Fandom Platform Fanon Raises $1 Mn in a Pre-seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital and Gruhas

Fanon, a platform built exclusively for fandom storytelling and discussion, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding in a round co-led by Kalaari Capital and Gruhas. The round marks Fanon’s first institutional fundraise as the company looks to scale its presence globally.

Founded by lifelong fans, Fanon was built around a simple idea: fandom today is fragmented across too many platforms. Fans move between Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, Webtoons, DeviantArt, and YouTube to consume theories, fanfiction, art, discussion and memes. Fanon brings these behaviours together into a single platform where fans can explore alternate storylines through stories, comics, and videos and engage with others who share the same obsession.

Fandom and fanfiction-related content now drives over 500 billion views annually across major social platforms, signalling a shift from niche subculture to mainstream behaviour. Fanon has leaned into this shift by building dedicated spaces for fan-driven formats such as “Fix-Its,” where fans reimagine endings or rewrite story arcs from popular franchises. The platform currently hosts fan works across more than 250 fandoms, including Harry Potter, Hazbin Hotel, My Hero Academia, Marvel, The Lion King and Undertale.

The capital will be used to grow Fanon’s user base to over one million users across its apps and website, build monetization pathways for fan creators, and expand its team across product, marketing, and technology. The company is also investing in discovery and storytelling tools designed specifically for fandom-driven content.

Commenting on the fundraise, Jatin Nayak, Nesar Rao, and Arvindmani Satyanarayan, co-founders at Fanon said “Fandom is one of the most creative and underserved communities on the internet. Fans spend countless hours writing stories, drawing comics, and building alternate universes, yet they’ve never had a platform designed specifically for how they create and consume content. We’re building Fanon as the place we always wished existed where fandom is taken seriously, creativity is respected, and fans can finally find their people.”

Speaking on the investment, Vamshi Reddy, Partner, Kalaari Capital commented “Fanon is tapping into a cultural behaviour that already exists at massive scale. The team has shown strong product intuition by focusing on fandom-first storytelling and fan expression. With the explosion of creative tools and technology, fan creators will be able to make their own feature length films soon. We believe Fanon has the potential to become the default destination for fan-driven narratives globally.”

Fandom Founders

Abhijeet Pai, Co-Founder, Gruhas commented “Fanon is redefining what fandom can be — immersive, inclusive, and driven by the people who love it most. At a time when long-form storytelling is resurging and fans are seeking spaces that are safe, engaging, and supportive, Fanon brings communities together while empowering creators to tell the stories that matter. We’re thrilled to back a platform that builds a sustainable, global ecosystem for fan-driven content.”

Shobu Yarlagadda, CEO & Co-Founder, Arka Media Works added “Deepening the connection between fans and the Baahubali universe has always been a priority for us at Arka. Through our collaboration with Fanon, we’re empowering audiences to reimagine the saga and stay meaningfully engaged with the characters they know and love.”

Fanon’s user base today is largely Gen Z, with a strong female audience between the ages of 15 and 25. The platform has grown to over 125,000 users, with a large percentage of users based in the United States, Canada, the UK and Europe . The top ten stories on the platform have collectively crossed 1.5 million views, with users spending an average of 20 minutes daily on Fanon.

In the past, Fanon has also partnered with Arka Media Works, the studio behind the Baahubali franchise. The collaboration allowed fans to officially create and monetize alternate storylines using Baahubali characters, giving them the opportunity to rewrite the saga and participate in the franchise’s extended universe.

As Fanon scales, the company aims to deepen its relationship with both fans and IP holders, while staying focused on its long-term vision: enabling every fan - no matter how niche their obsession - to find their fandom.
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Voice AI Startup, SuperBryn Secures $1.2M in a Pre-seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital’s CXXO Initiative

Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy (Left) and Nikkitha Shanker (Right)

• With this funding and selection for the Mphasis Sparkle Innovation Program (US) via Nasscom InnoTrek 2025, SuperBryn will fast-track its Evals, Observability & Self-Learning layer to drive the next era of reliable enterprise voice AI.

SuperBryn, the Evals, Observability, and Self-Learning layer for enterprise voice AI, has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Kalaari Capital CXXO Initiative, with participation from angel investors including Rikant Pitti (Co-founder, EaseMyTrip), Arjun Pillai (Founder, Docket AI), Sharath Keshava Narayanan (Founder, Sanas AI), Harish Manian (Group CEO, BMH), and Nivin Pauly (Leading South Indian Actor).

The funding will accelerate product development, expand engineering hiring, and deepen market validation with early enterprise customers across industries where dependable voice automation is now a strategic priority. Voice AI is a $47 billion market growing at 35% annually, but without a robust reliability infrastructure, much of this potential never reaches production, a gap SuperBryn is purpose-built to solve.

Commenting on the Fundraise, Nikkitha Shanker, Co-founder of SuperBryn, said: “Voice agents fail silently. An enterprise might have a million conversations a month, but they have no idea which ones went wrong, why the agent fumbled, or how to fix it without manually reviewing thousands of calls. We're building the layer that surfaces what's breaking, why it's breaking, and automatically makes the agent better, without human intervention. Monitoring and Evals is non-negotiable in industries like healthcare, finance, and insurance, where one failed conversation can mean a missed diagnosis, a compliance violation, or a claim that never gets processed."

Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy, Co-founder of SuperBryn, added: “After 14 years in speech and voice AI research, I’ve seen why voice agents fail in the wild. Most platforms test only for narrow conditions, not for the messy reality of human speech. SuperBryn exists to fix this. We’re building intelligent evaluation and feedback systems that ensure voice agents not only work on day one but keep improving every single day.”

Jayraj Bharat Patel, AVP, Kalaari Capital, said: “Voice AI is at an inflection point, enterprises are moving from experimentation to scaled deployment, but reliability remains the biggest bottleneck. SuperBryn will fill a critical missing layer with independent evaluation, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Nikkitha and Neethu have deep technical and 0-to-1 experience, and are extremely passionate about setting the reliability standard for voice AI globally. We are super excited to partner with them on this journey.

SuperBryn was founded nine months ago by Nikkitha Shanker, a second-time founder and NIT Calicut engineer, and Dr. Neethu Mariam Joy, a voice AI researcher with a PhD from IIT Madras and postdoctoral work at King’s College London. Founded by two women technologists from Kerala, SuperBryn emerged from a clear insight, voice agents excel in pilots but fail in production, especially with accents, noisy environments, multi-turn dialogue, and edge cases current platforms miss. Seeing the pattern, they set out to fix it by building the reliability layer that makes enterprise voice AI scalable.

Today, over 70% of pilots fail to reach production due to reliability issues in real-world environments. SuperBryn closes this gap enabling enterprises to move to production 20x faster and 10x cheaper, with early customers seeing resolution rates rise from under 40% to over 80% within 60 days.

These capabilities enable enterprises especially in healthcare, financial services, insurance, and other high-stakes environments to deploy voice AI with confidence and independent verification.From launch, the company is targeting global customers, with a strong early emphasis on the US market. SuperBryn’s selection as one of five startups for Nasscom's InnoTrek USA 2025 and its induction into the Mphasis Sparkle Innovation Program USA provide it with direct access to global enterprise clients, and the company is already working with US-based customers. SuperBryn’s long-term vision is to become the independent watchdog and reliability standard for enterprise AI agents, ensuring that voice AI systems meet the same monitoring, compliance, and reliability expectations as modern cloud infrastructure.

