Matrix Partners India Lead $4 Mn Funding in A Former IBM Blockchain & Finance Exec-Founded Emtech

Investment firm Matrix Partners India has led a $4 million seed funding round of New York based Emtech, a fintech company that modernizes central banks for financial inclusion and resilience, announced the investment firm. 

Other investors who participated in this round include BTN, VestedWorld, Equity Alliance and Lofty.

Emtech will use the fresh funds to fuel the ongoing development of its infrastructure tools for central banks and fintech companies, a statement said.

Emtech has so far bagged $10 million in funding. Last year in November, Emtech had raised $5 Mn in seed round from Level Up Ventures, followed by a recent $2 million extension.

Founded in 2019, by Carmelle Cadet, a former Executive at IBM Finance, Blockchain & Technology, Emtech offers an API-First Platform that connects central banks and fintechs for embedded regulatory compliance and central bank digital currency. The company is building the next generation of central banking infrastructure for the Web3 era.

EMTECH has successfully developed Regtech and CBDC stack solutions by harnessing DLT and blockchain technology. Notably, these solutions have been deployed and utilized by the Central Banks of Ghana, Nigeria and the Bahamas, effectively advancing their Regtech and CBDC agendas. Additionally, the company also works with fintechs in those regions, offering valuable insights from both a regulatory and innovation standpoint.

Aakash Kumar, Principal at Matrix Partners India, said, “Digital assets and programmable currency in the form of regulated CBDCs can turbocharge financial inclusion. Emtech’s vision of shaping blockchain powered fintech infra for CBDCs and solutions for fintech regulation is compelling and we are excited to partner with them on their journey.”

EMTECH will work with central banks across the world to deliver solutions that will fuel their regulatory and innovation agendas.

On the fundraise, Carmelle Cadet, Founder & CEO of EMTECH shared, “EMTECH’s adoption of blockchain technology enables the democratization of finance, bringing financial freedom and inclusivity to individuals and businesses of all sizes. With the support of our investors, we are well positioned to expedite our growth, diversify our product offerings and continue to drive transformative change across the financial services landscape.”

Career Accelerator Startup Pesto Raises $2 Mn from Matrix India, Swiggy Founders and Others

Gurgaon-based Pesto Tech, a career accelerator startup has raised seed funding of about $ 2 Mn led by Matrix Partners India with contributions from Swiggy Founders Sriharsha Majety, Rahul Jaimani and Nandan Reddy; Innov8 Founder Ritesh Malik; Posist Founder Ashish Tulsian and Jack Yeung of OIC Capital among others.

Founded in 2017, by Ayush Jaiswal, Country Head of Startup Grind India, and Andrew Linfoot, co-Founder of co-working space firm The Anvil, Pesto upskills Indian software engineers by offering 12-week bootcamp to make the engineers Silicon Valley-ready and pair them with the worlds top tech companies.

As part of the training bootcamp, software engineers with a minimum of two years of experience are connected to mentors in the US and trained in soft-skills.

Pesto's hiring partners include Mimir HQ, Vaynermedia, Fossa.ai, Scale API, Embibe and Zinc.io

Rajat Agarwal, Vice President of Matrix India, shared in media, "Remote work is an early trend globally driven by a shortage of high-quality local talent, the rising cost of living in key technology hubs, and widespread adoption of enabling infrastructure. Pesto is on a mission to build a marketplace for quality remote talent from India and we strongly believe in their skilling led approach.”

Trainees at Pesto have to sign an income share agreement before joining the programme. Earlier, Ayush was quoted in media saying, "once the trained engineers earn over Rs 15 lakh per annum at a full-time remote job in an international tech company, they have to pay 17 percent of their annual income as training fee for the next three years, monthly."

Starting this January, Pesto has launched a new batch every month and accepts students on a rolling basis.

In the same month, Matrix Partners India closed its Fund III with corpus of over $300 million and plans to continue investing in companies across seed, early-stage, Series A and B stages in different sectors.

In March, Matrix India, along with Tiger Global led the ~ $41 Mn funding round of Ola Electric Mobility, the Electric Vehicle (EV) unit of ANI Technologies that owns the home-grown cab-hailing firm Ola

Source - People Matters

Matrix Partners India Closes Fund-III of $300 Million Corpus

Private Equity (PE) investment firm Matrix Partners India has has raised a new fund of $300 million (~ ₹ 2103 Crores) with plans to invest it in early-stage startups across emerging sectors and expand its current investment team.

Notably, the PE firm has raised its new fund after nearly eight years, since 2011. Matrix Partners India is the local franchise of US-based Matrix Partners, which currently has at least $4 billion under management.

Led by General Partners Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani, Matrix India's first fund was set up in August 2006 with a $150-million corpus, later topped up to $300 million. In 2011, Matrix raised its second fund, which also had a corpus of $300 million.

In 2016, Matrix India chose not to raise a full-sized fund and instead decided to top up its second fund with a $110-million funding boost.

In an interview, Matrix Partners founder and managing director Avnish Bajaj said the VC would continue to stay bullish on ventures in the consumer internet space, while being more selective in sectors such as fintech.

“We never target a particular number of investments or deployment. By virtue of deepening of the market, the top of the funnel itself has improved... Our strategy remains to work with the best founders—we want a disproportionate market share of the best founders,” said Avnish Bajaj, Matrix Partners India founder and managing director.

