Lane Raises ₹8.5 Crore to Build Driver Intelligence Infrastructure for Safer Roads in India

• Lane (inlane.in) is building the driver intelligence infrastructure underpinning the next generation of driving education and vehicle ownership in India. Kae Capital led the round, with participation from DeVC, Antler India and Panthera Peak.

Lane, a tech-enabled driving education and mobility platform, has raised ₹8.5 crore in a round led by Kae Capital, with participation from DeVC, Antler India, Panthera Peak as well as prominent Angels.

The problem

The company is tackling a problem India has left unsolved for decades: the absence of structured, high-quality driver education at scale.

The stakes are high. More than 1.7 lakh people die on Indian roads every year, roughly twenty every hour. Most Indian drivers learn informally, from family or friends, and the formal test itself is run at 10-15 km/h on a fixed track, nothing like real traffic. India has about 1% of the world's vehicles but accounts for nearly 11% of its road deaths. The biggest gap is the near-total absence of a rigorous, accountable system for teaching people to drive.

The insight behind the category

Lane was founded by Samiksha Agarwal in 2025, who spent her career in VC and finance but always came back to one passion: driving. That led her to a simple observation — India has 250 million licence holders, but most were never actually taught to drive.

Samiksha Agarwalv– Founder of Lane

"Every driving school in India chases the same thing: the licence," Samiksha says. "We're after something harder and far more valuable — a confident, competent driver. Confidence behind the wheel is a life skill: built once, carried forever."

In 18 months, Lane has delivered 30,000+ hours of instruction to more than 3,100 learners, making it one of the largest structured driver-education platforms in the country. Nearly 70% of its customers already held a licence when they signed up — proof of the gap between getting a licence and knowing how to drive.

Lane's safety-first method was developed over 400+ hours of pilot classes, with input from automobile researchers. Instructors are held to the same bar: every partner is assessed across 15 driving parameters, including simulated lessons. Those who qualify can earn ₹80,000–90,000 a month, working within micro-markets close to home.

From education to ownership

Education is the entry point, not the endgame. Lane has begun offering car purchases, RTO services and more to its learners — with nearly 60% expressing intent to purchase their first car.

"We're not in the business of repeat enrollments," Samiksha says. "We're in the business of building trust that lasts well beyond the last driving class."

The bigger bet: driver intelligence at scale

Longer term, Lane is building an AI-powered, automotive-grade system for the full mobility journey — with education as the entry point and driver intelligence as the long game.

Sunita Viswanathan, Partner, Kae Capital:"What convinced us wasn't just the size of the category, but where it sits in a person's life, the moment you learn to drive is the moment you start thinking about owning, insuring, and building a life around a car. Samiksha found the right entry point, and she's exactly the founder to build from it."

At its core is a sensor-based system that turns every driving session into behavioural data, building a living driver profile for each learner.

• For insurers: pricing risk on how someone actually drives, not on static categories.
• For manufacturers: comparable, real-world data on how vehicles perform.
• For the country: a genuine picture of how India's 250 million licence holders drive — the foundation for incentive systems that reward safe behaviour and give policymakers something enforcement alone never could.

A partner to India's road safety mission

India's governments have put road safety firmly on the national agenda — from mandatory highway ambulances to Good Samaritan protections. What no public institution can build alone is the on-the-ground education, instructor accountability, and behavioural data that turn that intent into outcomes. Lane wants to be the engine that delivers it on the ground.

Use of funds

The ₹8.5 crore will be deployed across three priorities:

• Geographic expansion — scaling Lane's instructor network across Bengaluru and into other Tier 1 cities
• Sensor technology — accelerating the build-out of Lane's proprietary driving behaviour system
• Car ownership — building the downstream infrastructure that takes a confident driver through their first car purchase

About Lane

Lane is a first-of-its-kind tech-enabled driving education and mobility services platform headquartered in Bengaluru. Founded by Samiksha Agarwal, it brings structured driving lessons, end-to-end RTO and licensing support, and a driver intelligence platform together into one ecosystem, built on a simple conviction: that driving is one of the most important life skills an Indian will ever learn, and it deserves to be taught properly.

GobbleCube Raises $3.5 Mn Pre-Series A Led by InfoEdge Ventures to Scale Its AI-Powered Growth Copilot for Brands

• GobbleCube has crossed $2M in ARR within nine months, delivering 2-3x revenue growth for 200+ D2C and enterprise brands, with a waitlist that continues to grow.

