Indian Generative AI-based SaaS Startups Doubled Since 2021, Raised $590 Mn in Funding

Amid the growing demand for Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) tools, like ChatGPT, a rapid growth of Indian GenAI-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups has also grew over the time. According to a report by SaaSBoomi and McKinsey, Generative AI based SaaS startups have more than doubled since 2021, in India, and have raised $590 million in funding as of May 2023.

Currently, there are around 60 Generative-AI startups in India, compared to just 18 in 2021 the report said. 

The report titled ‘India’s SaaS Revolution: Exploring global opportunities in a dynamic market', also predicts that the India-centric SaaS ecosystem could achieve $50-70 billion in revenue and $0.5 to $1 trillion in enterprise value creation aspirations by 2030. Indian SaaS firms generated around $2.6 billion in revenue in 2020, which is projected to reach $15-20 million by 2025.

Capital invested in Indian SaaS companies grew 24% from $5.9 billion in 2021 to $8.4 billion 2022, even as SaaS investments globally got a 20% shaving from $305 billion to $245 billion in the same period.

Globally, the number of Gen AI-native SaaS companies has exploded, with over $12 billion invested in 60+ emerging domains in FY23 alone. Generative AI has attracted the attention of software giants like SAP, Salesforce, and IBM.

The number of Indian SaaS exits doubled in the last two years as more and more companies learnt the scaling and M&A mantras from their successful peers, said the report.

By utilizing the depth of domain and functional expertise available in India, SaaS companies in the country are well-positioned to embrace Generative AI. Investment firms like Together Fund are actively seeking opportunities in companies that leverage Generative AI.

The growth of Generative AI will have an impact on the workforce, requiring companies to invest in training and upskilling.

Last month, Indian IT services company HCLTech partnered Microsoft, a major investor in ChatGPT parent OpenAI, to help enterprises harness generative artificial intelligence (AI). Microsoft will train and develop skills among Indian IT company's workforce.

In early of last month, BYJU’S also announced the launch of BYJU’S WIZ, an innovative suite of three cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) transformer models - BADRI, MathGPT, and TeacherGPT.

SaaS Platform NimbleS2P Raises Rs 4 Cr in Pre-Series A Round led by Inflection Point Ventures

(L-R) Arun Krishnamoorthy CMO & Chandresh Sharma CEO, NimbleS2P

• NimbleS2P enables and supports the Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme by strengthening MSMEs to expand and grow their business digitally
• NimbleS2P was a finalist for the National Start-Up Awards in 2021
• The funds raised will be utilized for sales, marketing, partner relations, and product development
• Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) has so far invested over INR 550 Cr across 140+ deals

SaaS platform NimbleS2P has raised Rs 4 crore in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). The round also saw participation from other micro-venture catalysts and angel investors. The funds raised will be used for sales, marketing, partner relations, and product development.

NimbleS2P is a solution that aims to automate complex workflows related to finance, accounting, and procurement. The platform is designed to easily integrate and complement large ERP software such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, and others to deliver cost-effective digitization of business processes for businesses in the manufacturing and real estate sectors. Supplier management, PO and invoice processing, and contract management are among the platform modules. The company currently caters to 15+ customers, including renowned names like DLF, Jindal Steel & Power, and Oberoi Realty, among others.

Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures, says, “MSMEs are the backbone of the economy as they contribute nearly 30% to the GDP. However, critical sectors like manufacturing, power and infra have remained largely untouched from digital transformation owing to lack of tailormade platforms for them. NimbleS2P allows them to leverage their product to make an efficient and structural model and organise their workflow. This market is huge (both in India and internationally) with visible benefits (both cost and time) to the clients at an early stage that should support stickiness and adoption. The founders have deep experience in the space and can build a scalable and profitable business. This encouraged us to make an investment in the company.”

The SaaS solution streamlines and automates manual activities for buyers, reduces processing time by 50–70%, and enables inclusiveness by allowing small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to register and transact with large buyers. It also promotes better governance through its "know your supplier" process and supports the Digital India and Atma Nirbhar Bharat schemes by strengthening MSMEs and enabling their growth and expansion.

