India Focussed VC Firm Silverneedle Ventures Announces INR 100 Crore Fund and Invests in Knorish, A Creator-Monetization Platform

An early-stage technology focussed fund, Silverneedle Ventures today announced the launch of their INR 100 Crore Fund. Their first investment is in the creator monetization platform Knorish. Silverneedle Ventures (SNV) has invested an undisclosed amount of funding in a Pre-Series A extension round of the startup. The round is backed by marquee investors such as Andrew Holland, Bharat Serum Family Office, IPV, Mumbai Angels, and Jet Synthesys. Knorish is building the world’s most convenient platform for Creator Monetization through a sales funnel for online courses, webinars and memberships.

SNV is a sector-agnostic early-stage technology fund that partners with entrepreneurs to increase their probability of success through an active hands-on approach. The fund aims to invest in Pre-Series A/Series A round of early-stage startups focused on B2B SaaS, Deeptech, Sustainability, and D2C/Consumer Internet, among a few other sectors. The fund is founded by Ajay Jain and Deepesh Agarwal who were also the founders of Xseed Partners. The team has a group of seasoned professionals who have invested in 30-odd early-stage investments & mentored numerous startups. The SNV team has run successful startups & has been part of the startup ecosystem as employees/advisors of incubators & accelerators. The leadership team is based out of Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, and California.

With the launch of SNV, they have announced their first investment in Knorish. Knorish aims to utilize the fund by expanding and growing its business to new markets while planning to onboard more creators and use the rest of the fund to enhance its tech ability. Currently, the startup has a team of 32 people in technology, sales, customer success, content designing, and marketing. The startup is tapping a market of 80 Million creators and knowledge professionals in India who can eventually convert their skills into a creator business.

Knorish caters to 38,000 academies built by creators from 11 countries, impacting a million users in 45 countries. The goal is to actively acquire more customers from the growing global markets. The startup is founded by Kinner N Sacchdev (Co-Founder & CEO) and Rakhi Wadhwa (Co-Founder), serial entrepreneurs, who have previously led a leading consulting firm with Fortune 50 clients from the US, the UK, and the Middle East.

Mr Ajay Jain, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, of Silverneedle Ventures said, “After the success of Xseed Partners, we have set up Silverneedle Ventures with a very strong and diverse team, bringing expertise in core areas of the Startup business model. With our mentor-driven model approach, we will assign segment-specific experts across the globe, for the portfolio, so that each startup is taken on a growth trajectory. The SNV team is positive about success because of our previous investment track record & strong pedigree which holds us in good stead to not only source better but also to add maximum value to the startups throughout the journey. Our limited partners(investors) - be it individuals, family offices or fund of funds have the ability to fuel the growth for the startups.”

On the investment in Knorish, Mr Deepesh Agarwal, Founding Partner at, Silverneedle Ventures further said, “Our core team recognizes the increasing contribution of evolving sectors in the Global economy and the potential they offer via Startup investments. The team believes the creator economy stands at an inflection point, as content creators are moving beyond simply working with brands and evolving their businesses by adding numerous revenue streams. As a result, platforms are moving fast to build an increasingly multifaceted offering of opportunities. In turn, creators are leveraging these new tools to connect directly with fans and build their own communities. Knorish's offering stands to benefit from this trend and has got off to a good start. We expect Knorish to build out offerings that will make it a critical omnichannel gateway for creators”.

Mr Kinner N Sacchdev, Co-Founder & CEO, Knorish on the funding announcement quotes “When the creators set on their monetization journey, their biggest challenge is not content creation or basic setup. The challenge, instead, is building sales funnels, which Knorish aims to solve. We are extremely excited to partner with Silverneedle Ventures and the team is already working harder towards closing our Series A round. ”

“We’ll truly see a creator in every home at some point in the near future, and in order to enable millions of creators to live better lives with the newfound monetization, we need to train them, handhold them…. Monetization is just like any other skill, it can be learned. We are glad to have SNV as one of our investors, and looking forward to our partnership with them” said, Co-Founder & CBO of Knorish, Ms Rakhi Wadhwa. 

About Silverneedle Ventures

Silverneedle Ventures is an India-focused venture capital firm which invests in early-stage technology-led businesses. They primarily focus on Pre-Series A/Series A rounds in B2B SaaS, Deeptech, Sustainability, D2C/Consumer Internet, and a few other sectors. They partner with entrepreneurs to increase their probability of success through an active hands-on approach. The fund is backed by marquee Indian and global investors which include LPs, Family Offices, Institutional Investors, and others. The approach is a mentor-driven model, wherein segment-specific experts (partners/advisors / LPs) across the globe would ensure that a startup is taken on a growth trajectory. The fund was founded by Mr Ajay Jain and Mr Deepesh Agarwal in the year 2022.