GobbleCube, the AI-powered growth copilot for consumer brands, has raised $3.5 million in a Pre-Series A round led by InfoEdge Ventures, with continued participation from Kae Capital. This funding follows an exceptional nine-month run since the company emerged from Private Beta, growing from pre-revenue to $2 million in ARR and onboarding 200+ brands including Reckitt, Tata Consumer, Nivea, and Johnson & Johnson, all through organic momentum.

Founded by Manas Gupta, Srikumar Nair, and Nitesh Jindal, part of the original Blinkit leadership team, GobbleCube is redefining how brands drive revenue in the era of hyperlocal commerce. The platform helps brands unlock scale by identifying revenue leaks, demand gaps, and high-growth micro-markets, then acts on them with AI-driven precision. It’s already delivering 2–3x growth outcomes for both D2C challengers and large enterprises within months.

Unlike traditional platforms that only report the past, GobbleCube enables brands to predict and shape their future. Its AI engine processes billions of locality-level data points to surface high-impact actions across digital shelf visibility, pricing, planning, and now performance marketing, giving brands the intelligence to move from reactive decisions to intent-led growth.

“As commerce goes hyperlocal, the real opportunity lies in enabling brands to engage consumers with precision and relevance at scale,” said Manas Gupta, Co-founder and CEO. “This isn’t just a marketing challenge; it’s a big-data problem that demands AI-first, productized solutions. The response has been overwhelming, with multiple brands already live and many more on the waitlist.”

The problem GobbleCube is solving has global relevance. The company is already working with brands across MENA and LATAM, tapping into a multi-billion dollar opportunity in global digital commerce. With the new capital, GobbleCube plans to deepen its AI capabilities, expand platform coverage, and accelerate its global go-to-market motion.

“E-commerce and q-commerce are becoming increasingly complex, with brands needing to win at a hyperlocal and platform-specific level across marketplaces like Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart. GobbleCube gives them the real-time visibility and intelligence needed to drive growth and revenue outcomes. Their early traction highlights a strong value proposition across both large and emerging consumer brands. At InfoEdge Ventures, we believe GobbleCube is fast becoming a must-have AI partner for any brand selling online. The team’s clarity, speed, and execution are exceptional, and we’re excited to partner with them on this journey,” said Kitty Agarwal, Partner at InfoEdge Ventures.

Gaurav Chaturvedi, General Partner at Kae Capital, added, “GobbleCube has shown incredible execution velocity and product clarity from day one. Their ability to drive measurable growth for both emerging D2C brands and large enterprises within weeks signals strong product-market fit. We’re excited to double down and support them in this next phase.”

With AI at its core and commerce in its DNA, GobbleCube is fast becoming the copilot every brand wants in the race for digital dominance.

About GobbleCube:

GobbleCube is an AI-powered growth copilot for consumer brands, designed to help them scale revenue and market share by identifying leakages and unlocking opportunities at hyperlocal granularity. It offers brands end-to-end visibility and control across key growth levers, from availability and pricing to share of voice and performance marketing.

GobbleCube’s mission is to remove the guesswork from growth by abstracting problem identification. Brands simply define their objectives, and the platform figures out the highest-impact actions to achieve them.

Founded by the team that helped build Blinkit into a Q-commerce category leader, GobbleCube brings deep domain expertise and strong technical foundations to solve one of the most complex big-data problems in modern commerce.

Female-Care Product Startup Nua Raises $4 Mn from Lightbox Ventures

Mumbai-based Nua, a female care brand, has raised $4 million in Series A round of funding led by Lightbox Ventures with contribution from te startup's existing investor Kae Capital.

Operated by Lagom Labs, Nua -- as a brand -- creates products and services that revolved around women’s health and wellness. It currently makes sanitary pads and sells them online.

The Nua sanitary pads do not have prints, perfume or any chemical on the top layer, come in convenient disposable covers and are delivered as per the chosen frequency.

Founded in 2017, by Ravi Ramachandran and Swathi Kulkarni, Nua aspire to be the leading online-led femcare brand by building a tech-enabled company that truly cares for every woman's needs.

The funding, which marks Lightbox’s first investment from its $200 million third fund, will allow Nua to make investments in technology and data as well as in expanding its product offerings.

Prashant Mehta, partner at Lightbox, said to Business Standard, "I think in Nua, we found a team that has thought through how to create an amazing experience for women and do it in a manner that is delivering massively amazing value."