Audit SaaS Startup AuditCue Emerges from Stealth Mode; Raises $1.5 Mn in Seed Round Led By Kalaari Capital

• Round also saw participation from Java Capital & SF based angels
• Funds raised will be used for building the product and expanding the GTM & Engineering team
• Aims to expand in primary geographic markets of North America, India & EU
• AuditCue is a SaaS product that reimagines how risks, controls & audits work together. It removes friction from audits and empowers auditors & auditees through the entire lifecycle of risk & audit programs

Chennai-based AuditCue, an audit & risk SaaS startup, has raised $1.5 Million in a seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital. Other investors who participated include Java Capital and angel investors from San Francisco. The capital infusion will be allocated towards product development, accelerating the go-to-market strategy, and growing the engineering team

Founded in 2022 by Gaurav Kulkarni and Naren Janakiraman, AuditCue calibrates, guides and streamlines all actions that are a part of an audit lifecycle. AuditCue transforms the risk & audit experience for auditors & auditees both. The startup elevates customers’ audit & risk programs, speeds up audit cycles and improves process resiliency without compromising on agility. The elegant, simple & intuitive UX paired with its flexible and modular platform is what sets AuditCue apart from legacy solutions and market incumbents.

Gaurav Kulkarni, Co-founder & CEO, Auditcue says, “AuditCue is built for CISOs in regulated markets who keep pace with multiple compliance regimes. Unlike legacy solutions or automation products, AuditCue removes friction from audits and empowers auditors & auditees through the entire lifecycle of risk & audit programs. We are transforming the risk & audit experience for our customers to make audits seamless. With this funding round, we aim to expand further into our primary geographic markets of North America, India & EU.”

Vani Kola, Founder & Managing Director, Kalaari Capital, says “The $120B global audit and GRC market is ripe for disruption with new-age tools. The founding team brings complementary skills and we are excited to back their vision.”

AuditCue has been in stealth mode until now, working with industry experts & advisors to reimagine how risks, audits & controls work together. With this round, the company is gearing up to open up access to their solution for companies that are looking for a better way to manage risks & compliance.

Companies understand the importance of a risk & audit program but most still struggle to find the right solution to implement. Legacy solutions add more complexity to processes instead of simplifying them for companies, whereas other incumbents try a one-size-fits-all approach. But companies need a tailored approach to risk and a solution flexible enough to address their unique challenges and needs, and that’s what AuditCue is building.

About AuditCue

AuditCue’s mission is to transform the risk & audit experience for auditors & auditees both. Our SaaS solution elevates our customers’ audit & risk programs, speeds up audit cycles and improves process resiliency without compromises on agility. The elegant, simple & intuitive UX paired with its flexible and modular platform is what sets AuditCue apart from legacy solutions and market incumbents. For more details about AuditCue and our transformative GRC platform, please visit www.auditcue.com.

Kalaari Capital backed Edtech AlmaBetter Allocates Rs 50 Cr Fund, Launches AlmaBetter Innovarsity

• Has affiliated with Woolf, USA, a global collegiate institution
• Will equip 5,000 learners with a master’s degree by April 2024
• Marks AlmaBetter’s entry into the postgraduate education space with the aim to meet growing demand for tech professionals

Kalaari Capital-backed ed-tech institute AlmaBetter allocates funds of Rs. 50 cr with the launch of AlmaBetter Innovarsity, an innovative autonomous institute that offers niche technical education in Data Science and AI, and Software Development fields.

AlmaBetter Innovarsity has affiliated with Woolf, USA, a global collegiate higher education institution with the same accreditation as other EU universities. The Innovarsity will equip 5,000 learners with a globally recognized master’s degree in Computer Science, by April 2024. The company said a portion of the Rs 50 crore fund will go towards scholarships based on merit, financial aid, and improving students’ overall learning experience.

The curriculum has been designed by the best minds from academia and the industry, keeping in mind the evolving industry needs. On program completion, learners will be credited with 90 ECTS credits, making AlmaBetter’s master's degree in Computer Science equivalent to an MS from any US or EU institution.

AlmaBetter Innovarsity’s postgraduate programs come with a placement assurance with their network of 700+ hiring partners. The institute will offer the master’s degree in CS with an option of four specialisations, including Data Science and Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Software Engineering, and Cloud Computing. These are 15-month programs that will propel learners toward high-growth careers in the tech domain.

The master’s degree programs are relevant for working professionals who want to switch into a rewarding tech career, as well as for recent graduates who are looking to venture into niche tech roles. The programs will allow learners enrolled with AlmaBetter Innovarsity to explore employment opportunities in India, the US, Europe, Canada and over 60 other countries.

This strategic partnership with Woolf marks AlmaBetter’s entry into the postgraduate education space in India. According to a recent report by Nasscom, in the upcoming financial year alone, the new-age tech industry is predicted to add about 3 lakh employees to its credit, taking the total tally of employees to almost 5.4 million. Addressing this opportunity, Shivam Dutta, Co-founder & CEO, said, ”Since the inception of AlmaBetter in 2020, the company’s mission has been resolute to empower capable and young tech minds across the country with the right skills so that they can build high-growth tech careers and contribute to the country's tech advancements.

“The goal for Woolf has always been to make quality education accessible to learners from across the world. As a part of the Woolf ecosystem, AlmaBetter is aiding tech enthusiasts and learners to become the skilled workforce that today’s tech industry requires”, said Joshua Broggi, Founder and Head of Institution at Woolf. Woolf boasts of an exemplary Academic Advisory Council, which features prominent academics, including Pramath Raj Sinha, Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business and Founder of Ashoka University.

Over the past three years, AlmaBetter has placed over 3,000 learners in niche Data Science and Software Development roles with an impressive placement rate of 92%. Their network of hiring partners include industry giants such as KPMG, HDFC, Myntra, Blenheim Chalcot India, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and many more.

About AlmaBetter

AlmaBetter is one of India’s leading AI-driven tech upskilling institutes to build modern-day technology careers. Incepted in 2020 by 5 IIT-educated founders, the company challenges the traditional way of education by focussing on outcome-based learning powered by AI, called “Competency-based Learning”.

The company is backed by Kalaari Capital and 15+ angel investors, including founders of marquee technology companies that include Vidit Aatrey (CEO, Meesho), Sanjeev Barnwal (CTO, Meesho), Rajesh Yabaji (CEO, Blackbuck), Varun Alagh (CEO, Mamaearth), and Rahul Dalmia (Early backer in Polygon Technology), and is bridging the much needed skill gap between industry needs and the tech workforce. With a record of more than 70% of learners getting an offer even before the completion of their program, AlmaBetter aims to establish itself as a significant contributor to the tech industry by continuously adding skilled tech workforce to the country’s talent pool.

The institute offers programs in niche fields such as Data Science and Software Development, which come with placement assurance for the learners, making the education risk-free. The learners are edified by instructors and mentors hailing from premier institutions and Fortune 500 companies. With industry-approved design of the curriculum, innovative and easy-to-grasp methods involving experiments, gamification, and capstone industry projects, the institute nurtures learners to stay at the top of their game, thereby ensuring optimal learning and career outcomes.