“We think e-commerce and marketplaces are under-invested and fintech has been over-invested in. E-commerce is in a different avatar now, with tinges of social media and WhatsApp. SaaS and enterprise is taking off,” added Bajaj. Before Matrix, Bajaj co-founded Baazee.com with Nexus Venture Partners founder Suvir Sujan, eventually surviving the dot-com bust to engineer the then-biggest sale of an Indian startup to eBay Inc. for $55 million in 2004.

Bajaj indicated Matrix will stay away from “overheated” sectors such as food tech, which has attracted a glut of funding over 12-18 months. In December, leading food delivery service Swiggy raised $1 billion in primary and secondary capital from a clutch of top-tier investors. Fellow managing director Vikram Vaidyanathan said Matrix will make more investments every year with a larger team in near future, so that “we can make more bets as the market deepens”.

“(What) has happened is that a lot of people who have helped build out the Flipkarts and Paytms of the world and have worked with these star founders, have learnt best practices from them and have now ventured out to start their own companies, so the quality (of companies) has gone up because the number of experienced founders has gone up,” said Tarun Davda, a managing director at Matrix.

Over the past five-six years, Matrix India has participated in some of the most prominent technology deals in the startup ecosystem, including those involving Ola, Practo and Quikr. According to Crunchbase data, Matrix Partners India has made 68 investments, with its most recent investments made in last month, when it invested $3.2 million in Housejoy, a Bangalore-based home services startup, and $9 million in MoEngage, a California-based Intelligent Marketing Cloud for consumer businesses.

Matrix India has also backed fast-growing ventures such as DailyNinja, Stanza Living, Vogo and Ziploan. Till date, Matrix has partially or fully exited from at least 30 startups that it has invested in. The most notable exits of Matrix India include Mswipe Technologies, Just Dial, and TinyOwl Technology.

In April 2016, when India's startup ecosystem was going through downturn, Navani left to start his own fund. After surviving this rough patch, Bajaj, along with Davda and Vaidyanathan, decided to reposition Matrix’s focus on technology and Internet investments. During that time, Matrix decided against raising a new fund—unlike most of its top-tier peers like Sequoia and Accel—and made do with a top-up of $110 million on its second fund.

Source - Livemint

Intelligent Marketing Cloud MoEngage Raises $9 Mn from Matrix India and VenturEast

California, U.S headquartered intelligent marketing cloud for consumer businesses, MoEngage, has raised $9 million (~ ₹64 crore) in a Series B funding led by Matrix Partners India and VenturEast. MoEngage's existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Exfinity Ventures also contributed to the round.

With the latest round, the startup has raised a total of $15.8 million in funding over three rounds.

The startup will use the fresh funds to expand its global presence, strengthen data science capabilities and roll out integrated marketing technology stack for enterprise clients.

Founded in 2014 by IIT Kharagpur alumnus, Raviteja Dodda and Yashwanth Kumar, MoEngage had raised an undisclosed amount in 2015, from Anand Chandrasekaran, the Head of Platform & Product Partnerships for Messenger at Facebook. Anand had then joined MoEngage's advisory panel.

Built for the Mobile-first world, MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale by analyzing 200+ million users and delivering 10+ billion interactions every month. With MoEngage, companies can orchestrate campaigns across channels like push, email, in-app messaging, web push and SMS, with auto-optimization towards higher conversions powered by machine learning.

With presence across Asia, Europe and the US, MoEngage claims to be the leader in the mobile engagement market. The 4-year-old company works with Consumer businesses across the world including Fortune 500 brands like Samsung, Deutsche Telekom, Hearst, Prudential, Vodafone and Internet-first companies like Flipkart Group, Tokopedia, Traveloka, Gaana, and Oyo.

Globally, MoEngage competes with Swrve, Kahuna, and WebEngage.

Source - Economic Times, Crunchbase

[Top Image - MoEngage @facebook]

Hyperlocal Delivery Firm DailyNinja Raises Funding from Matrix, Sequoia

Bangalore-based milk and grocery delivery startup DailyNinja has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners India, with participation from existing investors Sequoia India and Saama Capital.

The funding came within four months after the e-grocery startup had raised $3 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Saama Capital, along with participation of existing investor Sequoia Capital, in June this year.

DailyNinja will use the fresh capital raised to further strengthen its presence in the daily essentials space and also in expanding to new cities beyond Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

On the back of fresh funding, it would expand its operations to new markets like Mumbai and Gurgaon. “We clock about 35,000 deliveries per day and we are looking to accelerate it to about one lakh as we expand to new markets and deepen our reach in existing markets. We are the clear market leaders in this space and this investment is an outcome of the progress we have been making,” said Yarnalkar, co-founder, DailyNinja.

Matrix Partners India director Gourav Bhattacharya said, “Daily consumption of milk is an India-specific habit. DailyNinja has been able to leverage this habit to create a pipeline to customers’ homes, and has built an attractive business on top of this distribution channel. Their unique hybrid approach of using the existing milk delivery system as well as their own in-house delivery fleet has enabled them to outpace competition.”

Founded in 2015, by Anurag Gupta and Sagar Yarnalkar, Daily Ninja, has a mobile app that delivers daily needs on a subscription model.

The company has recently acquired HYderabad-based 4amShop, which delivers milk, bread, eggs, butter, juices and other daily need items at customers' doorstep, free of charge.