"If you think about fem-care, there are already companies at the high end of the spectrum, you can always get very high-end products, but this team (Nua) really felt that it was important to bring care and wellness ideas to millions of women and not just the top echelon of women group,” said Mehta of Lightbox.

In August last year, Gurgaon-based Carmesi, which makes premium, all-natural and biodegradable sanitary pad, had raised $500,000 from Samrath Bedi, Managing Director, Forest Essentials, a luxury Ayurvedic beauty brand.

An another Sanitary Pad making startup called Saathi also provides affordable and bio-degradable sanitary pad made from waste Banana tree fiber and provide to women in rural India. The startup has recently selected in top 10 Innovative startups 2019 by Fast Company.

Source - Business Standard

Email Collaboration SaaS Startup Hiver (Grexit) Raises $4 Mn from Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital

San Jose, California and Bengaluru-based Software as a Service (SaaS) application, Hiver (formerly Grexit), that helps organizations collaborate from their email inboxes, has raised $4 million (~ Rs.30 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital.

The startup will use the freshly raised funding for product development, as well as for expanding its global customer base.

Notably, this funding round is the first round of equity financing raised by the startup since November 2011, when it raised $130,000 in seed funding from the Citrix Startup Accelerator, The Morpheus and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Post this funding, Gaurav Chaturvedi, venture partner at Kae Capital, and Rajesh Raju, manning director at Kalaari Capital, will be joining the Hiver's board of directors.

"We believe Hiver has the potential of becoming a product that is synonymous with productivity for businesses," said Chaturvedi of Kae Capital.

Founded by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumni, Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, Hiver was started in mid 2011 with an aim to build a collaboration tool that would let them stay in their inboxes and yet get work done efficiently.

[caption id="attachment_126832" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Bangalore Team of Hiver
(Image - Hiver @Twitter)[/caption]

The app was previously known as GrexIt, however in September 2015, the company changed its name to Hiver to avoid a naming conflict with the term Grexit being used to refer to the probable exit of Greece from the Eurozone. The company however retains GrexIt, Inc. as its legal name.

In a statement to a business daily, Niraj Ranjan Rout, co-founder and chief executive of Hiver, said, "With this investment, we will fuel our efforts to realise our vision of making Gmail a powerful collaboration platform that businesses can use for sales, support and their internal functions."

Before co-founding Hiver, Raut was also a co-founder of Mobilcules, a Noida-based firm that builds innovative and sophisticated products primarily for start-ups/new ventures in the US, Europe and India. Raut then exited Mobicules in January 2011 to focus on Hiver. Nitesh Nandy was also formerly at Mobicules as Technical lead and project manager

Hiver is now used by thousands of companies globally including Harvard University, and US-based vacation rental companies Hubspot and Vacasa. The app is one of the most loved products built for Gmail and G Suite.

Source - Economic Times

Email Collaboration SaaS Startup Hiver (Grexit) Raises $4 Mn from Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital

San Jose, California and Bengaluru-based Software as a Service (SaaS) application, Hiver (formerly Grexit), that helps organizations collaborate from their email inboxes, has raised $4 million (~ Rs.30 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital.

The startup will use the freshly raised funding for product development, as well as for expanding its global customer base.

Notably, this funding round is the first round of equity financing raised by the startup since November 2011, when it raised $130,000 in seed funding from the Citrix Startup Accelerator, The Morpheus and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Post this funding, Gaurav Chaturvedi, venture partner at Kae Capital, and Rajesh Raju, manning director at Kalaari Capital, will be joining the Hiver's board of directors.

"We believe Hiver has the potential of becoming a product that is synonymous with productivity for businesses," said Chaturvedi of Kae Capital.

Founded by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumni, Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, Hiver was started in mid 2011 with an aim to build a collaboration tool that would let them stay in their inboxes and yet get work done efficiently.

[caption id="attachment_126832" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Bangalore Team of Hiver
(Image - Hiver @Twitter)[/caption]

The app was previously known as GrexIt, however in September 2015, the company changed its name to Hiver to avoid a naming conflict with the term Grexit being used to refer to the probable exit of Greece from the Eurozone. The company however retains GrexIt, Inc. as its legal name.

In a statement to a business daily, Niraj Ranjan Rout, co-founder and chief executive of Hiver, said, "With this investment, we will fuel our efforts to realise our vision of making Gmail a powerful collaboration platform that businesses can use for sales, support and their internal functions."