Studio Sirah Raises $2.6 Mn in Pre-Series A Round Led by Kalaari Capital and Lumikai

The studio will globally launch its flagship gaming title Kurukshetra: Ascension, and build out additional original IP based strategy and mid-core games leveraging Indian culture and lore

Studio Sirah, a next-gen game studio that builds unique Indian-themed games, announced today that it raised $2.6 million in a Pre-series A round led by Kalaari Capital (an early-stage, technology-focused VC firm), and its seed investor, Lumikai (India’s pioneering gaming, and interactive media focused VC fund). The company plans to utilise the funds to globally launch its flagship gaming title, Kurukshetra: Ascension, by June 2023. In addition, the funds will also help to build out their second title, which will go even further in terms of ambition and scope.

Kurukshetra: Ascension is a free-to-play card battler, themed on India's two great epics - the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Players don the roles of ancient legends such as Arjuna and Sugriva, collect divine Astras and mythical creatures (from Apsaras to Daityas), and battle it out to the top in thrilling online duels. The studio is now adding in an expansive story mode (Ascension) - a grand tale of warring gods, conflicting philosophy, and the nature of Dharma itself, where player choices determine the fate of the universe.

Expressing his views on the fundraise, Abhaas Shah, Co-founder & CEO, Studio Sirah said, "Over the last year, we have worked hard to build a mid-core gaming studio from scratch, and launched a game which has both cultural resonance and global quality. The response has been amazing, both in India and abroad, and it is evident that there is a huge (and growing) market for uniquely Indian content. We are deeply grateful to Kalaari for joining us in this journey, and to Lumikai, for believing in our vision from the very beginning. Over the coming decades, we hope to not only entertain Indian gamers, but to take a slice of India to the world at large."

With over 120K organic downloads in beta, Kurukshetra-Ascension is available in early access on Play Store and Steam. A dedicated follower base on Instagram and a close-knit Discord community that has helped build and test the game from its MVP days reveals a growing appetite for India-based gaming content. Their current user base is deeply engaged, with a DAU/ MAU ratio exceeding 20% and average session times of over 25 min.

Commenting on the investment Vamshi Krishna Reddy, Partner at Kalaari Capital
said, “The Midcore genre like CCGs has done well globally, including China and Japan – but is severely under-penetrated in the Indian market. There is immense potential for more core IPs to come out of India. When we first met Abhaas and Prateek, we were in awe of the passion with which they were building Kurukshetra and saw a clear whitespace. With stellar artwork and innovative gameplay – Kurukshetra has already garnered a lot of appreciation from users and we are excited with what lies ahead."

Commenting on the investment Justin Shriram Keeling, Founding General Partner, Lumikai said, “We’re immensely proud of Abhaas and Prateek for building such a high quality midcore game studio over the last year. Kurukshetra Ascension has been lighting up the community and is widely anticipated ahead of its full release next quarter. Our recently published ‘India State of Gaming 2022 survey indicates that 80% of players have a strong tendency to play games with Indian IP., and we believe that games with culturally resonsant themes have the potential to significantly disrupt the Indian gaming market – especially in the midcore category. We’re excited to see Studio Sirah evolve to the next stage in their vision to create world-class IPs with culturally resonant content.”

Kurukshetra: Ascension is the first title from a team of two brothers, Abhaas Shah and Prateek Shah, avid gamers with strong technical backgrounds. They aim to build a new white space in the gaming industry with their rich Indian themed IPs that are gaining huge popularity across the globe. Prior to this, Studio Sirah had raised $830,000 in September, 2021 in its Seed round led by Lumikai and a pool of renowned angels such as Akshat Rathee (founder, Nodwin Games), Alexis Bonte (chief operating officer, Stillfront Games), Piyush Shah (cofounder, Inmobi), Roshni Rathi (partner, BCG), and Sameer Pitalwalla (Head Of Gaming, Google Cloud).

About Studio Sirah:

Studio Sirah builds mid-core games with a uniquely Indian flavour, for mobile and PC. Their games tap into India's rich lore, while making it accessible to a contemporary audience through stunning visuals and deep, engaging gameplay. The company aims to tap into the ever evolving Indian Gaming ecosystem with their rich Indian themed IPs. Studio Sirah envisions to be ‘India’s Biggest Global Entertainment Export.’
www.studiosirah.com

About Kalaari Capital:

Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based out of Bengaluru, India. Since 2006, Kalaari has empowered visionary entrepreneurs building unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact. The firm’s ethos is to partner early with founders and work with them to navigate the inevitable challenges of fostering ideas into successful businesses. At its core, Kalaari believes in building long-term relationships based on trust, transparency, authenticity, and respect.
www.kalaari.com

About Lumikai:

Lumikai is India’s first dedicated games and interactive media VC. The fund is building a next-generation tribe of India’s most forward-thinking, creative, and talented founders. The leadership team combines decades of strategic experience and sector knowledge while leveraging all-star local and global networks to help propel founders to success.

Lumikai has already backed some of India’s leading games companies including Bombay Play (building global hypersocial, cross-platform games), Loco (India’s leading game streaming platform), and Elo Elo (creator-led, social gaming, live streaming platform) amongst others. Lumikai is the lighthouse VC fund catalysing India’s “ripe for disruption” gaming & interactive media industries.
www.lumikai.com

Innovative Battery Tech Startup Clean Electric Raises $2.2 Mn Led by Kalaari Capital

Team of Clean Electric

Clean Electric, an innovative energy storage solutions start-up, has raised $2.2M in a seed round led by Kalaari Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Bengaluru.

The round also saw participation from Climate Angels, LV Fund, 7Square Ventures, and CIIE Regional Innovation Foundation. Clean Electric’s proprietary battery technology seeks to address pressing safety & performance issues for EVs like battery fires, long charging times and frequent battery replacement.

With the funding received, Clean Electric plans to set up a manufacturing facility in Pune to produce 5,000 battery packs per month.

Founded in 2020, Clean Electric manufactures, designs, develops, markets, supplies and provides after-sales of advance energy storage solutions for mobility & stationary storage applications as well as related energy infrastructure & services. The company has built liquid-cooled battery solutions for 2 Wheelers, 3 Wheelers, and Battery Swapping applications.

The company’s products have been in pilot testing with multiple vehicle OEMs across the country, having undergone more than 30,000 Kms of on-road testing. Compliant with AIS-156 Phase 2 guidelines (to be implemented from March 2023), the products are expected to be ready for certification tests before year-end.

Clean Electric also plans to use the funds towards expanding its R&D, sales, & operations teams, as well as for developing new products around Faster Charging, Renewable Energy Storage, and Battery Swapping.

Overall, EV penetration is less than 2%. In order to transition to an all-electric future, India needs robust electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. Current EVs take 3-4 hours to charge making it inconvenient for users, while unpredictable battery life makes it difficult for the NBFCs & Banks to finance these vehicles. On top of this, multiple reputed EV OEMs vehicles’ catching fire & resulting casualties have eroded the confidence of customers and created safety concerns in their mind.

