Noida-based Nexgen Energia Secures $1 Bn from Capital Edge

In a big news for India's green energy sector, NexGen Energia, a Noida-based firm specializing in Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) production, has secured a $1 billion investment from Capital Edge, a Kuwaiti investment company. 

This funding will help NexGen Energia expand its CBG infrastructure across India, supporting the country's transition to clean energy and energy self-reliance.

The funding is equity-based, allowing NexGen Energia to scale operations without short-term repayment pressure.

The company aims to establish 1,000 CBG plants by 2026, contributing to India's clean energy transition. The investment aligns with India's National Bio-Energy Mission, which promotes bio-energy initiatives for sustainability and carbon neutrality.

The Kuwaiti firm, Capital Edge, specializes in high-impact investments across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, focusing on scalable, sustainable projects.

The company aims to set up 1,000 CBG plants by 2026, significantly boosting India's renewable energy capacity 1. With the Indian government actively promoting bio-energy initiatives, this investment aligns well with national goals for sustainability and carbon neutrality.

NexGen Energia’s Director of Sales, Nishant Tiwari, emphasized that this funding will accelerate their vision of a greener India, fostering innovation, job creation, and energy independence.

This $1 billion investment in NexGen Energia's Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) infrastructure is a significant step for India's renewable energy sector and has multiple far-reaching implications such as Job Creation, as setting up 1,000 CBG plants will generate employment opportunities, especially in rural areas. Moreover, farmers can sell agricultural waste to CBG plants, creating an additional revenue stream.

Globally, investments in renewable energy have surged, with clean energy spending now nearly double that of fossil fuels. In 2024, total energy investment is expected to exceed $3 trillion, with $2 trillion allocated to clean energy technologies and infrastructure.

Indian Oil-GPS Renewables JV is investing 1,200 crore to set up 10 CBG plants across India in FY26. These plants will produce 5,475 tonnes per annum (TPA) of CBG, along with fertilizers and biomass pellets. Locations include Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh.

Last November, Reliance Industries announced a massive investment of ₹65,000 crore (approximately US$ 7.5 billion) to set up 500 CBG plants in Andhra Pradesh over the next 5 years.

The SATAT initiative (Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation) aims to establish 5,000 CBG plants by 2023-24, with an estimated investment of ₹2 lakh crore. This program is designed to boost clean fuel availability and create employment opportunities.

Financial analyses indicate that CBG investments offer promising returns, with growing demand for biomass blending in coal-based power plants and fertilizer markets. However, challenges include securing skilled manpower and ensuring stable feedstock supply.

Sirius Digitech, a JV of Adani and Sirius, Acquire Noida-based Coredge.io

Sirius Digitech, a joint venture between the Adani Group and Sirius International Holding, has acquired Noida-based Coredge.io Private Limited, announced Adani Enterprises, on Wednesday. Coredge.io is a cutting-edge sovereign AI and cloud platform company that offers secure and compliant cloud services for AI applications, ensuring data sovereignty. Coredge.io services are available across Japan, Singapore, and India.

The acquisition will enable Sirius Digitech to provide cloud services that empower organizations to leverage sovereign cloud innovations while retaining sensitive data within national borders. Coredge.io's expertise positions it as a leader in the field of sovereign cloud technology, and this move aligns with the growing demand for computation and sovereign data stack driven by artificial intelligence.

Founded as a bootstrap company in 2020, by Arif Khan – a JNTU graduate, Coredge.io has quickly expanded its client base across geographies like Japan, Singapore and India. Coredge aims to capitalize on the trillion-dollar global opportunity for sovereign cloud. Its expertise in accelerating hyper local cloud service providers with stringent data sovereignty and compliance measures has positioned it as a leader in the field.

“Partnering with Sirius marks an exciting new chapter for our sovereign AI and cloud platform business, both in India and globally,” said Arif Khan, CEO of Coredge.io “Together, we can accelerate the development and delivery of advanced AI services while upholding security, privacy and digital sovereignty principles, helping customers across the globe drive technological transformation while complying with their data ethics principles.”

Arif Khan, Founder & CEO, Coredge.io, is also the founder of ParserLab and co-founded VoerEir. Previously, he has also served as Chief Enterprise Architect in Ericsson. 

Coredge aims to build the complete solution stack for sovereign data centers that will include everything from bare metal servers to services, like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) built on open-source technologies, to enable Sirius Digitech to provide Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) as applications get built on its infrastructure.

Sports Discovery App Sportido Raises Funding led by Inflection Point Ventures and SucSEED Venture Partners

Noida-based Sports discovery app Sportido secures its second round of funding led by Inflection Point Ventures and SucSEED Venture Partners

Sportido, a sports discovery platform, seeks to solve the problem of majority of India’s urban adult population who want to play a sport but find it hard to gather people or lack access to good sports facilities. Sportido helps its users connect with like-minded people nearby and book venues online to play their sport. The start-up also provides its partner-venues with a facility management app (called ‘Charge by Sportido’) that enables them to track bookings and manage their customers and inventory. 

Founded by Neeraj Aggarwala (who had previously co-founded Easypolicy) and Akhil Ramachandran, Sportido aims to grow the ecosystem for sports and fitness enthusiasts. According to Neeraj, “The entire ecosystem is growing rapidly to cater to the increasing demand for Sports and Fitness. We have witnessed a 7x growth in the number of Sports facilities in just the last 3 years and Sportido’s platform helps us sit in the driver’s seat of this ecosystem.”

Since its previous fundraise in Oct 2018, Sportido has grown to 5 cities and their monthly sales have grown over 30x. Akhil Ramachandran mentions that “this growth is primarily due to stickiness of users and high repeat transactions. The average user has transacted 7 times in the last 6 months, which gives us a very high customer lifetime value.” On funding from IP Ventures Neeraj says, “This new round of investment will help Sportido in product enhancement and expanding to new cities.”

[caption id="attachment_139031" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Neeraj Aggarwala[/caption]

IP Ventures angel investor Mayank Jain, speaking on his investment in the start-up said, “Sportido is doing an amazing job in making these facilities accessible and developing the ecosystem so that it’s easy for common people to pursue sports. Sports is necessary for physical and mental fitness and a must for society as a whole.” Further, upon his experience with IP Ventures he expressed, “IPV has been a great learning experience for me. I’m impressed by the professionalism and approach in identifying, selecting and mentoring start-ups."

A combination of social networking and service-aggregation, Sportido helps its users discover places to play any sport with like-minded people around them, explore new sports, participate in events, and even find deals on clubs and gyms nearby. 