Before co-founding Hiver, Raut was also a co-founder of Mobilcules, a Noida-based firm that builds innovative and sophisticated products primarily for start-ups/new ventures in the US, Europe and India. Raut then exited Mobicules in January 2011 to focus on Hiver. Nitesh Nandy was also formerly at Mobicules as Technical lead and project manager

Hiver is now used by thousands of companies globally including Harvard University, and US-based vacation rental companies Hubspot and Vacasa. The app is one of the most loved products built for Gmail and G Suite.

Source - Economic Times

Digital Lending Platform CrediFiable Raises Seed Funding from Kae Capital

CrediFiable, a new age digital lending platform has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kae Capital. CrediFiable, which was launched this year, is focusing on the Personal Loan Segment for Salaried Professionals, providing loans ranging from Rs.50,000 to Rs.5Lakhs.

Through its data-driven proprietary underwriting model, CrediFiable caters to borrowers who have a Credit History or are New To Credit. It provides a final underwriting decision immediately to a potential applicant with disbursal taking up to 48hours. CrediFiable services the entire chain from sourcing the customer, credit scoring and conducting the verification process by leveraging India Stack.

“Salaried Professionals looking for personal loans are only concerned with three pain points, certainty of obtaining a loan, final loan package (quantum and interest rate) and speed. The CrediFiable underwriting model has been designed to address these three pain points without compromising on its Portfolio Risk. Our technology-enabled solution allows us to “Capture” the customer while simultaneously rejecting sub-prime candidates.” said Presha Paragash, Founder & CEO of CrediFiable.

Prior to CrediFiable, Presha was the co-founder of Sol Primero, which has invested in start-ups such as ZoRooms, Rapido. She has also worked with UBS in London and holds an MBA from Wharton and a graduate of LSE. Furthermore, the core team has deep and relevant experience in Financial Services and Technology and comes from premier institutions such as IIT, BITS and XLRI.

To date, CrediFiable has received more than 1,000 applicants and has tied up with 2 lending partners. “Our partnerships would allow us to disburse up to Rs.5crore a month.” said Presha.

“From an investor’s perspective, consumer lending represents an interesting dichotomy between a very large market and a highly competitive market. There are many segments in the personal loan market that are untapped and furthermore in most cases a decision is taken on the applicant’s bureau score. CrediFiable goes beyond the traditional bureau score and instead looks at many other traditional and non-traditional parameters when assessing the borrower. We feel that this allows them to reclassify borrowers and unlock value based on a “truer” assessment of super-prime and near-prime borrowers. “said Shubhankar Bhattacharya, Venture Partner at Kae Capital.

Gaming Startup Hypernova Interactive Secures Funding From Kae Capital

Gaming startup Hypernova Interactive has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from sector agnostic fund Kae Capital, marking it its first investment in a gaming company.

Commenting on the development, Shubhankar Bhattacharya, Venture Partner, Kae Capital said, "We believe that mobile games, especially those that capitalise on multiplayer and esports, is a large and rapidly growing market. We believe the Hypernova team matches up to the standards set by top global gaming companies, both in their execution capabilities, and their overall vision."

Founded in 2015 by Mayur Bhimjiyani and Huzaifa Arab, Hypernova is one of the fast growing e-sports game development studio. The Bengaluru-based startup is currently working on a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) title for mobile, where they are redefining the genre with a revolutionary approach.

“We provide a fast paced environment, where we push the limits of the design language on mobile everyday through a process of constant iteration. If you love questioning and redefining standing conventions, Hypernova Interactive is the place for you,” said Company’s LinkedIn Page.

War Tanks and Space Titans are the two games which startup has launched. Startup claims that in the past eight months, War Tanks has registered 350,000 downloads globally whereas, War Tanks has received an international featuring in the US on both Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Kae Capital invests in companies which bring about innovative solutions for the existing gaps in the markets, backed by a great team. The companies look for entrepreneurs who envision technology as a means to disrupt sectors such as mobile, e-commerce, education, healthcare, consumer internet and so on.

Earlier in March 2017, Kae Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in Parentune, a parents network with verified parents and real time trusted advice. In January 2017, Learntron, a learning technology startup with tech operations in Chennai and sales operations in Mumbai, had raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A round from Kae Capital. Other companies that received funding from Kae Capital include Popicom, Learntorn, Azuro, WOTU, and ListUP and other.