Clean Electric’s proprietary battery technology seeks to address pressing safety & performance issues for EVs like battery fires, long charging times and frequent battery replacement. With the funding received, Clean Electric plans to set up a manufacturing facility in Pune to produce 5,000 battery packs per month.

Overall, EV penetration is less than 2%. In order to transition to an all-electric future, India needs robust electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. Current EVs take 3-4 hours to charge making it inconvenient for users, while unpredictable battery life makes it difficult for the NBFCs & Banks to finance these vehicles. On top of this, multiple reputed EV OEMs vehicles’ catching fire & resulting casualties have eroded the confidence of customers and created safety concerns in their mind.

“Our aim is to enable Mankind’s shift from Fossil Fuels, and batteries have been the hardest part of this transformation. By providing dependable, safe, and performant Energy Storage Solutions, we believe we can add immense value to the EV and RE ecosystems” said Abhinav Roy, Co-Founder, and CTO at Clean Electric.

“India’s EV solutions will become global postulates. Next decade is going to witness the surge of EVs, expected to grow from the current ~1.4M to ~50M by 2030. India’s expectations of efficiency, performance, and safety of batteries under diverse and extreme constraints ranging from terrain to climate will seed global innovation. Clean Electric’s direct liquid cooled battery packs will become the benchmark, offering the highest safety while maximizing its life and efficiency. IITians Akash and Abhinav have invented zero kelvin packs which have the potential to meet growing needs of today and future.” said Ravinder Singh, Partner at Kalaari Capital.

“Clean Electric is delivering on the much-needed innovation in battery technology suitable for India. The patents the team has filed introduce direct liquid cooling technology wherein the cells of the battery are 100% in contact with a coolant which ensures maximum safety (fireproof), 25-minute charging and a 1.5x longer life span. Their solutions can also be exported to several countries in the global south that are dealing with similar issues around EV safety and performance, ” said Sumeet Singh, Partner at Climate Angels.

Clean Electric is engaged inter alia, in the business of manufacturing, designing, development, marketing, supply and after-sales of advance energy storage solutions for mobility & stationary storage application and related energy infrastructure & services to accelerate mass electric vehicle usage.

Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based out of Bengaluru, India. Since 2006, Kalaari has empowered visionary entrepreneurs building unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact. The firm’s ethos is to partner early with founders and work with them to navigate the inevitable challenges of fostering ideas into successful businesses. At its core, Kalaari believes in building long-term relationships based on trust, transparency, authenticity, and respect.

Climate Angels is SEBI Cat-1 Angel AIF that invests only in early-stage pollution reduction & climate tech startups. Leading tech entrepreneurs & investors are now making climate investments through us. Some of our marquee LPs includes Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Nipun Sahni (Apollo Global), Praveen Gandhi (Seedfund), Paula Mariwala (Aureolis Ventures) Phanindra Sama (Redbus Founder), Shailesh Vickram Singh (Massive), among 100+ others.

Peer Robotics Announces $2.3 Mn in Seed Funding Led by Kalaari Capital

Robotic Technology Empowers Manufacturers with a Human-Centric Focus

Peer Robotics, an exciting new mobile robotics solution transforming manufacturing, today announced that it has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from existing investors Axilor Ventures, Connecticut Innoviti दसons and Innopact VC.

“Manufacturers regularly deal with lots of repetitive, labor-intensive tasks that are great candidates for automation,” said Rishabh Agarwal, Co-Founder, and CEO of Peer Robotics. “Small and medium-size companies are struggling with the labor shortage today, not to mention high turn-over. Also, many operations are still manual with employees operating at a high risk of injuries and fatigue. Solutions to date have been too expensive and complex,” he added.

Peer Robotics is designed to work with humans; mirroring workflows in manufacturing operations on repetitive tasks; saving time, increasing efficiencies, and reducing injuries. The company’s robots learn from humans in real-time allowing people on the shop floor to easily integrate and deploy solutions alongside them with a flexible design, out of box deployment and low maintenance.

While any operation with repetitive tasks is a candidate, common industries include Automotive, aerospace, fabrication and machining, and home appliance and tooling. Typical tasks include warehouse to shop floor; kitting for assembly; and assembly line delivery – all repetitive, labor-intensive tasks that can be handled by a robot leaving more cognitive tasks to employees.

Peer Robotics is part of STANLEY+Techstars Accelerator program portfolio. The robot technology has been in research and development for the past year at several manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and India.

“Cyber physical systems are ushering a new era where collaborative robots with contextual intelligence, low implementation time, and negligible integration cost will lead industrialization in every sector.” said Ravinder Pal Singh, Partner, Kalaari Capital. “Peer Robotics’ navigation module and heuristic feedback-based learning, offers manufacturers the next generation of smart, content driven and affordable robotic platforms,” he added.

For more information about Peer Robotics and a demo, visit www.peerrobotics.ai.

About PeerROBOTICS

Peer Robotics is a new mobile robotics solution designed to work with humans; mirroring workflows in manufacturing operations on repetitive tasks; saving time, increasing efficiencies, and reducing injuries. The company’s robots learn from humans in real-time allowing people on the shop floor to easily integrate and deploy solutions alongside them a flexible design, out of box deployment and low maintenance. For more information and a demo, visit www.peerrobotics.ai.

About Kalaari Capital

Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based out of Bengaluru, India. Since 2006, Kalaari has empowered visionary entrepreneurs building unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact. The firm's ethos is to partner early with founders and work with them to navigate the inevitable challenges of fostering ideas into successful businesses. At its core, Kalaari believes in building long-term relationships based on trust, transparency, authenticity, and respect.

Deconstruct Skincare Raises $2 Mn in Seed Funding Led by Kalaari Capital

• Deconstruct is disrupting the 20-billion-dollar beauty and personal care market in India by primarily focusing on science-based skincare with research and innovation
• Betting big on “information over impulse”, the company is witnessing 25-30% month on month growth within 16 months of inception
• Deconstruct is the latest investment under CXXO - Kalaari's flagship programme

Deconstruct, a Bengaluru based start-up skincare brand, backed by science and unique formulations for result-oriented application, has secured USD 2 million in seed fund from Kalaari Capital’s flagship program CXXO and Beenext. Established with the objective of introducing transparent, solution-oriented and evidence-based skincare products, Deconstruct, also aims to increase awareness about the right formulations needed to address specific skincare concerns among women in India.

Malini Adapureddy

Founded in early 2021 by Malini Adapureddy, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and INSEAD, Deconstruct, has already achieved strong customer love for its products online by virtue of building a personal care brand for the knowledge economy. The brand’s philosophy and motto of ‘information over impulse’, is helping consumers understand product formulations and its impact on their skin, with a focused content strategy on social media to drive consumer education. The brand currently has 20 SKUs across face washes, moisturizers and serums.

Deconstruct aims to utilize the funding from Kalaari Capital for research and product development, innovation and expansion, hiring and marketing initiatives. In the next 12-18 months, the enterprise intends to increase its product range from 15 to 50 products, within skincare and adjacent categories, giving consumers greater choice, while also exploring presence in a few international markets such as UAE and some South East Asian markets. There are also plans to retail products on ‘quick commerce’ platforms such as Dunzo, Swiggy and Big Basket among others, expanding from existing distribution channels, which include all major e-commerce platforms as wells as Deconstruct’s own online platform. Deconstruct recently announced its foray into the Body Care segment with a range of gender-neutral body care products.