NimbleS2P creates 60%+ cost savings in source-to-pay for enterprises, and on top of that, it establishes a trusted supplier ecosystem, unleashing network effects within weeks.

Chandresh Sharma, CEO, NimbleS2P, says, "Our vision is to revolutionize supplier-buyer interaction through a fully-automated platform. In the next 2 to 3 years, we aim to establish a strong foundation and attract over 200,000 users, expanding our growth story from India to the Middle East, and South-Asia. In fact, we are confident that our partnership with IPV will be instrumental in driving significant value for our stakeholders and help us create a connected, automated, and well-networked supply chain."

The current global supply chain market size is estimated to be worth over $6 billion, and it is growing at a consistent rate of 7% CAGR, which means that by 2032, it is projected to reach an estimated $13 billion. The direct potential for this market is significant, particularly in India, where it is estimated to be worth over $750 million. Additionally, the Southeast Asia and Middle East regions also have a direct potential of over $2 billion, making it a lucrative opportunity for businesses in these regions. NimbleS2P is working with an aim to emerge as the "Most Preferred Supplier Portal" globally and already has tremendous traction in terms of partners in Middle-East, and closing few deals in Africa, and South Asia.

About NimbleS2P

NimbleS2P was founded in 2016 by Chandresh Sharma and Arun Krishnamoorthy with the goal of revolutionizing the source-to-pay process in the supply chain and logistics industries. As a B2B SaaS company, NimbleS2P primarily serves manufacturing and infrastructure companies with its innovative solution that streamlines the entire process, enabling increased efficiency and flexibility. The company's aim is to provide quick and impactful solutions to the source-to-pay function through automation and connectivity, setting the standard for the industry. The company has been bootstrapped so far, and the founders have close to 35+ years of combined domain experience.

About Inflection Point Ventures & Physis Capital

Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) is an angel investing platform with over 7400 CXOs, HNIs, and Professionals to together invest in startups. The firm supports new-age entrepreneurs by providing them with monetary & experiential capital and connecting them with a diverse group of investors. IPV has announced the launch of a $50 million CAT 2 AIF Physis Capital to invest in pre-Series A to Series B growth-stage start-ups.

SaaS Startup DeltaSalesApp Revolutionizes Field Sales Management

FMCG distribution companies often rely on field sales teams to visit retailers and distributors regularly, and managing these teams can be challenging. Without technology, it can be difficult for field sales teams to access updated product, pricing and customer information on the go, and for managers to track their team and consolidate sales activities.

Nepal based Delta Tech provides a solution to this problem through the Delta Sales App.

Ekta Golchha, Founder of Delta Sales App

Launched in 2018 by Ekta Golchha, an alumnus of Oxford University and Warwick University, UK, Delta Sales App is a SaaS-based solution that is revolutionizing the way businesses manage their field sales operations and communicate with their field sales team. The app streamlines sales activities, automates administrative and repetitive tasks, and provides quick access to customer and product information, all of which contribute to increased productivity for sales teams. GPS tracking of field sales reps also provides managers with a real-time view of sales activities and sales rep's effectiveness in the field. Field sales teams using Delta Sales App typically double the number of customers they visit each month, thereby increasing the companys overall revenue.

"The field sales industry is in the midst of a digital transformation, and adopting new technologies is crucial for businesses to stay competitive. Delta Sales App is designed to help field sales teams boost their productivity and performance. Our app enables users to manage their sales processes and analyze customer data, and simplifies the work of sales teams by providing them with quick and convenient access to information they need in order to be successful. It also automates tedious and time-consuming tasks, thereby allowing the sales team to focus on selling. Additionally, brands have been able to reach more stores in a cost effective and scalable way using this app." says Ekta Golchha, Founder of Delta Sales App.