The app also enables its users to create their own event and invite participation from other users nearby who are interested in the same sport. The Company’s mission is to inspire healthier and happier communities by helping them rediscover the joy of Sport.

IP Ventures was founded in 2017 by a group of accomplished CXOs who come with rich experience in the start-up ecosystem, either as co-founders themselves or by leading their organizations through various stages of funding. Their expertise lies not only in financial aspects such as private equity and venture capital but also in business strategy, expansion and risk mitigation.

Noida-based Startup AdmitKard Raises $1 Mn in Funding led by Australian EdTech Fund Growth DNA

Noida-based study abroad admissions startup AdmitKard on Tuesday announced it has raised $1 million in pre-Series A round led by Australian EdTech fund Growth DNA. The round also saw participation from other investors based out of Australia and India.

Speaking about the investment, Piyush Bhartiya, Co-founder, AdmitKard, said, “We will use the capital to enhance our product, strengthen our AI-driven counseling algorithms, and blockchain managed partner contracts. We also plan to rapidly expand our presence across 100+ cities in India through our already thriving partner network.”

Founded by IIT and IIM graduates Piyush Bhartiya and Rachit Agrawal after their successful exit from their first startup “LifePad” in 2016, AdmitKard provides a “course to career” solution for students who are looking for cross-border admissions into universities and colleges. The startup uses the concept of “near-peer” mentoring and AI/ML to assist in decision making. It connects students aspiring to study abroad with the students already studying in universities overseas through the AdmitKard platform for advice.

“AdmitKard is a data-enabled social platform which helps in eliminating information asymmetry and building trust among aspirants,” said Rachit. "It is a socially active platform by the students, for the students. Current students are passionate to guide aspirants on AdmitKard as they feel they were misguided when they were applying to study abroad,” he added.

AdmitKard has already partnered with multiple service providers ranging from test prep, student accommodation, education loans, banking, forex, etc., making it a complete solution for every student seeking to study abroad.

The startup helps students for applying to 1,000+ universities and colleges in countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many more. With over 100,000 courses listed on AdmitKard, it claims to cover 95 percent of the global requirement of international students.

Dheeraj Bhatia, Co-founder of Kips Learning Solutions, who led the deal from India, said, “Student experience for college admissions both for India and international and allied services are broken and underserved. The AdmitKard approach of product and network is the key to solve the scalability issue of this domain, and will enable us to serve students from around the world.”

In a statement, the startup said every year, more than five million students seek cross border admissions with the majority of them traveling to the US, the UK, Europe, Australia, and Canada, collectively paying more than $100 billion in fees and another $25 billion in allied services.

Not surprisingly, India is a key contributor to the student out-bound flow, only second to China. With multiple new countries promoting themselves as an education hub and India too joining the race, the total number of students going abroad to study is expected to double by 2025, it added. At present, AdmitKard competes with Indian and global players like SchoolApply, CollegeVine, CollegeDekho, Collegedunia, Shiksha Abroad, Kings Learning, and Hotcourses Abroad among others, which also help students fulfill their overseas education dreams.

IIM-Lucknow Incubated Skilancer Raises Seed Funding for its Robotic Water-less Solar Panel Cleaners

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-Lucknow) incubated startup, Skilancer solar, which designs and manufactures automatic robotic, self-powered, water-less Solar Module cleaners for decentralized, rooftop, and utility scale solar power plants, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Alfa Ventures, a proprietary fund launched by angel investor Dhianu Das, reported VC Circle.

Founded in 2017, Manish Das and Neeraj Kumar (IIT Jodhpur alumni), Skilancer will use the funds raised in upgrading its product design and technology as well as in building its team and expand geographically.

Skilancer is a centrally controlled, self-powered, robot for automatic cleaning of solar panels with elements of Artificial Intelligence (AI).





Incubated at L-incubator of IIM Lucknow, Skilancer raised pre-seed funding from there in March last year. L- Incubator at IIM, Lucknow houses business startups and provides them with seed funding, office space, mentorship, and networking opportunities with various investors.

According a recent research report, the global solar panel cleaning systems market estimated to grow with a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period from 2018 to 2026. After 2018, the year of uncertainty for a global solar panel as well as generation market, 2019 has already begun to show a positive outlook. The global installed solar PV capacity is expected to cross 1 Trillion watts in the next 4 years.

Solar Panel Cleaning Robot in particular has been the major product in the Other Solar Energy Related Products market over the past year, and it was very popular in India, United States, Turkey, Australia and UAE. according to Alibaba sales & inventory, India, with 21.93% leads the market shares of these countries. The US is second with 14.06% market share foolowed by Turkey:3.82%, Australia:3.77%, UAE:2.76% and rest have 53.66% share

Dhianu Das, Founder, Alfa Ventures commented, "I am absolutely bullish on India’s solar energy story. New installations in 2019 will reach nearly 14 gigawatts. This is about 50% more than the capacity added last year. This is where I see potential for a business like Skilancer Solar."

Prior to investing in Skilancer, Alfa Ventures had invested in an another AI led startup, CivilCops, a government tech startup and social intelligence platform.

AI Based Crowd-Sourcing Platform 'My Mobiforce' Raises $200K in Angel Funding

Noida based Crowd-sourcing Platform My Mobiforce providing on-demand Field Services raised US$ 200K from a US-based angel investor Mr Arpan Prakash and Mr Sanjiv Mital who is also an Advisor, Mentor and a Seasoned Angel Investor.

My Mobiforce is trying to solve one the biggest challenges of the brands and companies to implement on-demand Field Services by providing them with a technology platform to find a qualified field talent at the right time at the right place.

With the advancements in the space of IOT, Field Service industry is moving towards proactive & predictive service management. A huge amount of field service calls will be generated through the billions of connected devices thereby, preparing brands to handle this dynamic flow of service calls. Crowd-sourcing is emerging to be the best fit solution.

My MobiForce aims to create an extensive network of qualified Field technicians for brands to grow and expand their business without worrying much about Service Operations, hence, generating jobs for our Service Partners. The industry is moving from in-housing to out-sourcing to crowd-sourcing which is the need of the hour by sharing of resources and shifting the complete service operations cost model from Capex to Opex.

“With the funds coming in, the fund raised will be utilised for aggregation of a strong talent pool to serve brands looking for services around Connectivity & Connected devices. We plan to grow our sales team to add more enterprises and SMB clients to increase the service transactions number from 15,000 to 45,000 per month in the next 6 months. Strong focus is towards building a Technology around AI based Pricing Insight Engine, which can help the clients to pay the right price for the desired services”, says, Dheeraj Khatter, Co-Founder My Mobiforce.

