for banks, wealth managers and financial services companies to interact with customers. Affordplan is a tech product for doctors and patients to co-design payment plans for non-emergency healthcare services and Indee is a web video streaming platform that helps film studios and entertainment companies to promote and test their content before releasing it to viewers.

"We are investing about $500,000 in each of them through a convertible note so that they can keep their options open in terms of future dilution and valuation," said Vani Kola, managing director at Kalaari Capital who expects to pick about four startups every quarter.

The firm is looking to invest up to $20 million in as many as 40 startups for the programme over the next two years. Kstart will invest $100,000-500,000 in 6-9 other start-ups this year.

For its startups, KStart has also roped in top executives like former Cisco chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior, Airbnb's global expansion head Varsha Rao, Ratan Tata and top lawyer Zia Mody.

Kalaari Capital which started in 2006, is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm with $650 million in assets under management. The VC firm raised $290 million fund last year. Its portfolio include firms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Simplilearn and Zivame.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Kalaari Capital and IBM To Train & Mentor Indian Startups

The startup ecosystem in India got a major boost recently when Kstart, a well known incubator initiative of the venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, joined hands with technology company IBM to offer industry specialised mentoring and training sessions to Indian startups.

According to data revealed by a 2015 report by Zinnov and Nasscom, the India is currently at number three position globally in terms of the total number of mushroomed startups, and the fastest in terms of growing startup base.

According to Kstart, all the listed seed-stage portfolio startups will have the chance to apply for the prestigious IBM Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP). The programme is famous among the entrepreneurs as it provides them world class technical support, business mentoring, networking opportunities with enterprise clients and credits to help the business focused minds in building their applications on the company's IBM Cloud.

The Kstart portfolio startups will be diligently provided access to IBM technology experts and business leaders. This will help them in developing their market strategies, conquer market alignment and better their technology resources. Kstart participants will also be invited to take part in IBM organised training sessions on product design, cognitive learning and analytics.

IBM’s GEP is aimed at driving engagement and awareness about the startup industry. Under the programme, startups are allowed to apply for up to $ 120,000 in cloud credits to develop and run their own applications on the IBM Cloud.

Having a fund value of $ 650 million, Kalaari Capital has invested in big names like Myntra, Urban Ladder, Simplilearn and Snapdeal etc. Kalaari is hopeful that partnering with IBM will help them provide their entrepreneurs with the right expertise and best tools to climb the success ladder.

According to Nipun Mehrotra, Vice President, Growth Initiatives, IBM India/South Asia, “We believe in creating an environment that can foster innovation, which is why we working with Kalaari Capital to encourage and support the start-up community in their journey."

Kalaari Capital and IBM To Train & Mentor Indian Startups

The startup ecosystem in India got a major boost recently when Kstart, a well known incubator initiative of the venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, joined hands with technology company IBM to offer industry specialised mentoring and training sessions to Indian startups.

According to data revealed by a 2015 report by Zinnov and Nasscom, the India is currently at number three position globally in terms of the total number of mushroomed startups, and the fastest in terms of growing startup base.

According to Kstart, all the listed seed-stage portfolio startups will have the chance to apply for the prestigious IBM Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP). The programme is famous among the entrepreneurs as it provides them world class technical support, business mentoring, networking opportunities with enterprise clients and credits to help the business focused minds in building their applications on the company's IBM Cloud.

The Kstart portfolio startups will be diligently provided access to IBM technology experts and business leaders. This will help them in developing their market strategies, conquer market alignment and better their technology resources. Kstart participants will also be invited to take part in IBM organised training sessions on product design, cognitive learning and analytics.

IBM’s GEP is aimed at driving engagement and awareness about the startup industry. Under the programme, startups are allowed to apply for up to $ 120,000 in cloud credits to develop and run their own applications on the IBM Cloud.

Having a fund value of $ 650 million, Kalaari Capital has invested in big names like Myntra, Urban Ladder, Simplilearn and Snapdeal etc. Kalaari is hopeful that partnering with IBM will help them provide their entrepreneurs with the right expertise and best tools to climb the success ladder.

According to Nipun Mehrotra, Vice President, Growth Initiatives, IBM India/South Asia, “We believe in creating an environment that can foster innovation, which is why we working with Kalaari Capital to encourage and support the start-up community in their journey."