New Third India Fund of Matrix Partners Raises $300 million

Matrix Partners India III, which is the new fund of Matrix Partners India, is understood to have raised $300 million (~ Rs 2,100 crore), according to a ‘Form D’ filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dated August 14. Form D is used to file a notice of an exempt offering of securities with the SEC. It is a brief notice that includes basic information about the company and the offering, such as the names and addresses of the company’s executive officers, the size of the offering and the date of first sale.

Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with Rs 4,500 crore under management. Founded in 2006 by Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani, the firm invests in multiple stage companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market. Rishi Navani however quit Matrix Partner later to launch Epiq Capital.

Notably, the firm has recently invested in &ME, a Bengaluru-based food and beverage brand, focused on women’s health and wellness. Prior to this, it led the $1 million investment in Elemential Labs, a Mumbai-based blockchain administration platform touted as WordPress-for-Blockchain Solutions, in April this year. IN March this year, Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India.

Erlier this week too, Matrix Partners announced that it has co-invested in Vogo, a scooter-sharing platform for short haul commute. Vogo is a dockless scooter rental company which lets customers rent scooters for short one-way trips at various locations across the city. The company is currently present in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and plans to add over 1,000 pick-up points across the two cities in the coming year.

Few notable investments of Matrix India include companies such as Ola, Quikr, Practo, Dailyhunt, Treebo, Mswipe, Five Star Business Finance, Razorpay, OfBusiness, CreditVidya and ZipLoan, among others.

Sanjot Malhi, vice-president, Matrix India, said in a statement to Financial Express that Matrix Partners sees a lot of potential in &ME being able to become a large F&B brand. “More broadly, we are excited about investing in, and partnering with more home-grown consumer brands across the spectrum,” he said.

Last month, two former managing directors of Sequoia Capital's India unit have teamed up to launch a new Rs 2,000 crore investment firm, which will back early- to growth-stage private companies

According to a Grant Thornton report, H1 of 2018 was dominated by investments in the start-up sector, which contributed to 58% of total investment volumes garnering $1.8 billion. This is in line with the trends in the last seven years. Fintech attracted significant attention from investors with 52 deals, followed by healthtech, retail and enterprise solutions segments.

H1 witnessed a majority of the PE players cashing out their investments completely from their portfolio companies. A notable exit was witnessed in the e-commerce sector with the Walmart-Flipkart deal marking the largest PE exit in the period. Real estate, auto, IT, banking and energy sectors also saw top exits this year.

[Top Image - Avnish Bajaj | Via - ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/Flickr]

New Third India Fund of Matrix Partners Raises $300 million

Matrix Partners India III, which is the new fund of Matrix Partners India, is understood to have raised $300 million (~ Rs 2,100 crore), according to a ‘Form D’ filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dated August 14. Form D is used to file a notice of an exempt offering of securities with the SEC. It is a brief notice that includes basic information about the company and the offering, such as the names and addresses of the company’s executive officers, the size of the offering and the date of first sale.

Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with Rs 4,500 crore under management. Founded in 2006 by Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani, the firm invests in multiple stage companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market. Rishi Navani however quit Matrix Partner later to launch Epiq Capital.

Notably, the firm has recently invested in &ME, a Bengaluru-based food and beverage brand, focused on women’s health and wellness. Prior to this, it led the $1 million investment in Elemential Labs, a Mumbai-based blockchain administration platform touted as WordPress-for-Blockchain Solutions, in April this year. IN March this year, Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India.

Erlier this week too, Matrix Partners announced that it has co-invested in Vogo, a scooter-sharing platform for short haul commute. Vogo is a dockless scooter rental company which lets customers rent scooters for short one-way trips at various locations across the city. The company is currently present in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and plans to add over 1,000 pick-up points across the two cities in the coming year.

Few notable investments of Matrix India include companies such as Ola, Quikr, Practo, Dailyhunt, Treebo, Mswipe, Five Star Business Finance, Razorpay, OfBusiness, CreditVidya and ZipLoan, among others.

Sanjot Malhi, vice-president, Matrix India, said in a statement to Financial Express that Matrix Partners sees a lot of potential in &ME being able to become a large F&B brand. “More broadly, we are excited about investing in, and partnering with more home-grown consumer brands across the spectrum,” he said.

Last month, two former managing directors of Sequoia Capital's India unit have teamed up to launch a new Rs 2,000 crore investment firm, which will back early- to growth-stage private companies

According to a Grant Thornton report, H1 of 2018 was dominated by investments in the start-up sector, which contributed to 58% of total investment volumes garnering $1.8 billion. This is in line with the trends in the last seven years. Fintech attracted significant attention from investors with 52 deals, followed by healthtech, retail and enterprise solutions segments.

H1 witnessed a majority of the PE players cashing out their investments completely from their portfolio companies. A notable exit was witnessed in the e-commerce sector with the Walmart-Flipkart deal marking the largest PE exit in the period. Real estate, auto, IT, banking and energy sectors also saw top exits this year.

[Top Image - Avnish Bajaj | Via - ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/Flickr]

WordPress-for-Blockchain Solutions Startup Elemential Raises $1 Million From Matrix Partners, Others

Mumbai-based Elemential Labs, a blockchain administration platform that helps developers build and manage blockchain networks at scale, has raised $1 million from investors led by Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint, citing a person close to the development.

