Building Bharat’s TikTok for Games, SimpleViralGames Raises Rs 4 Cr in Pre-Seed Funding

• SimpleViralGames, aka SVG, has raised Rs 4 Cr from WEH Ventures, Eximius Ventures, PointOne Capital, Force Ventures. WEH led the round.
• A few prominent angels including Ankit Agrawal (Founder & CEO of InsuranceDekho), Prashant Sachan (Founder & CEO of AppsForBharat) also participated in the round. 
• The raised funds will be used by SVG to build Bharat’s TikTok for Games via their app named ‘TimePass’ which shall host 100s of fun hyper-casual games on the platform which can be played with a tap of a button without any additional download for each game.

Simple Viral Games aka SVG, a hyper-casual mobile gaming platform, today announced raising Rs 4 Cr (500,000 USD) in a pre-seed round led by WEH Ventures. The round also saw participation from Eximius Ventures, PointOne Capital, Force Ventures & a few angels including Ankit Agrawal (Founder & CEO of InsuranceDekho), Prashant Sachan (Founder & CEO of AppsForBharat).

Founded in December 2022 by Rahul KR & Sourav Badami, SVG is focused on giving the best mobile gaming experience to Bharat. This hyper-casual gaming platform shall serve users from all age groups & make playing fun games a part of everyone’s daily routine. On their app named TimePass, users can discover & play lots of games without any additional download for each game. Simply swipe up to see a new game reel!

(L-R) - Sourav Badami and Rahul K R

Rahul K R is an IIT Madras Alumnus and ex- Lead Product Manager at Khatabook & Apna. He was first Product Manager at Khatabook. While, Sourav Badami is an ex- Engineering Manager at Gojek. 

Speaking of the platform, the founders said “We are making Bharat discover and play the world's best, most simple, fun and innovative games! Imagine a video game arcade, which has 1000s of games to choose from & you can start playing with a single tap, all in one single app.”

Currently, the app has over 20 games & is adding new games every week. The company has started working with game developers & studios as well to on-board their games onto the TimePass app.

“Our goal is to become a TikTok like platform for hyper-casual/casual games & empower game developers and studios to publish their instant games on our platform & get distribution right away & earn with the revenue share. In next 3-5 years we wish to have over 100M monthly active gamers on out platform. Built in India, Built for Bharat” said the founders.

Speaking on the investment, Rohit Krishna, General Partner, WEH Ventures said “Except gaming, almost all other content categories have platforms that focus on personalized, infinite scrolls. We think Rahul and Sourav have great chemistry and complementary skills to build a ‘TikTok for gaming’ platform for Bharat”

Launched in 2017, WEH Ventures is a sector-agnostic early-stage venture fund with a primary focus on startups solving India-first problems. The fund is very often the first institutional investor in a company and aims to support it through the early years and beyond.  In its six year journey, the fund has already backed several category-leading companies such as smallcase, Jar, Masterchow, Appsforbharat and Pratilipi which have been subsequently backed by top tier institutional investors.

PreSales Intelligence Platform PreSkale Secures $500K in Seed Funding Led by BoldCap

PreSkale Secures Funding Round for Capturing Presales Intelligence to Create Sales Playbooks

PreSales intelligence platform has raised pre-seed funding in a Round led by BoldCap with participation from PointOne Capital 

Tech start-up PreSkale is capturing intel that helps people close a sale and is shining a light on the growing army of ‘PreSales' teams to become revenue creators . The PreSkale proposition and their all-in-one PreSales intelligence platform has raised a $500,000 pre-seed funding round today led by BoldCap with participation from PointOne Capital and strategic angel investors including Sathya Nellore Sampath, Ajith Sowndararajan, Vaidhyanathan, Jayagopal and Archana Priyadarshini.

PreSkale was founded in 2021 by Ajay Jay (Co-founder & CEO) and Prashanth Ganesh (Co-founder & COO) to improve product adoption early in the sales cycle and connect PreSales insights with go-to-market teams.

L-R Prashanth Ganesh and Ajay Jay

During his time at Freshworks & RFPIO, Ajay worked with enterprise clients — managing documents, meetings, product discussions, POCs, RFPs, and other assets across a dozen tools. The workflow was super-tedious, and lacked a centralized platform to offer a well rounded product evaluation experience. Ajay quickly realized his efforts and time weren’t documented either, and it was impossible to track or analyze PreSales influence and contribution across the sales lifecycle.

He started creating one-pagers to store evaluation plans and customer interactions during evaluation. These one-pagers were an instant hit during internal strategy discussions and with external stakeholders as well, as they helped get more done, faster. Ajay collaborated with Prashanth to iterate on this idea, and with an urge to solve these challenges they started building the platform for everything PreSales.

According to McKinsey, the PreSales engine can yield a five-point improvement in conversion rates, a 6–13% improvement in revenue, and a 10 – 20% improvement in the speed of moving prospects through the sales process. McKinsey found that companies with strong PreSales capabilities consistently achieve win rates of 40 – 50% in new businesses and 80 – 90% in renewal businesses — well above average rates.

Recognising the change in buyers mind-set and the impact of PreSales within the Go-To-Market ecosystem, G2 has announced PreSales as a new category in April 2022.