Delta Sales App is a full-fledged field sales automation app, equipped with features such as attendance management, order reporting, customer management, geo-location tagging, payment collection, beat planning, visit reporting, expense reporting, employee targets, inventory and delivery management. These features enable sales teams to outperform and achieve success in their roles. This app has proven to be incredibly useful for companies in the distribution industry, with over 400 FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) manufacturers and distributors currently using it.

The app also seamlessly integrates with popular accounting software, including Tally, Busy, Zohobooks and Quickbooks, making it all the more useful. Delta Sales App's integration capability streamlines the ordering process and improves order accuracy and order fulfillment for field sales teams on the go.

According to Golchha, Delta Sales App has been successfully implemented across a wide range of industries, including food, beverages, cosmetics, paper, plastic, oil, lubricants, paints, and chemicals. The app's user-friendliness and capabilities of easily scaling up or down to meet the needs of different sales teams and industries makes it fit into various industries seamlessly.

Delta Sales App is redefining field sales automation in the FMCG industry. The SaaS platform is helping businesses improve their efficiency and effectiveness in reaching customers and managing their sales teams, which can ultimately drive sales and grow the business.

About Delta Tech

Delta Tech, founded in 2016 is a tech company based in Biratnagar, Nepal. Initially, Delta Tech focused on providing IT services, but later ventured into the SaaS industry. Delta Tech is a company of RK Golchha Group, one of the oldest and reputed business houses in Nepal.

B2B SaaS Sales Startup Kennect Raises $700K in Seed Funding Led by FortyTwo.VC

Kennect, a Delaware and Mumbai-based Software-as-a-Service sales acceleration start-up, has raised USD 700,000 in seed funding led by FortyTwo VC. FortyTwo VC is a Dallas, Texas-based venture fund with an investment focus on disruptive enterprise tech opportunities.

Kennect’s no-code platform allows enterprises to design, simulate and automate their incentive plans. The startup aims to become the preferred and most flexible, intuitive, user-friendly solution for sales incentives. It helps improve sales productivity by providing performance and incentive visibility for the sales reps.

It has targeted to enable more than 100 enterprises for adoption over the next 2 years. Some of its marquee customers include Indian and global pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi, Zydus, Lupin, AstraZeneca, Lonza, amongst others.

Commenting on the seed round, Pulkit Agrawal, Co-founder & CEO, Kennect, said, "We all know sales is hard and managing sales compensation can be a pain point for many companies. Kennect aims to reward the hard work of every sales professional through an incentive platform that helps them stay on top of their incentive earnings. With its intelligent nudge feature, every sales rep is now aware of their next best action in real-time to boost their take-home compensation.”

He added, “With this investment, Kennect plans to ramp up its engineering team and expand its commercial presence in the North American and European markets."

“Incentive design and management is a critical part of successful sales strategy. Kennect is building the new age incentive compensation tool for the Global Life sciences industry. It is one of the few success stories of teams from India building Enterprise focused SaaS products for global markets.

The team at Kennect - Pulkit, Pralok and Omkar have built the foundation for a great business. They have a leading platform, a marquee list of customers and a solid global GTM strategy,” said Asutosh Upadhyay, Co-Founder & General Partner at FortyTwo VC.

About Kennect

Founded in 2017 by Pulkit Agrawal (an IIT Bombay Alumni and an EY consultant) and Pralok Chhajed (previously worked with Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Northeastern University Alumni), Kennect is a leading cloud-based platform to automate incentive compensation management, improve sales rep engagement and drive sales performance. Find out more at https://www.kennect.io/

About FortyTwo.VC

US-based FortyTwo.VC is an early-stage venture capital fund focused on early-stage seed & series A investments exclusively in the B2B SaaS and Enterprise Tech sectors. FortyTwo.VC partners with companies emerging from India and building SaaS / Enterprise tech businesses for North American markets. The fund is headquartered in Dallas, Texas Find out more at www.fortytwo.vc