The round also saw participation from Investopad, Lightspeed India Partners, Digital Currency Group, Hinduja Group, Eight Innovate and several notable angels such as PayU India’s Amrish Rau, SlideShare’s Amit Ranjan and former Facebook executive Prashant Malik.

The startup will use the funding to hire people across categories such as engineering, design and business management, said the Live Mint report.

Elemential Labs has also been named AngelList India’s first syndicate. Syndicate is platform introduced by US-based AngelList this January that allows investors team up with like minded people and pool funds for investments in startups in the country.

Founded in 2015 by Raunaq Vaisoha, Anil Dukkipatty and Sahil Kathpal, Elemential lab has built blockchain-based products and dev tools for a number of different use cases. Examples include trade finance applications, payment systems, compliance solutions etc. The startup also works with the National Stock Exchange of India and several other pilot customers across various use cases ranging from KYC, trade finance, reconciliation, consent management, etc.

This February, when National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and a group of domestic banks collaborated on a know-your-customer (KYC) data trial involving blockchain, it was Elemential Labs that provided the technology for the trial.

In a statement to media, Raunaq Vaisoha, CEO of company said, “Basically we are something like a Wordpress for companies looking to build blockchain network. Any entity including banks, companies, money exchanges, they can just pick up our existing templates and use that to build a new blockchain framework within their organization,” said Vaisoha.

Elemential has a flagship product called Hadron which makes blockchain administration a secure and easily managed process in order to make it possible for the current generation of blockchain entrepreneurs to focus on innovating on their application and not worry about protocol level risks and overhead; which today occupy a significant portion of their time before they are able to get to actually building their application. Imagine setting up a website without WordPress.

Rajat Agarwal, vice president, Matrix India, said the company will be scouting for more investments in the blockchain space. “Blockchain is the next big infrastructure shift in technology and we are looking to invest in start-ups that are capturing value at the core infrastructure, middleware or application layer,” Agarwal said in a statement.

Last month, an another Mumbai-based blockchain startup Nuo Bank had raised $250,000 in a seed funding from payment gateway firm PayU India’s chief executive officer Amrish Rau and managing director Jitendra Gupta.

In the same month, a yet another Mumbai-based blockchain startup Aetlo Tech, which was just a-year-old startup, has been acquired by Page Solutions, a global banking and financial firm based out of UK.

Last year in March, YES BANK -- for its unique business accelerator program -- YES FINTECH, had selected 12 Blockchain startups to offer mentorship and guidance from industry experts on how to create a scalable business from their products and deploy their innovative technologies within a collaborative framework. The bank's accelerator program also provided access to funding of upto USD 1 million through VC partners without any equity commitment.

Top Image - Entrackr.com

WordPress-for-Blockchain Solutions Startup Elemential Raises $1 Million From Matrix Partners, Others

Mumbai-based Elemential Labs, a blockchain administration platform that helps developers build and manage blockchain networks at scale, has raised $1 million from investors led by Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint, citing a person close to the development.

The round also saw participation from Investopad, Lightspeed India Partners, Digital Currency Group, Hinduja Group, Eight Innovate and several notable angels such as PayU India’s Amrish Rau, SlideShare’s Amit Ranjan and former Facebook executive Prashant Malik.

The startup will use the funding to hire people across categories such as engineering, design and business management, said the Live Mint report.

Elemential Labs has also been named AngelList India’s first syndicate. Syndicate is platform introduced by US-based AngelList this January that allows investors team up with like minded people and pool funds for investments in startups in the country.

Founded in 2015 by Raunaq Vaisoha, Anil Dukkipatty and Sahil Kathpal, Elemential lab has built blockchain-based products and dev tools for a number of different use cases. Examples include trade finance applications, payment systems, compliance solutions etc. The startup also works with the National Stock Exchange of India and several other pilot customers across various use cases ranging from KYC, trade finance, reconciliation, consent management, etc.

This February, when National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and a group of domestic banks collaborated on a know-your-customer (KYC) data trial involving blockchain, it was Elemential Labs that provided the technology for the trial.

In a statement to media, Raunaq Vaisoha, CEO of company said, “Basically we are something like a Wordpress for companies looking to build blockchain network. Any entity including banks, companies, money exchanges, they can just pick up our existing templates and use that to build a new blockchain framework within their organization,” said Vaisoha.

Elemential has a flagship product called Hadron which makes blockchain administration a secure and easily managed process in order to make it possible for the current generation of blockchain entrepreneurs to focus on innovating on their application and not worry about protocol level risks and overhead; which today occupy a significant portion of their time before they are able to get to actually building their application. Imagine setting up a website without WordPress.

Rajat Agarwal, vice president, Matrix India, said the company will be scouting for more investments in the blockchain space. “Blockchain is the next big infrastructure shift in technology and we are looking to invest in start-ups that are capturing value at the core infrastructure, middleware or application layer,” Agarwal said in a statement.

Last month, an another Mumbai-based blockchain startup Nuo Bank had raised $250,000 in a seed funding from payment gateway firm PayU India’s chief executive officer Amrish Rau and managing director Jitendra Gupta.

In the same month, a yet another Mumbai-based blockchain startup Aetlo Tech, which was just a-year-old startup, has been acquired by Page Solutions, a global banking and financial firm based out of UK.

Last year in March, YES BANK -- for its unique business accelerator program -- YES FINTECH, had selected 12 Blockchain startups to offer mentorship and guidance from industry experts on how to create a scalable business from their products and deploy their innovative technologies within a collaborative framework. The bank's accelerator program also provided access to funding of upto USD 1 million through VC partners without any equity commitment.