With 50% repeat rates, Deconstruct, within 16 months of inception, is growing at 25% -30% month-on-month and aims to become a 100-crore brand in the next 2 years. About 30% of the orders come in from the top 8 metros and 70% from the rest of India on its platform.

Deconstruct is the fifth portfolio company for Kalaari’s flagship program that seeks to level the playing field for women founders in India's start-up ecosystem. Developed on the three primary pillars of Capital, Community and Coaching, it helps female founder-CEOs take India’s startup ecosystem to the next level, as they shape India’s digital charter, creating exponential value in the economy.  Kalaari Capital has allocated US $10 million annually to fund 8-10 women entrepreneurs in the first cohort of CXXO. 

Speaking on the funding from Kalaari Capital’s CXXO, Malini Adapureddy, Founder and CEO of Deconstruct Skincare, said, “Kalaari came in from a very first principle thought process and undertook a detailed understanding of the business. This provided me immense confidence that they can be extremely valuable as partners who can go beyond capital. Kalaari has invested in multiple consumer businesses and has seen them scale and this will be of help as we go forward. Another impressive initiative that attracted me as a woman entrepreneur is the CXXO - for the inspirational and like-minded women that are a part and for the vision to help create a level playing field.”

Vamshi Reddy, Partner at Kalaari Capital, stated, “There is a paradigm shift in terms of consumer preferences with respect to beauty and personal care in the past few years. Annual per capita consumption of BPC products in India today is at $15 – we are only scratching the surface in terms of penetration. As consumers and their purchase behavior evolves, we believe there will be an opportunity for new age brands to capitalize on unique value propositions to build strong recall from consumers.

Deconstruct has a proven product market fit with evidence based skin care to educate customers around formulations and their impact. Strong customer love for the products, as well as capital-efficient growth makes us believe that the brand is poised to scale rapidly over the next few years.”

According to reports, BPC is a 20-billion-dollar market in India today with a 10% penetration online and the same is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 6.5% during the period, 2022-27, according to IMARC group.

About Deconstruct

With the motto of ‘Information over Impulse’, Deconstruct is a brand that aims to deliver well researched and high-quality skincare products to the consumer, while simultaneously educating consumers on what is good for their skin. The brand was founded by Malini Adapureddy, an engineer from IIT Kharagpur, who after spending years being exposed to deluding marketing tactics, decided it was time to launch a skincare brand that showcased efficacious results. Deconstruct sets itself apart by offering skincare products with unique formulations and actives, that are backed by science and designed to target specific skincare concerns. Since its inception, Deconstruct has received over $400K in funding from key investors such as Beenext, Binny Bansal, Abhishek Goyal, Hari TN and plans to foray further into multiple other skincare categories in the future.

About Kalaari Capital

Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based out of Bengaluru, India. Since 2006, Kalaari has empowered visionary entrepreneurs building unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact. The firm's ethos is to partner early with founders and work with them to navigate the inevitable challenges of fostering ideas into successful businesses. At its core, Kalaari believes in building long-term relationships based on trust, transparency, authenticity, and respect. 



About CXXO

Launched in 2021, CXXO is a Kalaari Capital backed initiative, to level the playing field for Indian female founder- CEOs. Developed on the three primary pillars of Capital, Community and Coaching, the CXXO community will help female founder-CEOs take India’s startup ecosystem to the next level, as they shape India’s digital charter, creating exponential value in the economy. Kalaari Capital has allocated US $10 million annually to fund 8-10 women entrepreneurs in the first cohort of CXXO

ClimateTech Startup Climes Raises $1.2 Mn in Its 1st Round of Funding Led by Sequoia Capital India and Kalaari Capital

Climes Founders

Climes is addressing the gargantuan climate finance problem which has been a huge obstacle in the fight against climate change

Partnered with brands such as MakeMyTrip, zingbus and TEDx

Climes, a ClimateTech company, announces its first round of funding of USD 1.2 million. The company is building an engine that accelerates the flow of fresh capital towards climate solutions by making it convenient for brands and individuals to take meaningful climate action.

Founded by Anirudh Gupta (ex-Airbus) and Siddhanth Jayaram (ex-Kalaari Capital), Climes unlocks an untapped source of capital, amidst an urgent need to finance climate action. While total commitments for climate finance have steadily increased over the last decade, the actual ‘flow’ of capital to meet internationally agreed climate objectives significantly lags required levels. This is as per the 2021 edition of the Global Landscape of Climate Finance. It goes on to say that an increase of at least 590% in annual climate finance is required to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. This is the problem that Climes takes head on.

The first round saw participation from Sequoia Capital India, Kalaari Capital, Nithin Kamath (Zerodha, Rainmatter), and Avaana Capital. Other notable participants in the round include Satyen Kothari (Cube Wealth) and Anshuman Bapna (Terra.do) from Stanford Angels, Keshav Reddy (Reddy Futures), and climate-tech founders Arjun Gupta (Smart Joules) & Akshay Singhal (Log9 Materials) among others.

On the announcement, Co-Founders, Anirudh & Siddhanth said “Finance is the single biggest lever to solve climate change. Fantastic projects and solutions for carbon mitigation exist all around us. However, the finance needed to scale these projects is simply not flowing fast enough. With this capital raise, Climes is i) building the necessary digital infrastructure to enable a big chunk of this money to flow transparently and ii) designing the right incentives for all market players to benefit. The delta of each rupee/dollar/euro that flows through Climes will have an outsized multiplier impact on global carbon mitigation.”

The Climes’ engine, at a macro-level, allows for a transparent flow of finance from where it is to where it needs to be. At a micro-level, it acts as the gateway for individuals and brands to take their first step towards climate action.

Climes’ mission is to reverse the effects of climate change by letting individuals take “climate action in a single click”. It is a first-of-its-kind climate start-up whose technology allows consumer-facing brands to go climate-positive in just a matter of hours. The tech-stack built by Climes integrates seamlessly into the checkout pages of everyday consumer brands.

With this, customers can neutralise emissions specific to their purchase or order. The emission calculations are based on accurate mathematical models, in line with global standards of carbon accounting. Next, they choose from a list of independently-certified (Verra, Gold Standard etc.) or rigorously verified climate solutions based in India. These solutions either remove atmospheric carbon by restoring green cover in degraded lands, or avoid additional emissions by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

This individual-led climate action is enabled by consumer brands. Partnering with Climes is the quickest way for brands to become climate-positive and kickstart their sustainability agenda with minimal effort. Some of the brands associated with Climes so far include TEDx, MakeMyTrip, Wedding Brigade and Zingbus. There are at least a dozen more in the pipeline.

Vani Kola, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital said “The rising awareness of the need for carbon neutral lifestyle and climate costs require urgent new solutions. Entrepreneurs offering solutions with climate-sensitiveness can create key differentiating propositions. Sid and Ani have lofty goals to bring climate awareness and action. Climes’ solution makes it possible for brands to embark on that transition by allowing customers to carbon-neutralise every transaction”

Adding to this, Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO, Zerodha & Rainmatter said “The ideal solution towards climate change problems is to reduce consumption which may not be possible at all times. Making people aware of their carbon footprint and then making it available to offset maybe a good mid-way path. We are excited to be a part of their journey and learn ourselves along the way.”