With our current operations in 10 cities with 2000+ freelancers and 1000+ Partners, My Mobiforce is serving Clients like HCL, Hughes, Tata Nelco, QTek Systems, Airtel, Voltas, Intex, Lloyd, POS Solutions, Xtreme Media, Firstouch and many more.

"Every service-oriented organisation have been using freelancers and Contractors in a very unorganised fashion and a lot of these technicians don’t even have a profile. My Mobiforce is trying to give a name and a face to all these skilled workforces by creating their profile, training them and giving brands the right technology platform to connect with these people in an organised manner", adds Mr Himanshu Kumar, Co-Founder My Mobiforce.

My Mobiforce Platform aims to make the Crowd-sourcing feasible for the Brands by integrating with their existing CRM like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamic etc. to leverage workforce on Cloud. SMBs & OEMs can use the cloud-based platform to configure CRM, projects, service Incidents with a bid price and can leverage AI based matchmaking which connects them with the right available talent within a few minutes.

Brands can set Auto Rules to select the right technicians and with the prominent features like reverse bidding, Mobility, real-time tracking, Proof of Service Delivery and auto alerts, customers can track the task from creation to Closure. The platform also takes care of payment settlement with contractors and freelancers which was a big hassle for brands.

[Top Image - MyMobiForce@Facebook]

Women-centric Online Fashion Brands Faballey & Indya Raises ₹60 Cr from SAIF Partners

Noida-based High Street Essentials (HSE), which owns women-centric fashion brands, FabAlley and Indya, have raised Rs 60 crore in a Series B funding from SAIF Partners.

This round of funding also includes a partial secondary share sale by Indian Angel Network (IAN), which was early investor in the startup. IAN had invested undisclosed amount as seed fund in Faballey, in November 2013.

With latest round of funding, HSE, which is led by women founders, has raised a total of about $11.3 million in funding over four rounds, including this one. The latest is the third round funding by the startup, which last raised its Series A funding from India Quotient in October 2016 and a round of debt from Trifecta Capital earlier this year.

The startup intends to use the fresh funding towards increasing distribution, product expansion, brand-building and strengthening its technology.

Founded in 2012, by Tanvi Malik and Shivani Poddar, who quit their high-paying jobs in Titan Industries, Unilever and Avendus Capital, HSE had started FabAlley as a highly curated women-centered accessories only store. It then grown to become brand of globally trendy apparel and accessories both, and all of which designed in-house.

In 2016, HSE launched 'Indya', a second by company that offers contemporary Indian wear with modern and distinctive Indo-western elements for the women-centric market.

The company claims to have turned profitable in FY18 with gross sales of Rs 80 crore and said it was on track to close FY19 at Rs 150 crore, while remaining Ebitda positive.

“The capital infusion will help us scale our offline presence rapidly from 15 exclusive outlets and 120 shop-in-shops to 50 and 300, respectively, by the end of FY20. We will invest in Athleisure and our plus size brand, Curve. We will also look at amplifying our brands” said Shivani Podda.

Tanvi Malik added “Our goal is to capture both online and offline growth opportunities by leveraging our channel-agnostic approach through phygital store experiences, virtual fitting rooms, seamlessly merged forward and reverse logistics – all aimed at benefitting from the strategic advantages of both channels, while minimising their inherent disadvantages.”

Recent Funding Led By SAIF Partner

SAIF Partners, which is a Hong Kong-based venture and growth capital fund, had recently led a $3.3 million Series A round of funding of IIT Madras incubated Internet of Things (IoT) Startup, DeTect Technologies, in last month.

In October, SAIF had also led a $3.1 million funding of Meesho, a Bengaluru-based social e-commerce startup backed by Y Combinator. Prior to this, in September this year, SAIF led a Series A round of funding worth $2 million of Sensehawk, a Bangalore and California-based startup that performs data analysis from autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Drones.

Source - Financial Express

PayPal, Temasek Invests $125 Mn in Noida-based Payment Startup Pine Labs

Noida-based point-of-sales (PoS) deploying company Pine Labs has raised $125 million from Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore and PayPal, the largest Us-based digital payments company. Both Paypal and Temasek have acquired minority stakes in Pine Labs.

Sequoia India, which first invested in Pine Labs in 2009, remains the company’s largest shareholder. This round is followed by the round that Pine Labs had announced in March of this year when it raised $82 million from private equity fund Actis and California-based investment company Altimeter Capital. Till date, the company has raised total of $208 milion in four different rounds including this one.

Founded in 1998 by Rajul Garg, Tarun Upaday, Pine Labs offers a cloud-based PoS payments solutions, allowing merchants to accept credit or debit card payments, as well as latest methods such as e-wallets, QR code payment solutions and unified payments interface (UPI)-based solutions.

Pine Labs plans to use the deep network of Temasek in multiple Asian geographies to help Pine Labs scale up operations in the south east Asian region and further with the technological capabilities of PayPal, Pine Labs is looking to strengthen its tech play as well.

Moreover, as Pine Labs is expanding its product suite by building new layers of services for merchants, banks and other communities in the payment ecosystem, PayPal’s global presence and strong product expertise will make the ally with Pine Labs invaluable.

Speaking on the fresh funding, Lokvir Kapoor, founder of Pine Labs, said, "We’re teaming up with Temasek and PayPal at a time when the Indian payments market is at an inflexion point. The investments will help us move a step closer to our vision for building a world-class merchant-centric payments ecosystem."

With $15 billion worth of transactions processed annually, Pine Labs is used by over 65,000 merchants across India’s retail, e-commerce, electronics, food and beverage, fashion, financial, pharmacy, telecom and airlines industries. The company aims to reach 1 million payment acceptance points in India in the next three to five years.

It may be recalled that just yesterday, an another payment startup Tonetag too raised $10 million from Amazon and Mastercard, along with others.

In February, ICICI bank bank had invested ₹99 Lakhs in Mumbai-based Biometric Payment Startup Tapits.

In January, Grab, a Singapore based on-demand firm, acquired Bangalore-based payments startup iKaaz. Ikaaz’ technology stack encompasses a range of innovations, such as NFC, QR-code, audio-based payments as well as bill payments, online payments and P2P.

Meanwhile, A recent study done by Fallible.co, a security firm working towards escalating the security of tech startups has made some shocking revelations. According to the study, many of the popular Indian startups whose services we avail online possess a potential credit card detail theft for the customers.

The above news was first reported in LiveMint.

OYE! Loans Receives $2.25 Mn in Funding from UK's GAIN Credit

Noida-based OYE Fintech, which operates a consumer-focused lending platform called OYE! Loans, has raised $2.25 million (about ₹15 crore) from GAIN Credit, Inc. OYE! Loans currently serves new-to-credit and new-to-workforce consumers with simple, timely and affordable One Year EMI loans (hence the brand OYE!), with ticket-sizes ranging between 10K and 1L INR.