Top Image - Entrackr.com

B2B Travel Startup Itilite Raises Seed Funding Via Matrix and A Group of Angel Investors

Bengaluru based business-to-business (B2B) travel startup Itilite has raised seed funding from Matrix Partners and a group of angel investors. The startup however did not disclosed the size of capital raised and names angel investors participating in the round.

Founded in 2017 by former Myntra employees Kukreja and Anish Khadiya, Itilite plans to use the freshly raised capital to strengthen its technology while it is also looks to hire additional workforce. The startup have about 15 people in the team now.

The SaaS startup which offers end-to-end corporate travel management solutions, uses its technology to offer cost-effective travel options, to keep expenses for companies at less than what their employees are entitled to.

The startup offers corporates solutions that allows them to reward their employees to save on travel cost. A travel rewards platform to help corporates save upto 30% on travel cost by rewarding employees to make cost conscious.

"The amount, which is saved owing to booking cheaper options despite higher entitlement, gets divided between the company and the employee on a 50-50 basis. Our solution is cutting travel costs by 30% for clients, while traditional players offer a promise of cutting 3-5% only", said Mayank Kukreja, co-founder of Itilite.

Matrix Partners India VP Gourav Bhattacharya said, "Corporate travel is in some sense the final frontier of travel — a large market that has meaningful components that are still offline and manual. Itilite's innovative SaaS product takes a lot of the friction out of the process. In addition, it also drives cost-saving for clients that creates direct bottom-line impact."

In a prepared statement, the company said the B2B travel market is worth about $35 billion in India and it is largely fragmented and serviced by offline travel management companies. "Our state-of-the-art technology, coupled with behavioural science, helps align the incentives of the company.

The above development was first reported in Livemint

Healthcare Startup Doctalk Raises $5 Mn Via Khosla Ventures and Matrix Partners

Health-care startup DocTalk, an app which allows doctors and patients to stay in touch and skip in-person follow-on visits, has raised $5 million in its first institutional round of funding led by Silicon Valley venture fund Khosla Ventures and Matrix Partners India.

Mumbai headquartered Doctalk, which is backed by Y Combinator-backed earlier, also saw participation from other Silicon Valley investors like Liquid2 Ventures, Altair Capital, YS partner Paul Buchheit who created Gmail, Arihant Patni, Apoorva Patni, Vy Capital, among others.

The startup plans to use latest raised capital to expand its team and on board hospital chains on its platform.

Founded in 2016 by Akshat Goenka, Krishna Chaitanya Aluru and Vamsee Chamarkura, DocTalk is a mobile app that allows its users to connect with doctor and skip the hassle of an in-person visit. Users can chat with their doctors, obtain prescriptions and share new reports with their doctors. The startup claims to have about 500 doctors using its services serving about 30,000 patients.

At present DocTalk has operations in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Akshat Goenka, co-founder and CEO, of DocTalk said, "We are looking to hire across departments such as sales, operations and technology as we plan to expand into new cities. We also have to develop a deeper presence in our existing markets."

Unlike other health apps like Practo, Doctalk is not solving the problem of discovery of doctors. Its instead simplifying and improving doctors' lives by giving them complete control over their patient communication and practice.

The startup aims to address the doctor-patient communication problem giving doctors the chance to engage with patients post consultation as well.

Matrix Partners India and Times Internet Lead Series A Investment in Bengaluru-Based Myra

Matrix Partners India and Times Internet today announced that they have co-led a Series A round of funding for Myra, a company that is transforming the way people buy medicines. Myra had previously raised an undisclosed seed round led by Matrix Partners India. Select entrepreneurs and angels have also invested in Myra including Pranay Chulet, co-founder & CEO of Quikr, Prashant Malik, co-founder & CTO of LimeRoad, Vamsi Duvvuri, Associate Director of Vy Capital and Pankaj Gupta, Ex Director-Product of Twitter among others.

Founded in 2015 by Faizan Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor, Myra uses cutting edge technology to enable its customers to get access to medicines at an affordable price from the convenience of their homes. Aimed at solving the persistent issues of high prices and poor availability of medicines at chemist stores, Myra is redesigning the pharmaceutical supply chain to remove multiple layers of middlemen and bring in efficiencies to the medicine distribution business. Myra enables consumers to order medicines at the tap of a button and have them delivered to their doorstep within sixty minutes. The company buys medicines directly from manufacturers, stores and delivers the medicines from its warehouses located across the city. This ensures better control on operations, superior margins and most importantly a smooth customer experience.

“When we started Myra we decided that our main focus should be speed, reliability, convenience and cost. Today, looking at our strong customer retention, I believe we made the right decision. By focusing on data sciences, R&D and engineering we will make our user experience even better, thereby ensuring that our customers continue to love the Myra experience.” said Faizan Aziz, co-founder & CEO of Myra. “We are excited to continue our partnership with Matrix and now bring Times Internet as well on board. Partnering with Times Internet gives us access to the insights from India’s largest digital network, support and resources we need to scale rapidly,” added Aziz.

“Myra is a unique solution of technology and operations that makes buying medicines fast and efficient. Using a data driven approach, we improve dispatch and delivery times while reducing wastage. People are now able to sit back, relax and get their medicines at home without the stress of whether the medicines will come on time or not,” said Anirudh Coontoor, co-founder & CTO of Myra.