M2P Fintech Acquires T-Hub Incubated SaaS Startup Syntizen Technologies

With the acquisition of Syntizen Technologies, M2P Fintech will bring cutting-edge solutions to build state of the art digital identity products for the BFSI sector in India & across the globe. Currently, M2P has a market presence in Asia specific countries and is strategizing to achieve the global markets of MENA & SEA Regions

Syntizen, with the acquisition, is looking to expand its services in the BFSI domain in India. M2P shall catalyze Syntizen’s plans of building Global Identity Solutions

M2P Fintech, Asia’s largest API infrastructure company announced that they have acquired Syntizen Technologies, a software-as-a service based company which offers instant, paperless, electronic, and authentic customer identification solutions for the private sector and citizen identification services for the governments. M2P Fintech provides API infrastructure which enables businesses of any scale to embed financial products. Presently, it is working with more than 500 fintech, banks, and other financial institutions.

Syntizen Technologies is a Hyderabad-based SAAS startup founded in 2014 by three young entrepreneurs, Siddharth Kukatlapalli, Vamsi Kotte, and Dinesh Desu, and is a T-Hub incubated startup. With Digital Identity being their forte, Syntizen offers services around the Aadhaar eco-system & AI/ML algorithms. Syntizen offers products like Aadhaar e-KYC, Video KYC, Aadhaar Masking, etc. like Facial Liveness & Facial Matching.

Mr. Madhusudanan R, Co-Founder, and CEO of M2P Fintech, commented, “We believe technology as the great leveler and technology-led solutions can act as a tool to permeate financial inclusion. We are certain that the work the Synitzen team has done over the years around Aadhaar enabled services and the KYC platform, presents a perfect opportunity to overlay the Syntizen stack on top of our infrastructure to deliver innovative solutions, we are excited with the prospect of Inclusive Innovation that can be delivered not just for financial institutions in India but for the world.”

The acquisition will not bring any major changes to Syntizen's Leadership or the current projects we are operating. Mr. Dinesh Desu, Chief Product Officer said “We have much advanced Digital Identity tech which helps to enable seamless customer identification. We constantly focus on acting as a trust layer for enabling digital services to end customers in a remote way”.

“We have decent market share of Digital Identity business in India, with this acquisition we will go multifold and launch our solutions in all the countries where M2P has a footprint. Deep integration of our services in BFSI sector is one more focused area” said Mr. Siddharth Kukatlapalli, CBO at Syntizen.

“While M2P Fintech driving BFSI towards a "Cashless" journey with Digital products Syntizen will add "Presence-less", "Paperless" journey to their customer onboarding process. A perfect mix for a great customer experience in Financial world. Looking forward to build bigger and better business together” said Mr. Vamsi Kotte, CEO of Syntizen Technologies.

M2P Fintech has already scaled its solution to six international markets and has plans to establish it across MENA & SEA countries.

Founded in the year 2014 and headquartered in Chennai, M2P Fintech is Asia’s largest API infrastructure company offering a wide gamut of services that enable businesses of any scale to embed financial services. M2P Fintech is an Omni-channel platform that operates in over 20 markets across the Asia Pacific, MENA, and Oceania regions. M2P works with over 30 banks and has clocked over 600+ Fintech engagements across a varied set of industries

M2P Fintech is well-positioned with a secure and highly customizable tech stack that helps businesses launch their products with efficacy and speed at its core. On one end, M2P’s platform allows businesses to quickly create and deploy customized fintech products by customizing all relevant workflows through their plug-and-play solutions. On the other end, M2P simplifies the ability of banks and licensed and regulated entities to support these products at the back-end by facilitating technology integration as well as settlement and operational support.

Founded in 2014, Syntizen is registered with Start-up India, incubated at Telangana’s T-Hub, India’s biggest Government-backed Start-up incubator, a member of India Stack, and a NASSCOM Emerge 50 Startup. Syntizen works with about 30 BFSI companies and 5 State Governments. Currently, Syntizen has completed about 2 Billion transactions for all its clients across all their products.