The company leverages alternative data to assess risk on customers who have thin or non-existent footprints on the credit bureau. The loan application to disbursal process is largely online, enabling for quick turn-around times of less than 2 business days – an attribute that has strengthened its growing reputation as a lender-of-choice within its target markets.

With the support of Northern Arc Capital (formerly known as IFMR Capital), its lending partner, OYE Fintech will leverage the new funds to strengthen its underwriting models aimed at new-to-credit consumers, scale-up operations, and enhance its footprint to cover multiple cities (currently OYE! Loans is only operating in Chennai). In the process, the company will stay focused on leveraging the digital ecosystem to evolve towards a completely paperless process with virtually no human intervention – a business model that its parent company GAIN Credit has perfected from years of operation in the UK.

“This funding marks a reiteration of GAIN Credit’s long-term vision of becoming a global fintech leader, driven by the mission of empowering the lives of the underserved and underbanked by providing responsible access to credit. In addition to the capital provided, OYE! is built on the back of our strong digital lending technology and talent footprint in India”, said Mukund Venkatesh, Managing Director India - Global Analytics India (a subsidiary of GAIN Credit, Inc.).

Congratulating OYE! on the development, Kshama Fernandez, CEO - Northern Arc Capital (formerly IFMR Capital), said, “As OYE!’s principal debt partner, we are pleased with the strong growth and expansion plans of the company. We look forward to continuing our support to the company in its journey, as it resonates with our aim of empowering financially-excluded households and sectors with access to credit solutions”.

Echoing the positive sentiment, Pradeep Rathnam, President - OYE Fintech, observed, “GAIN Credit’s investment in OYE! enables us to accelerate our plans to build scalable India-specific credit products with a focus on robust alternate credit scoring and fraud detection machine-learning models. As a result, we will be much better placed in identifying the right customers, setting the optimum loan amounts, and delivering compelling value propositions in a seamless, frictionless manner.

Buoyed by the Indian government’s laser-focus on digital transformation and measures aimed at fostering a cashless economy, the country’s fintech sector is forecasted to be worth $2.4 Bn by 2020 (KPMG report in 2016) presenting a significant opportunity for startups like us which are singularly focused on providing responsible credit solutions to those lacking access to mainstream financial services.”

Recent Loan & Lending Focussed Startup Fundings

Few days back, Chennai-based OpenTap, a startup focusing on the alternate lending segment, has raised about ₹3 crore funding from HNIs (high networth individuals).

Last week, Rubique Technologies PVT LTD, India’s largest online financial matchmaking platform has raised an undisclosed amount funding led by Japan’s Recruit Group and Russian venture capital management company, Emery Capital.

Prior to this, Capital Float, a Bengaluru headquartered digital lending startup, has raised $22 million in equity funding from Amazon Inc.

In that same month, New Delhi-based Namaste Credit, an another fintech category startup has raised USD 3.8 million in series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners.

PaisaDukan.com a P2P Lending marketplace solely owned by Mumbai based FinTech start-up BigWin Infotech, today announced a secured seed funding of $650K through Angel funding route.

OYE! Loans Receives $2.25 Mn in Funding from UK's GAIN Credit

Noida-based OYE Fintech, which operates a consumer-focused lending platform called OYE! Loans, has raised $2.25 million (about ₹15 crore) from GAIN Credit, Inc. OYE! Loans currently serves new-to-credit and new-to-workforce consumers with simple, timely and affordable One Year EMI loans (hence the brand OYE!), with ticket-sizes ranging between 10K and 1L INR.

The company leverages alternative data to assess risk on customers who have thin or non-existent footprints on the credit bureau. The loan application to disbursal process is largely online, enabling for quick turn-around times of less than 2 business days – an attribute that has strengthened its growing reputation as a lender-of-choice within its target markets.

With the support of Northern Arc Capital (formerly known as IFMR Capital), its lending partner, OYE Fintech will leverage the new funds to strengthen its underwriting models aimed at new-to-credit consumers, scale-up operations, and enhance its footprint to cover multiple cities (currently OYE! Loans is only operating in Chennai). In the process, the company will stay focused on leveraging the digital ecosystem to evolve towards a completely paperless process with virtually no human intervention – a business model that its parent company GAIN Credit has perfected from years of operation in the UK.

“This funding marks a reiteration of GAIN Credit’s long-term vision of becoming a global fintech leader, driven by the mission of empowering the lives of the underserved and underbanked by providing responsible access to credit. In addition to the capital provided, OYE! is built on the back of our strong digital lending technology and talent footprint in India”, said Mukund Venkatesh, Managing Director India - Global Analytics India (a subsidiary of GAIN Credit, Inc.).

Congratulating OYE! on the development, Kshama Fernandez, CEO - Northern Arc Capital (formerly IFMR Capital), said, “As OYE!’s principal debt partner, we are pleased with the strong growth and expansion plans of the company. We look forward to continuing our support to the company in its journey, as it resonates with our aim of empowering financially-excluded households and sectors with access to credit solutions”.

Echoing the positive sentiment, Pradeep Rathnam, President - OYE Fintech, observed, “GAIN Credit’s investment in OYE! enables us to accelerate our plans to build scalable India-specific credit products with a focus on robust alternate credit scoring and fraud detection machine-learning models. As a result, we will be much better placed in identifying the right customers, setting the optimum loan amounts, and delivering compelling value propositions in a seamless, frictionless manner.

Buoyed by the Indian government’s laser-focus on digital transformation and measures aimed at fostering a cashless economy, the country’s fintech sector is forecasted to be worth $2.4 Bn by 2020 (KPMG report in 2016) presenting a significant opportunity for startups like us which are singularly focused on providing responsible credit solutions to those lacking access to mainstream financial services.”

Recent Loan & Lending Focussed Startup Fundings

Few days back, Chennai-based OpenTap, a startup focusing on the alternate lending segment, has raised about ₹3 crore funding from HNIs (high networth individuals).

Last week, Rubique Technologies PVT LTD, India’s largest online financial matchmaking platform has raised an undisclosed amount funding led by Japan’s Recruit Group and Russian venture capital management company, Emery Capital.

Prior to this, Capital Float, a Bengaluru headquartered digital lending startup, has raised $22 million in equity funding from Amazon Inc.

In that same month, New Delhi-based Namaste Credit, an another fintech category startup has raised USD 3.8 million in series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners.