Myra’s state-of-the-art heterogeneous warehousing capability and data science platform allows it to ensure high availability of medicines and delivery within sixty minutes. Myra’s revenue has grown by over 700% last year, driven entirely by strong word-of-mouth referrals from its loyal customer base. Myra will use the new funds to accelerate product development, expand operations to other cities, and hire new talent across engineering, data science and operations.

“Despite advances in technology the $15B Indian pharma market continues to be largely unorganized. The current customer experience is broken at a fundamental level with issues of low fill-rates, delivery delays, expired & spurious medicines. Myra is revolutionizing the way medicines will reach patients in need of care. The platform provides a public utility by allowing patients to experience a fast, reliable and convenient service offering at cheaper prices. It is our privilege to partner with Faizan Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor, the co-founders of Myra,” said Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India.

“Very few companies in India have been as successful in infusing technology into operations as Myra has. Myra has created a high frequency use case that makes it super easy for users to access a pharmacy digitally. We are delighted to partner with Myra and looking forward to accelerating their growth and expansion,” said Miten Sampat, VP- Corporate Development, Times Internet.

Ed Tech Startup Testbook Raises Funding from Matrix Partners India

Matrix Partners India announced today that it has invested in Testbook, an ed-tech startup. Founded by a team of IIT graduates, Testbook is an online learning platform enabling students to prepare for recruitment exams for Government jobs such as SBI PO, SSC CGL, IBPS PO, Railways and many more. Government jobs exam preparation is one of the largest education markets in India with over 40 million students appearing every year for such exams.

Students can purchase mock tests from the Testbook website, Android app or through offline Testbook Test Centers and Smart Labs in select cities. Testbook offers personalized guidance and detailed solutions for all questions along with All India Ranking for select mock exams. Students can also remain abreast with current affairs in Hindi or English through Testbook’s Daily Current Affairs app that has been downloaded by over 2 million students already and is one of the highest rated education apps in India. A free Testbook test series is also bundled with the new book titled Quantitative Aptitude for Competitive Exams written by renowned author R.S. Aggarwal and published by S.Chand and Company, an investor in Testbook.

Ashutosh Kumar, Founder and CEO of Testbook, said, “We are on a mission to reshape the process of how students prepare for competitive exams. Our endeavor is to deliver world class, personalized learning content for students while solving the problem of access and affordability for the masses. We decided to partner with Matrix as we believe they share our vision and we look forward to a long-term partnership with them”.

“We are excited to partner with the Testbook team in their mission to disrupt the competitive exam preparation market. Ashutosh and team have several unique insights on how to succeed in this market and we especially like the quality of their content, technology thinking and unique go-to-market strategy. Ed-tech is a focus area for Matrix and we will make multiple investments in the space” said Rajat Agarwal, Vice President, Matrix India.

Matrix Partners-Backed Zarget Raises $6M in Series A Funding Led by Sequoia

Zarget, a SaaS-based marketing automation platform, has announced that it has raised a $6 million Series A round of funding, led by Sequoia India, with participation from existing investors Matrix Partners India and Accel. The company plans to use the funds to scale its marketing automation products and help small businesses easily optimize their web presence in real-time without any coding skills required.

Zarget was founded in 2015 by three seasoned SaaS entrepreneurs, Arvind Parthiban, Naveen Venkat, and Santhosh Kumar, who spent a decade at Zoho building business productivity tools and customer relationship management software. The company has now raised $7.5 million to date from global venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners India and Accel Partners.

With Zarget’s all-in-one platform, any business owner has an easy and affordable way to become an effective digital marketer and improve performance of their websites instantly, without learning how to code or hiring an expensive IT department. Zarget offers all of the capabilities of competing solutions and more – including A/B testing, dynamic heatmaps, funnel analysis, form analytics, user polls and feedback – but at 10% of the cost and is backed by exceptional 24/7 customer support.

Best of all, businesses gain access to the industry’s first Chrome plugin that lets them make changes instantly from within the browser. This eliminates the kind of complexity and costs that are typically only available for large enterprise teams. Starting as low as 50 cents per day, any small business owner or digital marketer can instantly turn their website into a visualization dashboard for marketing automation, optimization and testing, and gather actionable insights needed to make critical improvements on the fly.

"Just a few years ago, I was a marketer facing the same challenges affecting marketers today – desperate to improve my campaigns in real-time, but without the tools, IT skills, or budget to make it happen efficiently. Our aim is to make it easy and affordable for any person or business to access the solutions they need to increase engagement and drive revenue across their websites,” said Arvind Parthiban, co-founder & CEO, Zarget. “Our investors believed in our vision, and we're proud to deliver on the industry's first Chrome plug-in that allows anyone to become a savvy digital marketer in a matter of days, without learning a single line of code."

“Zarget has an exceptionally talented team of product engineers who’ve spent the past 10 years developing customer relationship management business automation software that’s already in use by leading enterprises today,” said Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sequoia India. “We’re excited to back a team with such proven capabilities and believe their marketing platform will become an essential fixture within the SMB marketplace for many years to come.”

"Today, marketers are swamped with several fragmented optimization solutions with poor integration capabilities. Zarget offers the foremost integrated platform that provides small-and-medium businesses a comprehensive and affordable way to scale conversions with a superior customer experience," said Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India. "We've been very impressed by the traction they've gathered so far, and we look forward to continue working with the team to help them expand into new markets and build a broader stable of marketing automation products."