The company intends to use the capital on two fronts. One, deploy more integrations with brands in fashion, food, travel, beauty & personal care, and enable a pathway for brands to become climate leaders within their categories. And two, expand their tech-stack to swiftly onboard high-quality climate solutions within India, as well as to measure and report impact transparently.

According to the founders of Climes, any climate plan should follow a simple formula, devoid of current complexities - ‘Cut what you can, neutralise what you can’t.’ In other words, reduce avoidable emissions through climate-friendly operations, and neutralise unavoidable emissions, through platforms like Climes.

Virtual Assisted Selling Platform Convin.ai Raises Rs.16 Cr in Seed Round Led by Kalaari Capital

Convin, India’s leading AI-driven platform that reimagines virtual assisted selling for businesses, raises Rs. 16 crore in seed round led by Kalaari Capital

Good Capital, Plan B Innovations, Bharat Founders Fund & Digital Sparrow also participated.

Convin.ai, a leading AI-driven platform that reimagines virtual assisted selling for businesses, today announced that it has raised Rs. 16 crore in its seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital with participation from Good Capital, Plan B Innovations, Bharat Founders Fund, and Digital Sparrow.

Convin's platform provides businesses with powerful tools to solve key challenges–increase in conversion rates, sales process observability, conversational intelligence, and enhanced customer experience among others. Convin will utilize the funds to further hone its end-to-end assisted selling platform and expand product & GTM teams.

 

In his comments, Durgesh Choudhary, Co-founder & CPO, said, “Assisted selling will stay & become even more crucial for enabling better conversions & great customer experiences. This validation from leading investors is a huge vote of confidence in our goal of transforming the entire model of assisted selling for businesses & their customers through an all-in-one platform.”

Added, Bharat Patidar, Co-founder & COO of Convin, “We look forward to enabling more sales leaders to drive revenue and ensuring sales representatives fulfill their quota by effectively & efficiently engaging the customers in conversation."

According to Kiran Vasireddy, Partner, Kalaari Capital, “Disruptive events of the last 2 years have accelerated SalesTech adoption – remote virtual selling, distributed sales teams & an expanding array of digital customer touchpoints. AI’s progress and sales teams uncovering gaps in the current tech stack have led to the emergence of a new category of SalesTech. The founding team's deep technical expertise, product thinking clarity, and passion stood out for us. We’re excited to partner with Convin to build a SaaS business that makes sales & customer interactions efficient for organizations worldwide.”

About Convin.ai: Convin was founded in 2021 in Bengaluru by IIT Delhi alumni Ashish Santhalia (CEO), Bharat Patidar (COO), Atul Shree(CTO), and Durgesh Choudary (CPO). While working with industry leaders across BFSI, EdTech, Healthcare, Real estate, Travel & Hospitality domains, they witnessed first-hand the growing need for a holistic platform that allows customers to interact at multiple channels in different ways, automates conversation analysis, assists agents to sell better, improves agent productivity and enhances end-customer experiences. Convin has since helped global companies across  verticals with its’ platform to improve sales. It received pre-seed funding from Titan Capital and 9Unicorns back in June 2021.

Marketing SaaS Platform Zocket Raises Usd 3 Mn Led by Kalaari Capital

(L-R) Sundar, Mukund, Karthik and Nandha

SaaS platform for SMBs - full stack marketing platform

100+ SMBs are seeing 4x-6x return on ad spends

Addressing 400 Million+ SMBs globally

SaaS platform Zocket has raised USD 3M in their seed round of funding led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from Kettleborough VC. Zocket enables SMBs to promote their offerings at the click of a button across multiple digital platforms.

Founded in 2021 by second-time entrepreneurs - Karthik Venkateswaran, Nandha Kumar Ravi, Sundar Natesan, and Mukund Srivathsan - Zocket helps businesses launch their digital ads in less than 30 seconds. Their proprietary tech stack combines ~150 variables to generate the best ad copy, visual design, and platform for any SMB. The algorithm generates a real-time visualization of any business’ social profile based on business category, location, intended target audience profile, expected spend, and other such parameters.

Zocket’s beta version has garnered 5000+ users within a week of its launch. Initially, the product was given on an invite-only basis to over 100+ brands to run social media ads who have seen up to ~4x to 6x return on ad spends.

Zocket’s founders bring deep expertise in working with SMBs. They scaled GoBumpr to 10+ cities driving customer footfalls to over 5000+ small automobile workshops. GoBumpr was acquired 100% by a large traditional automobile after-market player in 2021.

Karthik Venkateswaran, Co-Founder & CEO of Zocket, said, "Consumer-facing small businesses in India have been heavily reliant on online classifieds for digital discovery. With social becoming the new identity, most businesses want to have their own online presence on Facebook, Instagram & other media. This is where Zocket comes in to help these small businesses instantly create their social presence and build their brand online."

The company plans to use the proceeds to expand its product offering, improve brand building, bolster its team and launch its full-fledged AdTech solution to the SMBs.

Vani Kola, Managing Director of Kalaari Capital, said, "We believe the next big disruption in SMB Tech adoption will be in the digital discovery layer as business owners move up the digital hierarchy stack. We are extremely delighted to partner with Zocket as they build an end-to-end tech platform for global SMBs that help these businesses generate instant content, publish across different platforms, and optimize ad spending for the highest ROI."

Targeting India first, Zocket is envisioning to take their solution to the global SMBs and capture a large chunk of the $700Bn+ global ad spend market. There are approximately 400Mn SMBs globally, and AdTech solutions shall be at the cusp of digital disruption in all aspects for these businesses.

Gaming Company Atirath Raises Funding from Kalaari Capital

(L-R) Shiva and Raju

Game development company Atirath has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Kalaari Capital. Atirath develops games in casual and strategy genre bringing unique sub-continent cultural elements with global appeal. The funds will be used for strengthening products to evolve and develop the economic model of game metaverse and for team expansion.

India is among the top five mobile gaming markets in the world. High internet penetration rate, mobile first phenomena and low cost of internet play are key factors driving this growth. Today, mobile gaming is a $2.2B market in India, poised to reach $7B by 2025 growing at an astounding CAGR of 40%. An average Indian consumes over 8.5 hours of gaming content per week.

Atirath was founded in mid 2020 by Shiva Bayyapunedi & Ramachandra Raju who worked together at Apalya Technologies that Shiva founded and was later acquired. Both come with strong tech and business operations backgrounds. Their vision is to create game metaverse with geographic, economic, and social experience in strategy genre connecting players, content creators and game publishers.

Shiva Bayyapunedi, Co-founder, Atirath, said, “We are at an exciting stage in gaming world where new business models are evolving from game as a service to game as a platform model. As the model evolves, we see a lot of innovation happening in a centralized and decentralized metaverse world. Business models like Play-to-earn, Play-to-collect models with technology innovation in blockchain based solutions in NFT/FT will fuel phenomenal growth. Players are no longer passive and new platforms will be enabling them to contribute and monetize from the success of games. We are building game metaverse in strategy genre with Indian mythology theme with unique game play features.”.