PaisaDukan.com a P2P Lending marketplace solely owned by Mumbai based FinTech start-up BigWin Infotech, today announced a secured seed funding of $650K through Angel funding route.

Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida Best Place for Startups; Home To 8,772 Startups in 2017

While we know India has the third largest ecosystem in the world, which are the places within the country that are most preferred by budding entrepreneurs and startups to start their journey?

According to a recent report from Data analytics company Tracxn Technologies, NCR, which comprises of New Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida currently houses a whopping 8,772 startups, which is the highest in the whole of the country. Not only this, the three cities also house some of the most rapidly evolving technology hubs in the country within themselves, separately. Further, the combined region can also pride itself on housing the highest number of online retail startups in the country at 1,288 startups. Some of the popular startups in the region include Paytm Mall, Snapdeal, Shopclues and Limeroad.

The rise of Delhi NCR as India's most preferred location for starting up might seem a shocker to some people, especially considering the fact that when the entrepreneurial wave first hit India, it was the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad that had dominated the Indian startup ecosystem and became instant favourite locations among the industry people. While the startup fever might have entered Delhi NCR late than its counterparts, but it is surely spreading through the cities' tribes faster than any other place in the Indian subcontinent.

Being the country's capital seems to have worked wonders for Delhi's startup ecosystem. Startups in Delhi NCR have easy access to important government offices, top talent from institutes such as IIT Delhi and Delhi College of Engineering etc., a fast pace city life with a mix of people having different opinions, choices, languages, and a business hub of some of the world's top most companies.

Entrepreneurship seems to be the flavour of the season for Indians. A recent survey by Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm Randstad had revealed that the South Asian country is the keenest when it comes to taking the entrepreneurship route.

The survey highlighted that out of the 400 Indian workers the firm surveyed, 56 per cent were considering hanging their boots and starting businesses of their own. According to the global recruitment firm, the figure was the highest globally.

India is currently seeing the emergence of a new generation of youngsters who are capitalising on the hard-won financial security of their parents and venturing out of the mundane 9 to 5 job routine to try their luck in the risky startup business. More and more young people in the second largest populated country on the Earth are now embracing the startup culture, which can be seen as a stark contrast to the previous generations of the country which aggressively endorsed employment stability above all else.

According to the Randstad survey, the Indian youth's attraction towards entrepreneurship and startups is sparked by the current startup friendly atmosphere in the country. Some even cited government's initiative such as the Rs 10,000 crore Startup India fund when answering their reason behind favouring entrepreneurship over a regular service job.

This development was first reported in Economic Times.

Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida Best Place for Startups; Home To 8,772 Startups in 2017

While we know India has the third largest ecosystem in the world, which are the places within the country that are most preferred by budding entrepreneurs and startups to start their journey?

According to a recent report from Data analytics company Tracxn Technologies, NCR, which comprises of New Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida currently houses a whopping 8,772 startups, which is the highest in the whole of the country. Not only this, the three cities also house some of the most rapidly evolving technology hubs in the country within themselves, separately. Further, the combined region can also pride itself on housing the highest number of online retail startups in the country at 1,288 startups. Some of the popular startups in the region include Paytm Mall, Snapdeal, Shopclues and Limeroad.

The rise of Delhi NCR as India's most preferred location for starting up might seem a shocker to some people, especially considering the fact that when the entrepreneurial wave first hit India, it was the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad that had dominated the Indian startup ecosystem and became instant favourite locations among the industry people. While the startup fever might have entered Delhi NCR late than its counterparts, but it is surely spreading through the cities' tribes faster than any other place in the Indian subcontinent.

Being the country's capital seems to have worked wonders for Delhi's startup ecosystem. Startups in Delhi NCR have easy access to important government offices, top talent from institutes such as IIT Delhi and Delhi College of Engineering etc., a fast pace city life with a mix of people having different opinions, choices, languages, and a business hub of some of the world's top most companies.

Entrepreneurship seems to be the flavour of the season for Indians. A recent survey by Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm Randstad had revealed that the South Asian country is the keenest when it comes to taking the entrepreneurship route.

The survey highlighted that out of the 400 Indian workers the firm surveyed, 56 per cent were considering hanging their boots and starting businesses of their own. According to the global recruitment firm, the figure was the highest globally.

India is currently seeing the emergence of a new generation of youngsters who are capitalising on the hard-won financial security of their parents and venturing out of the mundane 9 to 5 job routine to try their luck in the risky startup business. More and more young people in the second largest populated country on the Earth are now embracing the startup culture, which can be seen as a stark contrast to the previous generations of the country which aggressively endorsed employment stability above all else.

According to the Randstad survey, the Indian youth's attraction towards entrepreneurship and startups is sparked by the current startup friendly atmosphere in the country. Some even cited government's initiative such as the Rs 10,000 crore Startup India fund when answering their reason behind favouring entrepreneurship over a regular service job.

This development was first reported in Economic Times.

Noida based Uber-for-Farmers Startup Founded By Ex-CEO Airtel Raises $10 Mn

Noida-based EM3 Agri Services, an Agri-tech startup which offers farm services and machinery on rent, has raised $10 million in series-B round from London-based non-profit Global Innovation Fund (GIF), a global innovation fund backed by the governments of US, UK, Sweden and Australia.

Founded in 2013 by Rohtash Mal, a former CEO of Bharti Airtel and his US-educated son Adwitiya Mal, EM3 is inspired by ridesharing firms like Uber and aims to "Uberise" farm services in India by bringing relevant global technologies and equipment to India and make them accessible and affordable to Indian farmers with FAAS (farming-as-a-service) where they pay per use.

EM3 Agri operates under the brand name Samadhan in Madhya Pradesh and parts of Gujarat. The company offers farm equipment such as ground-levelling machines, deep-ploughing equipment and power harrows for making seed beds to farmers on rent.

In 2015, the startup had raised its first round of equity funding of Rs 27.5 crore from Soros Economic Development Fund, via Aspada Investments, a fund that focuses on early-stage businesses in India in sectors like healthcare, agriculture and education.

EM3 Agri said that post latest funding it will expand into Rajasthan in phases, beginning with districts in the south. Over the next 12-18 months the company will set up operational outposts called Samadhan Kendras -- which maintain the equipment and double up as customer-facing stores—across the state.

"We have impacted nearly 15,000 farmers, our equipment touches 300-plus acres of farm land everyday. Currently we have 160 employees," says Rohtash Mal, 66, who has over 35 years of experience spanning six industries -- agri-machinery, agriculture, telecom, automobiles, paper and chemicals across companies such as Bharti Airtel, Maruti and Escorts.