Parentune Raises Second Round of Funding from Kae Capital & SEGNEL Venture

Parentune, India’s largest parents network with verified parents & real time trusted advice, has announced its second round of funding from Kae Capital & SEGNEL venture. With the Babytech space heating up, parentune has raised the funds towards its technology roadmap, and scale up which includes the launch of the network in Hindi and other languages. The startup was conceived and founded in 2012 to support parents with trusted advice, and validated solutions.

Nitin Pandey, Founder, parentune.com says,“We see Babytech as a big impact opportunity. India alone has 500 million parents and close to 29 million newborns each year. Considering that the majority of our population is young, imagine the scale of impact parentune can make in the life of each parent and child. Our vision has been to be the must have support for parents and we are excited to be moving in that direction. We have raised this round of funding to continue building a highly personalised support for parents, with technology, data and intelligence at the center of parentune’s scale up.”

Parentune is now scaling up faster,with more than 3 million sessions monthly across its website, mobile site and mobile app. It recently crossed the 1 million verified parents milestone. Although, the majority of the users are from India, the network also has parents from UAE, UK, Singapore and US as well, especially on the mobile. Parentune has also grown rapidly on the business front with a 6X revenue growth in just a year. It has two streams of revenue, the Brand revenues and the proparent services, i.e. value added services for parents.

On the development , Nitin adds, “We’re excited about our progress especially the uptake and high usage of parentune on the mobile. We have tested a vernacular version and are launching a parentune Hindi version now. We would want parents to be able to find the parentune support in their preferred language independent of their location. We look forward to our association with Kae Capital and SEGNEL Venture who come with a sharp understanding of the consumer internet and technology space.”

This unique start up is diversified with top talent in technology, content, & growth hacking, business and various expert-areas like nutrition, health, education, child psychology & behaviour. The Parentune app is leading the growth and has an unparalleled engagement of 9-10 min per session. With close to 5,00,000 downloads, it’s also among the top 3 ranked mobile apps on Google play store in the parenting category.

Venugopal, parentune’s Co-founder and CTO shares, “A parent looks for information & solutions, around his/her concerns and interests for his/her child. Each parent has a personalised version of parentune to herself and that makes our support useful and valuable. We achieve this through HOTSPOT, parentune’s trends analytics & listening IP and going forward, we are working on making this support more intuitive without giving away the validated nature of solutions on parentune. It means real time intelligence with an improved response mechanism for parents. Parentune technology team shall innovate and iterate the parentune support for best results. This shall perhaps be unique and a first suchin multiple ways.”

Kae Capital, an early stage fund has reinvested in parentune.Vidushi Kamani, Venture Partner at Kae shares, “There are low entry barriers in this segment. Parentune stands out as a parenting network that brings true value to its members. It has grown organically by listening to its users and enabling real-time and meaningful advise and support through its platform. This is what gives Parentune its differentiated value proposition.”

This round is also participated by Segnel Ventures, an early stage fund from Singapore, which provides funding to promising startups across the South East Asia region. Segnel’s founder Hideki Fujita says, "It's natural that more and more parents are looking for support and advice in bringing up their children. Parentune provides parents with trusted advice, validated support and relevant solutions. A lot of users love parentune; there are 3 million monthly sessions across the website and app. The fact that parentune has improved continuously by listening to their users through the use of technology is their strength and uniqueness both."

Parentune is a technology centred startup with a lean team of 12 behind its scale up. Nitin talks about the parentune culture as one of the most important factors behind its progress. “Learn-fun-speed truly captures parentune’s culture. We realized the importance of culture-building early on and that meant that the team got together to curate it. Its so much better, when it’s shared and built together. We feel it’s a more sustainable approach.”

HealthKart to Expand Portfolio, Enter Offline Space; Raises Rs 80 Cr

Bright Lifecare Pvt Ltd, which operates online fitness and nutrition portal HealthKart.com today announced that it has raised Rs 80 Crore of fresh capital. The investment is led by Sequoia India and existing investors, including Omidyar Network and Kae Capital, have also participated in the round.

HealthKart plans to use the funds to build upon its leadership in the fitness and nutrition space - with investments in its assistance and content capabilities, portfolio expansion into additional nutrition segments and expansion into the offline space.

HealthKart was founded by Sameer Maheshwari and Prashant Tandon in 2011 as an online portal to buy health products. Since then, the company has focused on the fast growing fitness and nutrition space, becoming its clear online leader. The portal offers curated nutrition products along with detailed reviews and expert assistance by nutritionists on exercising and dieting regimes.