Business Accounting Behemoth Vyapar Acquires SaaS Startup NeoDove

Business Wire India
Bengaluru-headquartered business accounting giant Vyapar acquired SaaS startup NeoDove for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, the two companies hope to step up their efforts to cater to the SME sector.
 
Both NeoDove and Vyapar are driven to make life easier for small and medium-sized businesses, and this acquisition comes on the back of meeting the growing demand for cutting-edge technologies for the less technologically-savvy SMEs.

 

It's incredibly inspiring to see how far we've come, as well as how our users have been able to scale and grow their businesses. Now with Vyapar’s support, we look forward to reaching even greater heights. — Arpit Khandelwal, Co-founder, NeoDove.

Vyapar and NeoDove
 
Founded in 2016 by Sumit Agarwal and Shubham Agarwal, Vyapar today is India's top GST billing, inventory and accounting software provider for small and medium businesses.
 
The Vyapar App allows businesses to manage their financial data from a single platform. Their rich range of features has enabled the growth of many MSMEs in the country. Moreover, since its inception, Vyapar has gained the trust of over one crore users.
 
The company also raised $30M in a Series B round led by WestBridge Capital in January 2022. Other investors in the round included IndiaMART and India Quotient. 

Building on our six years of success, the acquisition of NeoDove is our next big step to broaden the scope of problems that we solve for the MSMEs of India aligning to our larger goal of solving 360 degree problems of MSMEs" - Sumit Agarwal, CEO, Vyapar.

NeoDove, founded in 2020 by Arpit Khandelwal and Ankit Kumar Agrawal, provides a unique telecalling and sales engagement solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Through their unique CRM system, NeoDove provides their customers with features that are required to drive better results from their sales, marketing and customer engagement efforts.
 
In addition to their comprehensive and customizable features that help streamline the telecalling process, NeoDove is recognized as one of the best in the industry for their exceptional customer support.
 
Over 700 companies have been onboarded to date, and these companies are not just from India, but also from the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
 
Their Shared Vision
 
“Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of our economy. One of the major problems holding them back is that they lack access to proper technology.” - Ankit Kumar Agrawal, Co-founder, NeoDove
 
MSMEs make up 70% of all businesses in India and contribute about 29% to the GDP. But many business owners still struggle to cope with their growth due to the lack of efficient systems. A large percentage still rely on manual methods, such as pen and paper or just Excel for accounting and telecalling.
 
Through their respective platforms, Vyapar and NeoDove so far have assisted hundreds of businesses to ditch the tedious manual processes and implement a more sustainable process of doing business. The companies have been keen on responding to the concerns of their users by adapting their platforms accordingly.
 
By coming together and leveraging their uniquely designed platforms, they wish to influence millions more. Despite their independent business identities, both companies are aligned in the direction of working and moving forward together.

Banner - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I21xx6LYD0HY2fNahSF7jIiRWkXStHQX/view?usp=sharing

Saas Startup Everstage Raises $1.7 Mn Seed Funding Led By 3one4 Capital

(L) Vivek Suriyamoorthy, Co-founder and CTO (R) Siva Rajamani,Co-founder and CEO

• Prominent angels like Prasanna Sankar, co-founder of Rippling; Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam, co-founders of Chargebee; Sidharth Malik, CRO of Freshworks; Koti Reddy, CTO of Conga; Vetri Vellore, CEO of Ally.io; Utsav Somani, Partner at Angellist India; Ganesh Shankar, CEO of Rfpio also participated in the round
• Funds raised to be used for team expansion and B2B focused marketing initiatives
• Everstage automates the sales commission processes in companies to drive the performance of their customer executives
• Everstage customers include SaaS Unicorns like Chargebee, Postman and Lambdatest

Chennai, 12th August 2021: Everstage, a B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by 3one4 Capital with participation from several prominent angels including Prasanna Sankar, co-founder of Rippling; Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam, co-founders of Chargebee; Sidharth Malik, CRO of Freshworks; Koti Reddy, CTO of Conga; Vetri Vellore, CEO of Ally.io; Utsav Somani, Partner at Angellist India; Ganesh Shankar, CEO of Rfpio among others. The Company plans to use