EM3 has partnerships with John Deere, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of farm equipment with a turnover of $40 billion so that all technologies can be made available to the farmer; a joint venture with Trimble that offers precision farm services; Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC), a financial consortium specialising in agriculture financing and with ITC via its e-Choupals.

To recall, last year in October Mahindra & Mahindra group too had launched similar services called Trringo for farmers in India where they can hire/rent tractors, and the company had even invested Rs.10 crore of amount into it.

Paytm Unveils Payments Bank, Plans To Open 500 Mn Accounts By 2020

Finally, after waiting for one long year Paytm has unveiled its Payments Bank, becoming the third payments bank in the country, after Airtel and India Post.

It will offer customers a 4 percent annual interest rate which the lowest among the three payments banks that is, Airtel offers about 7.3 percent interest and India Post about 5.5 percent annually. Apart from offering its customers cashbacks on deposits, Payment bank will offer zero charges on all online transactions and no minimum balance requirement.

Commenting on the development, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman, Paytm Payments Bank said, “RBI has given us an opportunity to create a new kind of banking model in the world. We are proud that our customer deposits will be safely invested in government bonds, and be used for nation building. None of our deposits will be converted into risky assets”.

Having its first branch in Noida Paytm plans to open 31 branches and 3,000 customer service points in a year. The company is setting up KYC centres across India to complete KYC for customers and make them eligible for a Payments Bank account.

Paytm Payments Bank accounts will initially be available on an invite-only basis. In the first phase, the company will roll out its beta banking app for its employees and associates. Paytm customers can request an invite by going to www.PaytmPaymentsBank.com or on the Paytm iOS app.

Every customer to open a Payments Bank account will get a cashback of Rs. 250 as soon they bring deposits of a total of Rs. 25,000 in their bank account. The account will have zero balance requirement and every online transaction (such as IMPS, NEFT, RTGS) will be free of charge. For savings accounts, the company would also offer an interest of 4% per annum. The company will also offer current accounts to its millions of merchants.

“ Our ambition is to become India’s most trusted and consumer-friendly bank. Leveraging power of technology, we aim to become the preferred bank for 500 million Indians by 2020,” said Renu Satti, CEO, Paytm Payments Bank.

Run and operated by One97 Communications, Paytm founder and CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a majority stake in the company, with the remaining share owned by One97 Communications Pvt Ltd. The Paytm Payments Bank aims to build a new business model in the banking industry that is focused on bringing financial services to hundreds of millions of unserved or underserved consumers across India.

The company is aiming to replicate this success in the banking sector and further drive cashless transactions with the Paytm Payments Bank. The current Paytm Wallet will move to the Paytm Payments Bank in the same capacity, i.e. KYC Wallet as KYC Wallet and minimum detail KYC Wallet as minimum detail KYC Wallet. Users will continue to be able to use their Paytm Wallet in the same manner as before.

Noida-Based Brevistay Is A Kind of 'Oyo' To Book Accommodation On Hourly Basis

Whether it's your coffee or your aircraft seat, nowadays everything can be customized as per your taste and need. So, why shouldn't the hospitality sector offer its customers the same thing? Well, we might be able to customize our rooms, their facilities, but the one thing that every hotel guest has ever wanted to do was to customize their hotel bills according to their stay hours. This particular dream of every frequent hotel guest was realized when a few short-stay startups like Stayuncle.com, Mistay.in and 6hourly.com etc. entered the hospitality sector. Joining this short-stay hotel segment race is a Noida based startup called Brevistay.

Started by four engineering graduates in May, 2016, breviStay claims to be a one stop solution for one's way to hotels in a totally customized manner. With breviStay by one's side, they can book quality hotels stay for a short period like 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or a day long and then pay accordingly to the number of hours they have booked the room for. The added bonus, no fixed check-in/check-out time.

Having started their journey only a few months ago, the startup is currently only catering to short-stays hotel needs in Delhi and Noida. One can book themselves a breviStay either over a call or visiting their website. In order to make the service more user-friendly, the startup plans to launch their android application by the end of this month.

According to the startup, the response from customers has been quite promising, with almost 10-15 inquiries coming their way through various sources for people looking for rooms in Noida or Delhi.

Brevistay is a concoction of ideas and hard work of the fantastic four -- Prateek Singh, Aditya Naithani, Shubham Agarwal and Ronak Khandelwal.

Prateek Singh- Having graduated in Computer Science and Engineering from Amity University, Noida, Prateek's fluent skills in C, C++, Java and B2Bi is helping Brevistay grow and become better each passing day. Currently, at Brevistay, he is responsible for mainly handling the operations of the startup. In addition to this, he also provides technical assistance to the team.

Aditya Naithani- Since Aditya's expertise lie in Web development as a full stack developer, he is responsible for all technical related aspects of Brevistay. Also a graduate in Computer Science and Engineering from Amity University, Noida, Aditya has an experience of working as a freelancer for various companies and as a full time employee for Shiksha Overseas.

Shubham Agarwal- Handling the research and planning department at Brevistay, Shubham is a graduate in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Chandigarh Group of Colleges, Mohali. Prior to Brevistay, he has worked as a Marketing analyst for MagicPin. In addition to research and planning, Shubham also provides marketing assistance to the team.

Ronak Khandelwal- A graduate in Mechanical and Automation Engineering from Amity University, Noida, Ronak handles the Marketing and Client acquisition at Brevistay. Prior to this, he worked for an year as a Business development Manager at Greymeter.

With Brevistay, the four co-founders aim to make short-stays a luxury that everyone can enjoy rather than being just available to a selected few in a few elite hotels.

In order to achieve the same, their immediate plan is to expand to 6 cities including Jaipur, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram by the end of this month, and provide 30-50 bookings in a day.

The bootstrapped startup, is currently on a lookout for funding.

Let's see if Brevistay is able to survive its competition and make short-stays a reality for everyone in India.

This IIT Alumni Led Online Laundry Is An Affordable Service To Every Middle Household

A Noida based startup called Dhobilite promises to make all your laundry burden lite in a jiffy.

If for once you're thinking that Dhobilite is similar to all the other online laundry services currently operating in the market, you're highly mistaken. In addition to the regular cloth laundry and dry cleaning service, the startup also offers its customers with shoe dry cleaning and car wash and dry cleaning services. Sounds interesting? Well, it is.

Started in the year 2013, Dhobilite's mission is to make laundry a hassle-free chore for people. It's user-friendly website and Android app helps it to provide its users with an end-to-end solution for all their laundry needs, right from placing their orders, tracking them, rate list, history, coupons, referrals, rating and payment solutions and integration with PayTm. Further, in addition to providing its customers with end-to-end solutions, the startup has taken upon itself the responsibility of providing end-to-end solutions to all the vendors associated with it.