Vamshi Reddy, Partner at Kalaari Capital, commented, “ While RMG and Casual Games have continued to do well, we are excited by the immense potential of the upcoming models in Gaming. We will see new forms of monetization layers coming up, especially with the onset of Play2Earn and the amalgamation of NFTs and Crypto in Gaming. Mythological games like God Of War and Assassin’s Creed have worked out very well across the world, selling over 200 million copies and we think the Indian Mythology is still an untapped opportunity since the rich history of India offers a high possibility of a hit global IP being built out of here. This aligned with NFT gameplay is a huge opportunity to create an immersive experience. We are excited to be a part of this journey with Atirath in creating the metaverse of Indian mythology experience.”

Atirath Gaming Technologies currently has a team size of 15 members based out of Hyderabad developing casual/strategy genre based gaming metaverse platform.

Next-Gen Community Investing Platform Threedots Raises $4 Mn Led by Kalaari Capital

(L-R) Prakhar Bhardwaj, Rishu Garg and Akul Agarwal

Founded by ex Groww employees

Onboarded 100+ market experts and partnerships with Groww, Coindcx and Finshots

Tapping a $30B combined stocks and crypto market

threedots, the fast-growing next-gen community investing platform has raised USD 4 million in seed round of funding led by Kalaari Capital. Other investors include Better Capital, iSeed, Cloud capital, Kunal Shah (Cred), Lalit Keshre (Groww), Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter), Amrish and Sweta Rau (Pine labs), Ramakant Sharma (Livspace), Rohit MA (cloud9), Giri Malpani (Malpani Family), Mohit Daga and others. The funds will be used for strengthening the product and expanding the team.

It has become easy to start investing. However, a large number of people including millennials are confused and clueless about making investing decisions. The lay person doesn’t have the access to institutional-level expertise & resources, unlike mature investors. They end-up losing hard-earned money, due to a lack of right guidance, resources & wrong expectations. Youngsters who are first-time investors lack a connected community where they can discuss investing and the markets with like-minded folks and keep themselves updated with the trends.

The market is rapidly expanding with over 14M Demat accounts in FY 2021 vs 4.9M in FY20. Currently, only 3% of Indians invest in the capital market which is poised to reach 15% by 2030 as compared to 55% in the US.

threedots has been designed and created by a team with deep backgrounds in the fin-tech space, keeping the user at the core - with utmost importance given to their expectations. The app offers users a daily dose of financial news and a finance centric community apart from stock investing. It provides a platform for members to leverage the knowledge & experience of stock/crypto market experts. It bridges the gap between market experts and users, which helps users to make quality decisions.

threedots has already onboarded 100+ market experts who guide users in their community as well as partnerships with Groww, Coindcx, and Finshots. Its key differentiators are - Just in time & on-demand relevant information availability; experts led investing communities, interests, and cultures; app designed with a focus on real needs & problems of the masses.

threedots was founded in March 2021 by Rishu Garg, Prakhar Bhardwaj and Akul Agarwal who are BITS Pilani alumni and have worked together at Groww. The founders have experience in product and scaling with backgrounds in working with companies like Cleartax and Small case.

Rishu Garg, Co-founder, threedots, said, “Our vision is to make threedots the next-gen community investment platform where people can learn, discuss & invest all at one place. Our goal is to shape and empower the investment ecosystem in India. We want to change the financial life of the next 100 mn users in India who will be using financial services for the first time and help them create wealth. At threedots, we always practice & believe in hyper trust - within our users & our team, which was missing in the industry for so long."

Kiran Vasireddy, Partner at Kalaari Capital, Ex-COO Paytm, commented, "We are excited to partner with Rishu, Prakhar, and Akul as they are building a social investing platform for the new generation of investors in India. Equity investments in India are expected to witness strong growth backed by the increased information access brought by platforms going digital. With current penetration only at 5%, there is a huge opportunity for a platform to help millennials come and learn from financial influencers the art of investing. We are impressed with Rishu and the team's strong experience in building consumer internet products and excited to partner with them in their journey as they build threedots for the world.”

threedots has a team of 30 and expects to be 50-strong in the next few months. Its home-grown app is available on Android and ios.

There are 200 million people with investable income in India, but only 30 million investors. The only way to bring the next 170 million on board is by making investing simple. threedots aims to play a leading role in making it easier for the next generation.

Vernacular E-Sports platform WinZO Raises $5 Mn from Kalaari, Hike, Others

WinZO, India’s largest vernacular e-sports platform, raised $5MN in Series A early this year. The funding was led by Kalaari Capital and Hike, India's homegrown tech unicorn.

“WinZO’s team has achieved a strong product market fit and is all set to disrupt the vernacular entertainment space. We led company’s seed round early last year, and are highly impressed with the team’s growth trajectory and strong execution.” added Rahul Garg, Principal - Kalaari Capital.

Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO, Hike, "Gaming to us has always been a new, bite-sized source of entertainment for the masses. As we unbundle Hike, we think of our investment in WinZO and its stellar team as a strong bet in the segment. WinZO’s deep understanding of the market has enabled them to build a unique product in this space and we’re excited to partner with them in their next phase of growth."

The funding came within a few days after WinZO announced a $1.5Mn fund to support game developers and acquire content for the platform.

Founded by Paavan Nanda and Saumya Singh Rathore, WinZO is a vernacular esports gaming platform that is competitive, inclusive, and for everyone. The games on the platform provide bite-sized action in multiplayer or player vs player format, taking esports and social gaming experience to the vernacular Bharat. WinZO is a series A funded venture and is Kalaari’s second biggest bet in the gaming category after Dream11.

Since its inception, WinZO has gone on to have more than 7 Million registered users across Tier 2/3/4/5 cities. Average Users are currently spending more than 55 minutes inside the app every day. With strong signs of stickiness, the top 20% of the users are already spending 60% of their smartphone usage time on the platform. WinZO currently accounts for 38% of their monthly entertainment budget, popular games on the platform include Carrom, Cricket, Pocket Tank, Fruit Samurai, etc.

“WinZO’s social multi-player skill gaming platform is a one stop entertainment destination for Bharat. We have been receiving phenomenal traction, and are very excited to emerge as India’s most loved household brand for the next 100MM users.” said Paavan Nanda, Co-Founder, WinZO

WinZO is India’s largest e-sports vernacular gaming platform with monetary benefits and is available in 10 languages. It gives users an opportunity to win real money for playing and winning these Games of Skill. The platform offers nearly 30+ games across multiple formats viz Tournament, Versus Mode and Table Format. On a single platform users, can play all popular games such as Carrom, Cricket, 8 Ball Pool, Sniper 3D, Bubble Shooter, Fruit Samurai, Knife Up, Fantasy League, and Trivia based questions. These games are acquired from developers and studios from across the world. WinZO is designed to solve for a stable monetization in the Indian Gaming ecosystem, which experiences one of the highest engagements globally with 300MM internet users spending 45 minutes daily playing games on their smartphones.

Paavan is a graduate from IIM Calcutta and was a Co-Founder of ZO Rooms/ Zostel. While Saumya did her Masters in Consumer Psychology, had led Growth for the Television Business of the Times Group and ZO Rooms earlier.