Founded in 2020, by Siva Rajamani formerly with Freshworks and Vivek Suriyamoorthy previously with DE Shaw, Everstage helps companies drive performance of their customer-facing teams through its no-code sales commission automation platform. Some of the early customers include SaaS unicorns and high-performing companies such as Chargebee, Postman & Lambdatest. Over the next 12 months, the Company plans to grow their customer base by 20X. Everstage is already working with multiple customers from the US. The Company is planning to launch their operations at a much larger scale in the US in the next 12 months.

Mr. Siva Rajamani saw this problem first-hand as the Global Head of Revenue Operations at Freshworks: sales commission management complicates work for ops & finance teams, and lack of transparency leads to stressed sales teams.

Siva Rajamani, Co-founder CEO, Everstage, says, “A typical company spends more than 10% of their budget on commissions. Yet, most companies manage commissions over spreadsheets, losing out on the opportunity to provide visibility and drive sales performance through interventions.” Legacy vendors have also not addressed this problem effectively. “In my previous role, while evaluating these vendors, we realized that they were really professional services firms disguised as software products. There was neither flexibility for the Ops and Finance team, nor were they set up to motivate sales teams,'' he adds.

Everstage was born to address this gap as they have built a platform which fully integrates quota and commissions management platform, with a no-code plan designer offering complete flexibility to Ops and Finance teams while gamifying the entire commission’s experience for customer-facing teams.

Anurag Ramdasan, Principal & Head of Investments, 3one4 Capital says, “As customer acquisition and retention have increased in complexity with more roles & workflows than ever, Revops teams have become mandatory to drive revenue. With their considerable experience, the Everstage team is well-positioned to help Revops teams succeed, starting with real-time commission planning and administration, and we're excited to partner with them."

Everstage is a B2B SaaS startup based in Delaware, US, and Chennai, India. The company provides a no-code commissions automation platform to companies across verticals. Most of its customers are organizations based in North America.

Customers use Everstage to remove recurring busywork for their Ops and Finance teams and provide transparent and gamified incentives experience to their customer-facing teams. Everstage counts hyper-growth companies such as Chargebee, Postman and Lambdatest among its customer base.

The company was founded in 2020, by Siva Rajamani (previously Freshworks) and Vivek Suriyamoorthy (previously DE Shaw). Everstage has raised $1.7M in its seed funding led by 3one4 Capital with the participation of several prominent angels. The company has aggressive growth plans with the aim to 30x its customer base and 4x its employees over the next 12 months.

About 3one4 Capital

3one4 Capital is an early-stage VC fund based in Bangalore, India. The firm works in select market categories and in the intersection of adjacencies that are large, growing, and ready for unique products and services. The themes pursued are SaaS and Enterprise Automation, Direct-to-Consumer, Media & Content, FinTech, and Deep Technology, with a focus on sectors that include machine-driven actionable intelligence services for the enterprise, ambient intelligence technologies, edtech, logistics and distribution, agri-tech, consumer products and services, and health.

3one4 Capital currently oversees a corpus of INR 1800 Cr (+$240 Mn) and a portfolio of 70+ total investments across the early stage. Its portfolio companies include Licious, Bank Open, DarwinBox, Betterplace, Koo, Dozee, Breathe Well-Being, among others. The firm, founded by Pranav Pai & Siddarth Pai, has continuously attracted top-tier global and Indian investors as Limited Partners (LPs). These investors include family offices, endowments, foundations, as well as corporate and financial institutional investors.

SaaS Firm for Solar Infra SenseHawk Raises $5.1 Mn in Funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI)

• Funds raised to Enhance Efficiency in the Development, Construction and Operation of Solar Power Plants.
• Alpha Wave Incubationand SAIF Partners to Lead its Second Institutional Round.
• Funding to be Used for Product Development and Expanding SenseHawk Teams in North America, Middle East and North Africa .