Nowadays lives have become so fast and tiresome that at the end of the day the last thing we want to do is laundry. But, like food, it is one thing that we ought to do in order to live a healthy life. This is where Dhobilite enters your lives and shoos away your laundry troubles right from your clothes, shoes to your car.

The startup believes that they debuted in the market at the right time, and this has helped them garner important knowledge about the market and technology. And, now that the market is ready to reach its true potential, they are best placed to reap the fruits of hard work they have been laying for the last three years since entering the market.

The startup has recently launched its operation in Gurugram (Gurgaon) market, where it is offering premium laundry services which has better TAT, individual packaging options, etc.



The Noida based startup knows that the market's need is just laundry, and other things like technology, branding etc. are just enablers that helps them reach their customers demands and expectations. Hence, they believe in investing most of their time and resources in providing 100% quality laundry services at the best rates possible rather than going for expensive marketing and advertising.

Due its clear understanding of the market needs, the startup has been able to maintain an increasing growth tangent since inception.

The following figures speak for themselves in terms of Dhobilite's noteworthy growth since the year 2013.

• Order served has increased from 3000 in financial year 2013 to 4500 in financial year 2014 and further to 6500 in last financial year.


• 80% MoM retention rate of customers


• Approx 40% orders are from online platform (app / web)


• Avg delivery time of 2.2 days (It include delays due to customer unavailablity, otherwise order gets ready in around 36 hrs.)


• 80% of order are picked and delivered on time.



• Average number of complaints of below 1 percent (this includes complaints of web/app, behavioral issues, timing, pressing, washing, billing, etc.)

The startup is the labour of hard-work of two IIT Varanasi alumni, Nishant Tripath and Abhishek Kumar. Both of them have a strong 13+ experience in technology and cleaning services and a sound knowledge in process automation and behavior analysis data capture techniques.

After forming a strong grip in Noida and nearby areas, the startup, which hasn't received any funding as of yet, has recently made a foray into the Gurgaon market and so far the feedback has been positive. In the near future, the startup aims to have its presence in whole of NCR and other major cities like Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

Noida-Based WeTravelSolo Lets You Do 'Real Life' Social Networking Through Travel

WeTravelSolo - On reading the company's name, many might infer that I'm talking about just another travel company in the town offering travel packages for different locations. Well, those who have already inferred this, are going to be left real disappointed, as Wetravelsolo is not a quintessential Travel Company.

Noida based WeTravelSolo focuses on making its users meet like-minded people in real life, through travel. The startup claims to be India's first online Solo Traveler Community, which organizes special interest Tours for Solo Travelers. Bridging the divide between the ever increasing online and offline world of people.

In the 21st century, as we starting growing up, we slowly slowly become so much self-occupied and caught up in our own lives that the social circle of our real life starts depleting, while the online one starts increasing at a good pace. Wetravelsolo was founded with an intention of curbing this very disorder of the fast-paced lives that we live in nowadays.

Traveling is considered as one of the most effective methods to meet new people with least inhibitions. We all have the urge to travel. While in some it's clearly visible, others have successfully been able to hide the itch under some or the other worldly pleasure like money, work etc.

In this 21st century world, it's no less than a task to find like-minded people to travel with you. Even if you're successful in finding some, it's highly unlikely that they would all want to travel with you at the same time, to the same place and in the same way as you want. www.Wetravelsolo.com solves this very problem of the current generation.

While Solo Traveling might look and sound very glamorous outside, it is very boring and difficult task in real. Further, whether people agree or not, even while traveling solo, most of us are looking for ways to meet new people. So, the Wetravelsolo.com team came out with a quick and permanent solution for this travelling problem. The startup helps connect solo travelers with other solo travelers and then lets them travel solo together with each other thus taking care of your on trip Experience.

The startup aims to build a Community for the Solo Travelers. It wishes to accomplish the same by joining the three aspects of the statement, Solo, Travel and Community with the power of technology.

Their main focus is to empower every traveler by the following aspects:
a. He/She can travel solo.
b. For every Solo Traveler, there is a community which connects with you and your passion for traveling.
c. Giving hand crafted budget, experiential or backpacking trips by other influential travelers.

With such a unique concept at hand, receiving funding hasn't been that much of a task for the company. They have received Seed funding from Frontline Strategy Limited, a Mauritius based investment company and . Ccube Angels, a Singapore based angel investors community. Both the investors have acquired a minority stake in the startup.

[caption id="attachment_102501" align="alignleft" width="275"] Shefali Walia[/caption]

WeTravelSolo was founded in the year 2014 by Shefali Walia, an MBA from Amity University. She was born and bought up in Ambala and moved to Delhi in 2008 after joining Amity University for her MBA. After completing MBA, she joined New Look Skin Care (New Look Laser Clinics) in marketing department. She has handled business and marketing strategy for growth of different reputed organizations till the time she came up with the idea of WeTravelSolo.

The current figures suggest quite a promising path ahead for the company. According to the figures, the startup has already been able to be build a strong community of 30000 Solo Travelers within such a short span of time. Further, their Community Mangers are talking to close to about 100 of Solo Travelers Daily.

The startup's immediate future plans includes coming up with their own Mobile Application which can prove to be a huge game changer for them and the travelling community.

So, if you always had the urge to travel but didn't have a group of like minded individuals to travel with, you now know where to follow your traveling passion.

Noida-Based WeTravelSolo Lets You Do 'Real Life' Social Networking Through Travel

WeTravelSolo - On reading the company's name, many might infer that I'm talking about just another travel company in the town offering travel packages for different locations. Well, those who have already inferred this, are going to be left real disappointed, as Wetravelsolo is not a quintessential Travel Company.

Noida based WeTravelSolo focuses on making its users meet like-minded people in real life, through travel. The startup claims to be India's first online Solo Traveler Community, which organizes special interest Tours for Solo Travelers. Bridging the divide between the ever increasing online and offline world of people.

In the 21st century, as we starting growing up, we slowly slowly become so much self-occupied and caught up in our own lives that the social circle of our real life starts depleting, while the online one starts increasing at a good pace. Wetravelsolo was founded with an intention of curbing this very disorder of the fast-paced lives that we live in nowadays.

Traveling is considered as one of the most effective methods to meet new people with least inhibitions. We all have the urge to travel. While in some it's clearly visible, others have successfully been able to hide the itch under some or the other worldly pleasure like money, work etc.

In this 21st century world, it's no less than a task to find like-minded people to travel with you. Even if you're successful in finding some, it's highly unlikely that they would all want to travel with you at the same time, to the same place and in the same way as you want. www.Wetravelsolo.com solves this very problem of the current generation.