In addition to the latest round, Zarget is announcing recent growth and customer traction with more than 1,000 customers in 10 countries in just four months since launch, including leading brands like Landesk in the US, BizTalk360 in the UK, and Buscape in Brazil.

"Zarget’s A/B testing and HeatMaps made it easy and affordable for us to launch experiments and make the proper decisions to improve our customer experience,” said Anand Krishnamoorthy, CEO of Wedtree, an online store for wedding gifts. “Although we did not have the resources of a full-fledged marketing team, we were able to create page variants quickly, with the confidence of knowing exactly what to do. As an example, after replacing the product category images with the individual products we saw a powerful spike with clickthrough rates increasing by a whopping 54%.”

Image : Zarget's Founders

Matrix Exits W as TA Associates Invests $140M

TCNS Clothing Company Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading branded women’s apparel platform, today announced a US$140 million investment for a minority stake by TA Associates, a leading global private equity firm. The investment marked a full exit for Matrix Partners India which invested Rs. 60 crores in TCNS in 2011 for a minority stake and overall Rs. 90 crores in primary and secondary capital.

Headquartered in New Delhi, TCNS Clothing designs, manufactures and sells contemporary ethnic wear, targeting women between the ages of 25 and 40. Through its three brands – W, Aurelia and Wishful – TCNS operates across the value chain from economy to premium segments. The brands are present in more than 1,600 points of sale across more than 100 cities in India, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, and in over 300 exclusive stores and several large multi-brand retailers and online portals. TCNS achieved consumer sales of more than US$120 million in 2016, resulting in 70% year-over-year growth.

“TCNS has enjoyed great success over the last five years and we are proud to have become India’s leading women’s apparel company,” said Mr. O.S. Pasricha, Founder and Chairman, TCNS Clothing Company. “We are pleased to have TA Associates as our partner for the next phase of our growth, and are delighted to welcome TA to our company and to our Board.  We look forward to a close, long-term collaboration.”

Anant Daga, CEO, TCNS Clothing Company Pvt. Ltd.  remarked, “We are in an exciting phase of our journey, and despite TCNS being the leading branded womenswear player in India, we believe there are bigger opportunities ahead. Apart from organic growth, we see significant avenues for expansion through the possible introduction of additional womenswear brands and complementary offerings, as well as expansion into additional international markets. With TA’s experience in consumer sectors and fashion verticals, we believe this partnership will add immense value across all strategic and operations spheres.”

“It has been a privilege to partner with Mr. O.S. Pasricha, Anant Daga and the TCNS team – we thank them for the journey and the excellent returns delivered and wish them God Speed ahead with their new partners of high repute.” added Avnish Bajaj, Managing Director at Matrix India.

TCNS Clothing Company Pvt. Ltd. (TCNS ) is the name behind the evolution of the most fashionable contemporary wear brand for women - W. In 2002, TCNS entered retailing by setting up its first store in Delhi. Design and Fits are key strengths for TCNS. Pioneers in scientific sizing with 7 sizes, introduction of iconic knit churidar and smaller width stoles, the company has made functional fashion available for everyday woman. The three TCNS Clothing brands - W, Aurelia and Wishful breathe different fashion sensibilities altogether – ranging from ethnic  to contemporary fashion. W is the first Indian women's brand to have 200+ stores and Aurelia is avaible through 100+ stores. The brands are also available through 1600 points of sale across 100 cities in India, Mauritius, Srilanka and Middle East.

Matrix-backed Ridlr Raises $6M Series B Funding

India’s leading local transport app, Ridlr, has announced $ 6 million in series B funding by Times Internet as well as existing investors Matrix Partners India and Qualcomm Ventures.

Ridlr provides real-time public transport and traffic information across 24 Indian cities, serving an engaged community of over 2M users. Public transport ticketing has also recently been added to the platform. The new round of funding will be used for scaling up public transport ticketing in focus cities, growing user base, as well as hiring across key roles. Current partner agencies for Ridlr include BEST, NMMT and MMRC.

Commenting on the fundraise, Brijraj Vaghani, CEO of Ridlr said, “This is a significant milestone for Ridlr in its journey to become the leading local transport information and ticketing platform in India. This round is great validation of our growth, team strength and ability to execute. It gives us the confidence to continue to disrupt the local transport space.”

“Ridlr seeks to give customers a seamless public transport commuting experience. This aligns with our investment philosophy of backing companies and products that pass the ‘toothbrush test’ i.e., products that are used by consumers on a daily basis. We are excited to partner with the Ridlr team on their journey of changing the way people commute in India”, said Miten Sampat, VP Corporate Development, Times Internet.

“Ridlr’s vision is to be the de-facto app for every urban commuter in India. Their approach of working closely with transport companies to bring real-time information and ticketing online, and their focus on their user community, makes them uniquely positioned to create impact in the lives of millions of users. We look forward to partnering with Brij and the team on this journey and welcome Times to this partnership”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Food Ordering App TinyOwl Raises $16 Mn From Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital & NVP

Mumbai-based food ordering app TinyOwl has raised Rs 100 crore from Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners in Series B round. Earlier TinyOwl raised $1 million in August 2014. followed by a $3 million Series A round in December 2014.