“PreSales stands to be one of the most influential, and impactful go-to-market (GTM) functions for all B2B teams. Yet, today PreSales doesn't garner the same value as other GTM teams. We're building PreSkale to level up PreSales operations for PreSales Engineers, and organizations. From managing day-to-day account tasks, notes, and meetings to generating master-playbooks filled with valuable insights to help PreSales engineers build better product experiences, and improve product adoption, PreSkale does it all” commented Ajay Jay, Cofounder & CEO of PreSkale

PreSkale will use the funds to grow its customer base by 20x and team size by 3x over the next 12 months. It will also invest in Go-To-Market strategy and marketing initiatives to increase reach and awareness.

“PreSales is a relatively large team in most companies, and they generally collaborate across sales, product, and engineering teams. They enable sales teams to sell better and bring customer intelligence, and product requirements back to product and engineering teams. They are important, yet a massively underserved team, and that’s what got us excited” commented Sathya Nellore Sampat, General Partner at BoldCap.

About PreSkale

PreSkale helps PreSales teams streamline evaluation experiences, deliver impactful solutions, and improve technical conversions. With PreSkale teams can:

• Streamline everyday operations effortlessly with the unified workspace and the seamless integrations with existing systems
• Identify and engage with best-fit prospects, document niche product interactions, and accelerate product conviction to drive sales conversions.
• GTM functions can make data-driven decisions with intelligent playbooks powered by PreSales evaluation plans, interactions, efforts, and insights to make effective strategies

For more information please visit https://www.preskale.com/ or follow the company on LinkedIn and Twitter

NCOME Secures Rs.3.6 Crore Funding led by Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns, PointOne Capital and LetsVenture

NCOME Team

Aiming to further disrupt the high-potential fintech landscape, the pre-seed investment round also saw participation from 9Unicorns, LetsVenture and PointOne Capital

Mumbai, December 29th, 2020: Venture Catalysts, India's 1st, largest, and pioneering integrated incubator and accelerator and PointOne Capital have led a pre-seed investment in NCOME, the country's first Escrow-as-a-Service platform. The idea-phase accelerator fund, 9Unicorns, also participated in the Rs.3.6 Crore funding round, along with angel investment firm LetsVenture and other investors.

Powered by one of India's largest private banks and a leading trusteeship company, NCOME provides enterprise and individual customers with fast, secure, and low-cost digital escrow service. It leverages cutting-edge technology to streamline conventional processes through online KYCs and digital escrow account openings. With an easy-to-use account management suite, it also enables its customers to manage their digital escrow accounts in a hassle-free manner.

Speaking on the investment, Vineet K. Singh, Co-Founder–NCOME, said, "We are over-whelmed by the response that we've got from Investors during these times. Escrow-as-a-Service is a huge, under-served opportunity and we feel privileged to be the amongst the First Movers in this space. Our initial traction is outstanding and more importantly industry-agnostic and it vindicates our belief that we are solving a large problem and a large, profitable business can be built in doing so."

Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder & President – Venture Catalysts & 9Unicorns, said, "Fintech is one of the most promising and exciting sectors in India and played a major role in keeping the economy ticking during the COVID-19 outbreak. NCOME represents the next phase of the industry's exponential growth trajectory and is addressing a massive market white space with its unique service offering. We are confident that, with an experienced founding team at its helm, it will drive greater fintech disruption by democratising digital escrow transactions for all."

ArchanaPriyadarshini, General Partner-PointOne Capital said, "We believe NCOME will be democratizing the escrow service which is very much needed for gig economy and rise of marketplaces. It will usher in a new era of secure transactions for both buyers and sellers".

The founding team at NCOME comes with extensive industry experience and a proven track record of growing successful businesses. Over the last two decades, its Co-founder & CEO, Vineet Singh, has built several multi-crore businesses across domains as diverse as payments, real estate, e-commerce, jobs, matrimony, and travel. Some of these include MobiKwik, Buildzar, 99acres.com, Naukri.com, NaukriGulf, Naukri Fast Forward, and Jeevansathi.com.

On the other hand, Ritesh Tiwari (Co-founder & CPO – NCOME) has more than 10 years of experience in building innovative digital payments, prepaid card, neobanking, and investment banking products. Having worked with leading global organisations such as Omnio, Ensygnia, Barclays, and JP Morgan Chase, he was also selected by the UK government under the Exceptional Talent Visa scheme in the fintech vertical and was part of its fintech delegation to India in 2019.

Venture Catalysts is India's first integrated incubator. It invests $250K – $1.5 Million in early stage startups that have potential to create enduring value for over a long period of time. Venture Catalysts brings a lethal combination of Capital, Mentoring and Business Network to help investee companies to succeed. Their innovation provides value to startups through its extensive angel network, funding, community, services and co-working facility.

9Unicorns is India's First Accelerator VC providing acceleration support & seed funding to early-stage start-ups. The funding can be provided up to $100K per start-up in the first round, and may invest further $500K-$2Mn in successive rounds with its co-investors. From the idea stage to the angel stage, it supports start-ups across various themes & sectors.

9Unicorns' strength & focus is to provide a hands-on support ecosystem for start-ups, beyond capital. 9Unicorns, besides investment, opens doors to the startupsfor access to a wide network of successful founders, category-leadrs, CXOs of large corporations, seasoned angel investors & partners of global VC funds. Every portfolio company receives acceleration support for 3 months & post-investment support of 18 months.