Sameer Maheshwari, Founder and CEO, said “Fitness is a very engaged and assistance oriented category and customers trust us across their fitness lifecycle - from seeking advice from expert trainers/nutritionists, connecting with other fitness enthusiasts, specialist curation of products, customer reviews and buying authentic nutrition products. We are super excited by strong support from the investors, and look forward to continue building upon our leadership in the space”

“Healthkart has executed extremely well and carved out a valuable area in the online nutrition products and services market. We continue to believe they are on a unique path that will generate significant value,” said Shailesh Lakhani, managing director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Image - Prashant Tandon (left) and Sameer Maheshwari

ListUp, An App to Buy & Sell Used Goods, Raises $500K in Seed Round of Funding

ListUp, an app to Buy & Sell used goods, raises $500,000 in seed funding led by Kae Capital with the participation of Kunal Shah (FreeCharge, Chairman) and Sandeep Tandon (Tandon Group). Sasha Mirchandani (Founder, Kae Capital) will be joining the board with this round of Funding.

Founded by Sumit Gupta, Pulkit Gupta and Saurabh Jain, ListUp was launched in January 2016 with a vision to disrupt age-old classifieds in India. The startup is focused on P2P exchange of secondhand goods, which aims to bridge buyers & sellers using technology in a way that was never done before.

What differentiates it from other players in this space is its location-based discovery of products and social approach to classifieds. Unlike existing classifieds platforms where there is no real seller identity, all ListUp users are socially verified that leverages social connections to solve the problem of trust in the transaction.

"With our 100% MoM verified user growth and with an average active user spending around 15 mins per day on the app and active sellers spending 30 mins daily, ListUp claims to create a product that people can use to discover and sell things within their neighbourhood in the fastest possible way," the company added.

It is based on the simple idea of letting everyone buy and sell used items in an easy and efficient way through their smartphone. Centred around geographical proximity, ListUp enables people to discover interesting goods being sold in their neighbourhood, thereby minimizing the time between contacting the seller via direct chat and meeting them in person.

Having a significant range of products, varying from guitars, speakers, mobiles and even drones, ListUp is synonymous to a second-hand shopping mall. In India, an average Indian hoards at least 20,000 worth of items they don’t use anymore and can turn it into real cash. Since it’s launch in Jan’ 16, No. of listings on the app are increasing by 300% MoM and interesting products worth millions of dollars have already been listed on the app.

The firm is bringing in a mobile approach to traditional classifieds and is revolutionizing the way how people buy & sell secondhand goods. With an incredibly easy-to-use product, ListUp allows users to instantly reach out to all prospective buyers nearby and thus enabling quicker & safer transactions.

With this fresh round of funding, ListUp will be doing product enhancements such as utilising data to give personal recommendations, offline and online marketing and also creating network density in their target markets.

Online Dating Startup TrulyMadly Raises Rs.35 Cr Via Helion Venture & Kae Capital

Delhi-based online dating and matchmaking app TrulyMadly has raised Rs. 35 crore in their first round of funding from Helion Venture Partners and Kae Capital. TrulyMadly has been started by several serial entrepreneur, including Sachin Bhatia, who had also co-founded MakeMyTrip.

TrulyMadly is an app which serves a platform that brings singles together based on common interests and psychological matching.

The TrulyMadly app was launched in August 2014, and so far has seen over 200,000 downloads, and claims to have about 65,000 monthly active users mostly from India and south-east Asia. Of those, 35 percent are women.

Other than Sachin Bhatia, co-founder MkaaeMyTrip, the other co-founder is Hitesh Dhingra, who co-founded his earlier venture Letsbuy.com which was sold to Flipkart in 2012 for reported $25 million. The third co-founder in the company is Rahul Kumar, who has earlier been associated with Expedia, Oracle, and MakeMyTrip.

Sachin Bhatia, CEO and Co-Founder, TrulyMadly said, "since we are building a social network of sorts, the brand needs to grow virally and therefore we will be investing in developing original, sharable content. We will also be investing heavily in bolstering our product and tech team. We plan to grow to five million users by next year and sustain our leadership position in the dating and match-making space."

Online dating is finally finding mainstream acceptance in India. Last month, matrimonial portal Shaadi.com owner People Group has acquired about 25% stake in dating applications maker Thrill in a cash and stock deal valued at close to $1 million (about Rs 6 crore 13 lakhs).