While Solo Traveling might look and sound very glamorous outside, it is very boring and difficult task in real. Further, whether people agree or not, even while traveling solo, most of us are looking for ways to meet new people. So, the Wetravelsolo.com team came out with a quick and permanent solution for this travelling problem. The startup helps connect solo travelers with other solo travelers and then lets them travel solo together with each other thus taking care of your on trip Experience.

The startup aims to build a Community for the Solo Travelers. It wishes to accomplish the same by joining the three aspects of the statement, Solo, Travel and Community with the power of technology.

Their main focus is to empower every traveler by the following aspects:
a. He/She can travel solo.
b. For every Solo Traveler, there is a community which connects with you and your passion for traveling.
c. Giving hand crafted budget, experiential or backpacking trips by other influential travelers.

With such a unique concept at hand, receiving funding hasn't been that much of a task for the company. They have received Seed funding from Frontline Strategy Limited, a Mauritius based investment company and . Ccube Angels, a Singapore based angel investors community. Both the investors have acquired a minority stake in the startup.

[caption id="attachment_102501" align="alignleft" width="275"] Shefali Walia[/caption]

WeTravelSolo was founded in the year 2014 by Shefali Walia, an MBA from Amity University. She was born and bought up in Ambala and moved to Delhi in 2008 after joining Amity University for her MBA. After completing MBA, she joined New Look Skin Care (New Look Laser Clinics) in marketing department. She has handled business and marketing strategy for growth of different reputed organizations till the time she came up with the idea of WeTravelSolo.

The current figures suggest quite a promising path ahead for the company. According to the figures, the startup has already been able to be build a strong community of 30000 Solo Travelers within such a short span of time. Further, their Community Mangers are talking to close to about 100 of Solo Travelers Daily.

The startup's immediate future plans includes coming up with their own Mobile Application which can prove to be a huge game changer for them and the travelling community.

So, if you always had the urge to travel but didn't have a group of like minded individuals to travel with, you now know where to follow your traveling passion.

Noida-based Siftr Lets You Create Your Own Photography Website From Existing Online Content At Instagram, Flickr or Facebook

A picture is said to say a thousand words. It somewhere also depicts the story and the aspirations of the photographer behind it. Every photographer aspires to do something big in his/her career but, unfortunately, most of times their dreams are just confined to a Facebook page with borrowed likes. Changing this scenario and making these amazingly creative people realise their dreams, is a Noida-based startup called Siftr.

Launched a month ago, Siftr is a machine learning based photo curation platform. The platform auto-creates photographers' website from their existing online content present on sites like Instagram, Flickr, Behance, 500px or Facebook, and presents the best photographs in a visually appealing manner.

No doubt, there are hundreds of platforms (eg. Squarespace, Smugmug, etc.) already present online which help photographers create their own websites but the whole creation process involved in these sites is very painful. Further, keeping these sites always updated and fresh with all latest photos is an extremely tough task to achieve.

This is where Siftr's self-updating capability takes the cake and sets it apart from all the other platforms. A Siftr user is never asked to upload even a single photo himself to create/update his website. The platform uses artificial intelligence to continuously analyzes all your photos online and find the best shots to create visually appealing and professional photography shots.

As a result, Siftr claims to be the World's first zero-maintenance, self-updating website.

[caption id="attachment_101898" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Screenshot of a photography website created using Siftr platform[/caption]

The platform is indeed quite handy for pro photographers as Siftr eliminates the need for constant updating. One can just keep uploading new pictures on their preferred social networks and the Siftr platform automatically finds new photos and keeps adding the best ones to the website, which can then be customized according to the requirements. So, while having a client meeting a pro photographers can just bring his or her Siftr link/URL and save a lot of time collecting & curating photos.

Founded by Romil Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, Siftr was launched just 4 weeks ago and is currently fully bootstrapped. It has so far analysed more than 1 million photos.

"We haven't done any paid marketing till now, but plan to start that soon," said Romil. The founders current future plans involves keep building upon their machine learning platform and improve their photo curation algorithms.

Siftr's mission, as the co-founder of Siftr - Romil says is to help these hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers realise their photography dream and help them get more opportunities and nurture their talent further.

The startup's main target audience are the various hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers present out there. Due to the phenomenal rise in good quality mobile phone cameras and photography based social platforms, various people have realised their photography talent. Unfortunately though, because of have a day job in a non-photography domain, many aren't able to devote time to showcase their talent to the world.

[cp_special_text color="red" size="normal"]Special Text[/cp_special_text]

RingaBell Is Like Whatsapp For Reminders With Social/Productivity Features

In this ever busy, fast paced world, we're trying too hard for making ends meet that we often forget the important moments in our life like our parents anniversary, our best friend's first day at work etc. In situations like these one can always make use of some extra help which will make sure that we never ever forget anything and are always on time for every occasion. Providing such help in the 21st century is RingABell.

RingABell is a new free mobile app that lets one set free reminders to their friends smartphone that will ring off at the time and date specified by you and remind the other person to complete the specified task right on time.

More specifically, the app lets you set free reminders to your friends phone that rings off at the time specified by you and reminds the other person to complete the task. Simply add a Reminder with a title, date, and time, and reminder will be sent using push notification to the selected contact at the date and time you specify. Now no need to call or text others to complete the tasks. The app also has calendar to list all scheduled tasks with details of incoming and outgoing reminders.

Developed by Noida-based startup Share2People, RingABell is extremely user friendly as it's extremely easy to understand and use. Currently available on Android app store, RingABell can come as huge relief from all the money and time we used to waste in making those uncountable calls and texts to our friends in order to remind them to complete a particular task. RingABell app will also be available for iOS and Web by the month's end.

In order to distinguish themselves from the sea and establish an identity of their own in the market, the startup also offers it customers with voice reminders. This newly introduced feature lets one send their voice as reminders which will ring in the other person's phone in order to remind them of the task that needs to be completed. RingABell provides its customers with an end to end notification system so that they can be confirmed of the task completed on the specified time.

Using the app, you can also send reminders to multiple friends at once - simply create a group and add all your favourite contacts together in a group and this will let you send reminder to all the people in your group at once.

Share2People, a company behind RingABell, has been founded by Sakshi Jain and Nimit Jain, both of whom have a background of software engineering and more than 5 yrs of work experience in the same behind them.

The startup's future plans include increasing customer traction and building strong revenue model by introducing In app purchases, coupons program and entering into the world of data analytics. The startup which hasn't received any funding till date is currently on a lookout for investors.

So, if you have a phone with a working internet, then go and make use of RingABell right away!