The company plans to utilize the Series-B funding to expand its footprint to over 50 cities in the country and on technology to enhance end-user experience.

TinyOwl is a Mumbai-based company founded by IITB alumni in 2014 and is currently operating in Mumbai city only. The app available for Android and iOS platform smartly detects user's location and show restaurants in his/her vicinity and allows users to order food from multiple restaurants in one go at no extra fee.

TinyOwl has associated with more than 4,000 restaurants in Mumbai and processes about 2,000 orders a day and Currently has two products - 'TinyOwl for food' from nearby restaurants and 'TinyOwl HomeMade' for healthy food from local chefs. The startup currently has a team strength of 400 employees.

TinyOwl is facing a stiff competition from other players in market such as FoodPanda and TastyKhana. Moreover, food discovery portal Zomato has already announced that will launch a food order service in India next month.

Healthcare Startup Practo Raises $30 Million From Sequoia Capital & Matrix Partners

Mumbai-based healthcare startup, Practo Technologies, which helps people search for doctors online, has raised $30 million (over Rs 185 crore) in a fresh series B funding from Sequoia capital and Matrix partners. The company will use funding to finance expansion in nearly 30 Indian cities and overseas markets by March 2016.

Matrix India Managing Director Avnish Bajaj will be joining Practo's Board of Directors. Practo had earlier raised $4 million from Sequoia Capital in mid-2012.

Practo Search is the largest doctor search engine in Asia with 4M monthly searches and company's flagship product Practo Ray is the clinic management software of choice used by 30,000 doctors managing tens of millions of patients and their healthcare.

Practo claims that its $30 million series B funding is one of the largest investments into digital health globally and the largest for any Indian healthcare technology company

Related - 30+ Online Health & Wellness Related Portals in India

Practo currently has its presence in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune in India apart from having footprints in Singapore and Philippines. In India, the startup is looking to expand in other cities such as Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Jaipur and Coimbatore.

With this round funding, Practo will expand our reach to serve hundreds of millions of people around the world. In the coming few months the startup will;

1. Expand to 35 cities in India



2. Open multiple more international locations (current location are India, Singapore & the Philippines)


Grow the team of Practeons from 600 Practeons today to more than 1500 by December 2015

Practo Technologies is founded in 2008, in a college hostel dorm room by Shashank ND and Abhinav Lal and in 2009 Practo becomes part of the Start-up Acceleration Program initiated by Morpheus Venture Partners.

LimeTray Raises Funds From Matrix Partners India

Alchemy Web Pvt Ltd., a New Delhi-based startup which provides software services to the restaurant industry and operates under the brand name and an online portal 'LimeTray', has raised an undisclosed amount from venture capital firm Matrix Partners.

Alchemy Web's angel investors include Groupon's Asia Pacific head Ankur Warikoo, Gaadi.com CEO Umang Kumar, Akosha CEO Ankur Singla and InMobi executive Anurakt Jain.

LimeTray provides restaurants with a platform for day-to-day operations including ordering, online presence management, and CRM. The company has already signed up over 200 restaurants, mainly in the Delhi NCR area.

The 18 month old startup was founded by Akhilesh Bali, founder and CEO, who started the company with Piyush Jain in May 2013. Both were former employees at online food delivery company Foodpanda.com. Akhilesh was earlier cofounder and India head of FoodPanda and also ran a startup called MithaiMate (online sweets delivery) while Piyush Jain was head of online marketing at FoodPanda.

"Our vision is to build a full-stack technology platform for restaurants across India. We are restaurant-first in our approach, and want to enable more and more restaurants to come online and solve critical business needs using our platform," said Bali.

"Restaurants are adopting a range of mobile-first technology at a rapid pace to solve their business needs be it discovery, dining experience, ordering, loyalty or restaurant management. The Food-tech market is deep enough to have multiple winners. We believe other SMEs are also ready to adopt technology," said Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director at Matrix India.

Chumbak.com raises funds from Matrix Partners India

Chumbak.com, a Bangalore based design-led consumer products e-commerce store, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners India and its existing investor Seedfund.

"With this round of funding, we will continue to deliver amazing and fun products to our customers, expand our footprint and also enter into new product categories. In addition to this, we are looking to increase the contribution of online sales to the overall revenue," said Vivek Prabhakar, founder and CEO of Chumbak.

Chumbak.com is the second fresh deal for Matrix Partners India since January this year, recntly the investment firm had also put additional money in existing portfolio firms such as Quikr and LimeRoad. Matrix Partners India invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer market at the seed, early and early-growth stages and the firm has around Rs 3,000 crore under its portfolio management.

Chumbak.com specialises in India-themed and colorful consumer products especially fridge magnets, the bobble-heads and the Chumbak tins but now the website have over 30 categories of products including keychains, tshirts and boxer shorts, coffee mugs, phone cases, laptop sleeves and more.

Chumbak ships its products currently in India only through its own site as well as other websites such as Flipkart as well as from various brick & mortar departmental stores and shops in cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai. Currently Chumbak do not ship outside India.

Chumbak was founded in 2010 by Vivek Prabhakar, who had earlier worked at companies like Titan, Motorola and Sun Microsystems.

Interestingly Chumbak has seen 25 percent of online revenue coming from Facebook and it uses Facebook as its sole marketing channel. Facebook is used by Chumbak not just to drive awareness of product lines and announce new product launches but also to crowdsource ideas for designing its new products.