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

Social Commerce Platform Shop101 Raises Fresh ₹80 Crore from Kalaari, Unilever Ventures

Mumbai based Shop101, a social commerce platform that enables entrepreneurs to sell on WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram with zero investment, has raised Rs 80 crore (~ US$ 11 million) in Series B funding from Kalaari Capital and Unilever Ventures.

Existing investors, Stellaris Venture Partners, Vy Capital, and Livspace cofounder Ramakant Sharma also participated in the round.

The fresh funding comes in less than five months after the startup had raised $5 million in Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Vy Capital. To date, Shop101 has raised a total of $5.2 millioon in funding over two rounds including this one.

The startup will use the fresh funds to strengthen its core leadership and product team, scale the supplier network and enhance the technology platform, Abhinav Jain, Founder & CEO, Shop101.

Notably, just last month an another "Whatsapp/Facebook" based social commerce platform called 'Meesho' had raised $50 million in a Series C funding round from Shunwei Capital, DST Partners and RPS Ventures. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Meesho has raised a total of about $65 million in fundings and out of this $61.5 million have been raised in this year alone.

Shop101 enables reselling from a wide range of supply of products along with providing a technology platform to setup online stores integrated with a pan-India fulfillment network.

Founded in 2015, by IIT Kanpur alumni Abhinav Jain and Aditya Gupta, Shop101 helps small merchants sell to customers on social media platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. It has an online store with an inbuilt order-processing system. It also has a marketplace that helps small sellers procure supplies from distributors and manufacturers at the best price, further enabling micro-entrepreneurship.

“Social media as commerce platforms have the ability to disrupt traditional e-commerce players by offering personalised shopping experiences. Given India’s diverse population, social commerce will be the next great opportunity to reach new internet consumers,” said Vani Kola, managing director of Kalaari Capital.

"The Social Selling platform is tapping the large Indian e-commerce market potential beyond Metro cities. The model and unique technology empowers individuals across the country to become entrepreneurs. We believe Shop101 is well placed to grow this market" said Pawan Chaturvedi, Investment Director, Unilever Ventures.

[Top Image - Entrackr.com]

Source - Economic Times - ETTech

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

Ola-owned Foodpanda Acquires Shut Down Foodtech Firm Holachef

Foodpanda, the Ola-owned online food ordering and delivery startup, has acquired Mumbai-based foodtech startup Holachef Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, which had shut down operations in July-August this year, for an undisclosed amount.

Foodpanda will take over Holachef’s employees and kitchen equipments. Founders of Holachef, Anil Gelra, Gaurav Srivastava and Saurabh Saxena, will join the leadership team at Foodpanda.

The acquisition however is believed to bring bring no returns to its investors of Holachef, which include InnoVen Capital, Kalaari Capital, India Quotient, SIDBI Venture Capital and Ratan Tata. Holachef raised a total of $9.6 million in funding over eight rounds since 2015. The last funding raised by Holachef was in February this year when it raised Rs.20 lakhs in Series B round.

A media report in Augst has suggested that Kalaari Capital and India Quotient had already resigned from the board of directors of HolaChef earlier this year.

HolaChef acquisition comes within two months after Mumbai-based on demand delivery firm Scootsy was acquired by food delivery firm Swiggy, which is Foodpanda's biggest rival in India besides Zomato.

Notably, Holachef is Ola’s second acquisition within a year, since it had bought Foodpanda from Germany’s Delivery Hero in December last year.

HOlaChef was founded in 2015 by Saurabh Saxena, Anil Gelra and Gaurav Srivastava. Essentially, HolaChef used to curates chefs ranging from executive chefs to amateurs and allows them creative freedom through their signature dishes. Before shutting its operation three months back, the company was managing the logistics of the food (packaging, storage & delivery).

[caption id="attachment_126758" align="aligncenter" width="620"] HolaChef Founders (L-R)- Saurabh Saxena & Anil Gelra
Image - BusinessStandard.com[/caption]

With this acquisition, Foodpanda will foray into cloud kitchens and also plans to launch its own food brand across categories. The company claims to have a network of over 1 lakh delivery partners and access to over 150 million customers.

“We aim to build India’s largest cloud kitchen network that will be a major step in further elevating the food experience for our customers,” said Pranay Jivrajka, chief executive at Foodpanda. “I am delighted to welcome the Holachef team on board and look forward to their joining us in our mission of delivering superior food experiences to a billion Indians.”

"We are delighted to join hands with Foodpanda to accelerate our mission. We are thrilled to be part of Foodpanda’s and Ola’s passionate team that is truly changing the food experience for a billion Indians,” said Saurabh Saxena, co-founder and chief executive at Holachef.

Meanwhile, an another online food delivery player, FreshMenu is reportedly in talks to raise $25-30 million from new and existing investors.

Ola-owned Foodpanda Acquires Shut Down Foodtech Firm Holachef

Foodpanda, the Ola-owned online food ordering and delivery startup, has acquired Mumbai-based foodtech startup Holachef Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, which had shut down operations in July-August this year, for an undisclosed amount.

Foodpanda will take over Holachef’s employees and kitchen equipments. Founders of Holachef, Anil Gelra, Gaurav Srivastava and Saurabh Saxena, will join the leadership team at Foodpanda.

The acquisition however is believed to bring bring no returns to its investors of Holachef, which include InnoVen Capital, Kalaari Capital, India Quotient, SIDBI Venture Capital and Ratan Tata. Holachef raised a total of $9.6 million in funding over eight rounds since 2015. The last funding raised by Holachef was in February this year when it raised Rs.20 lakhs in Series B round.

A media report in Augst has suggested that Kalaari Capital and India Quotient had already resigned from the board of directors of HolaChef earlier this year.

HolaChef acquisition comes within two months after Mumbai-based on demand delivery firm Scootsy was acquired by food delivery firm Swiggy, which is Foodpanda's biggest rival in India besides Zomato.

Notably, Holachef is Ola’s second acquisition within a year, since it had bought Foodpanda from Germany’s Delivery Hero in December last year.

HOlaChef was founded in 2015 by Saurabh Saxena, Anil Gelra and Gaurav Srivastava. Essentially, HolaChef used to curates chefs ranging from executive chefs to amateurs and allows them creative freedom through their signature dishes. Before shutting its operation three months back, the company was managing the logistics of the food (packaging, storage & delivery).

[caption id="attachment_126758" align="aligncenter" width="620"] HolaChef Founders (L-R)- Saurabh Saxena & Anil Gelra
Image - BusinessStandard.com[/caption]

With this acquisition, Foodpanda will foray into cloud kitchens and also plans to launch its own food brand across categories. The company claims to have a network of over 1 lakh delivery partners and access to over 150 million customers.

“We aim to build India’s largest cloud kitchen network that will be a major step in further elevating the food experience for our customers,” said Pranay Jivrajka, chief executive at Foodpanda. “I am delighted to welcome the Holachef team on board and look forward to their joining us in our mission of delivering superior food experiences to a billion Indians.”

"We are delighted to join hands with Foodpanda to accelerate our mission. We are thrilled to be part of Foodpanda’s and Ola’s passionate team that is truly changing the food experience for a billion Indians,” said Saurabh Saxena, co-founder and chief executive at Holachef.

Meanwhile, an another online food delivery player, FreshMenu is reportedly in talks to raise $25-30 million from new and existing investors.