Website – https://Silverneedle.vc

About Knorish

Knorish is a Gurugram-based Saas-based creator's economy and monetization platform that is building the world’s most convenient platform for the Creator's Monetization through sales funnels for online courses, webinars and memberships. The startup is founded by Kinner N Sacchdev (Co-Founder & CEO) and Rakhi Wadhwa (Co-Founder), serial entrepreneurs, who have previously led a leading consulting firm with Fortune 50 clients from the US, the UK, and the Middle East.

https://knorish.com/

Knorish Raises $1.1 Mn for Enabling Coaches, Instructors and Organizations

Knorish Founders

The funds will be utilised to accelerate innovations to empower entrepreneurs worldwide to take their knowledge businesses online

New Delhi 26th July 2021: Knorish, a platform that enables coaches, instructors, and organizations to build and launch online academies, announced today that it has raised $1.1 million as an extension of the Pre-Series A round. The investment was led by Inflection Point Ventures and also had Pentathlon Ventures, Rockstud Capital and Bespoke HNIs including KRS Jamwal, Dhanpal Jhaveri and Prophetic Ventures syndicate. The latest round comes on the heels of a $323,000 round last June and the 100x.vc investment as a part of their funded class 01 of 2019.

The fresh infusion of funds would help Knorish in accelerating innovations that would empower Passion Entrepreneurs across the world to take their knowledge businesses online. Additionally, the company aims to bring one of the finest app creation technologies for online academies, expand their team and further empower a network of Academies on Knorish.

Speaking on the acquired funding, Kinner N Sacchdev, Co-founder and CEO, Knorish, said -

The Coaches and instructors are good at teaching, but they struggle to sell. With Knorish’s Funnel builder, over 90% of content sellers are able to cross $1000 within the first few months of launching their first funnel.

Knorish already boasts of offering several unique features that help it stand out such as the Free Zoom enterprise account access for every paid subscriber for conducting live sessions, launch sales funnels, and automation that enable you to single-handedly manage and grow the online academy. The platform also offers features such as a powerful website - landing page builder tool, a course builder, pre-integrated payment gateways to automate payment collection, along with many other tools to quickly launch online academies and businesses.

Speaking on the funding, Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures said,“Knorish’s platform is built to help lakhs of original content creators like trainers, teachers, coaches etc. to expand their market catchment area. We found this to be a big differentiator as they are attempting to unlock a new market segment which is otherwise unorganised and bringing them on a tech enabled platform. The pandemic, no doubt, has made it difficult for certain solopreneurs to attract business. That is also because they have largely remained offline. With Knorish, they have the opportunity to reach a large audience and share their knowledge with the world. The whole approach around which the business is built got us interested to invest in the business.”

“This platform is democratizing online teaching by helping tutors and coaches build, launch, and sell courses. Their early traction, the quality of content creators on their platform, and strong founding team suggest they possess the DNA of Scale. We strongly feel they're poised to become leaders in this space.” Madhukar Bhatia, Managing Partner, Pentathlon Ventures added.

Also speaking on the funding, Abhishek Agarwal, Managing Partner of Rockstud Capital, said, “Post-COVID, it is no longer just an option but a necessity, for anyone looking to build courses and reach out to its target segment, to be present online and be able to have the right tools to scale. Knorish has created a platform which not only helps in building one’s course online but also be able to sell it to its target audience and have all the analytics to review performance.”

Online learning continues to be a dominant need in 2021. With online courses, becoming the norm for learning across all age groups in the last 5 years, Covid-19 accelerated this demand tenfold. As per the recent GSV Asset Management report and International Labour Organization, UNESCO, digital education is now expected to skyrocket to $1 trillion globally by 2027.

Thus, the investment will enable Knorish to forge ahead and create the world’s most advanced stack for building sales funnels and automations for Online Academies. In less than a year, the platform already supports over 22000 academies across 200 domains and half a million monthly active users buying courses from over 37 countries.

About Knorish

Knorish was founded by Kinner Sacchdev and Rakhi Wadhwa who had earlier led technology product launches for Fortune 500 companies and Global education brands through their consulting company Scientity, active in the UK, US and the Middle East. Considered an influencer in the space, Kinner is also a popular speaker at conferences around the world and was awarded the Business World Young Entrepreneur 2020 (35 under 35).