SenseHawk, a SaaS company that helps customers develop, build and operate solar and other infrastructure sites through superior insights, announced today that it has raised $5.1 million in Series A1 funding. The investment round was led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), a $300m venture fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital, a leading global alternative asset manager, and backed by ADQ, one of the largest regional holding companies based in Abu Dhabi. Existing investor SAIF Partners also participated with a follow-on investment.

SenseHawk’s cloud-based platform and application modules solve several challenges in the development, construction and operation of solar sites. Its application modules enable solar companies to reduce costs, enhance workforce productivity and improve solar site performance leveraging sophisticated AI and machine learning models.

The SenseHawk platform is used by over 80 customers to analyze over 28 GW of solar assets in 15 countries, and the company is focused on expanding its offerings and customer base as the world increasingly moves to renewable energy. Global installed solar capacity is expected to increase from the current installed base of 600GW to 3000 GW worldwide in 2030. Moreover, SenseHawk is already expanding its market by serving customers in road infrastructure, power transmission and construction industries, and deepening its suite of offerings beyond solar.

The application modules on the SenseHawk platform support site and terrain management, construction monitoring, operations, thermography, work management and file organization. A mobile app extends the power of the platform and brings data to field techs so they have all the information they need at their fingertips. The mobile app also supports onsite navigation, enabling users to easily navigate to allocated tasks on sites that can be 1000s of acres in size.

Be it a developer, EPC, O&M contractor, asset owner, independent engineer or anyone else that works on a solar project, collaboration is easy using the SenseHawk platform and application modules.

As part of this investment from AWI, SenseHawk will expand its presence to Abu Dhabi and use the Emirate as a global base for international expansion while also targeting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and other global markets. SenseHawk will also build a world-class team of data scientists, product managers and engineers located in Abu Dhabi.

“The investment through Alpha Wave Incubation provides strategic access to the MENA market in addition to powering the ongoing development of our software platform. The follow-on investment by SAIF Partners is a validation of our direction and reaffirms their commitment to be a long-term partner to the startups they invest in,” said Swarup Mavanoor, CEO and co-founder of SenseHawk. “Solar construction is on a fast trajectory and this new funding enables us to continue to support designers, builders and operators of this critical form of renewable energy."

“SenseHawk has sophisticated technology, strong global traction and a leadership team with deep experience in the solar industry. We are excited to back an industry-leading AI-first SaaS company which brings about step-function increases in performance, productivity and cost efficiencies for their customers. Its platform offers immense application to the UAE and the GCC’s already large and burgeoning renewable energy sector,”

said Anirudh Singh, managing director at Alpha Wave Incubation.

“Over the last two years, we have seen SenseHawk build a best-in-class platform to serve the entire solar lifecycle,” said Mayank Khanduja, managing director, SAIF Partners. “Their marquee global customers are a testament to the power of the platform. We are excited to reaffirm our commitment to SenseHawk in this round."

“The SenseHawk platform uses a microservices architecture that enables us to easily build and integrate tools that can serve both technical and business processes in the solar industry,” said Saideep Talari, CTO of SenseHawk. “Our goal is to build a single solution to fill all the software needs of our solar industry customers."

About SenseHawk

SenseHawk, co-founded in 2018 by SwarupMavanoor and Rahul Sankhe, is a leader in AI-powered software for the solar site lifecycle. The company offers a powerful cloud-based platform and a completely integrated set of applications that support everything from solar plant design and construction to operation and maintenance. SenseHawk software has delivered data analytics for more than 28 GWs of solar assets across 15 countries worldwide. The company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and has offices in India. For more information, please go to www.sensehawk.com.

About Alpha Wave Incubation

Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) is a $300m venture fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital and backed by ADQ. AWI has a dedicated team across London, Bangalore and Abu Dhabi. The fund invests in early stage tech-enabled, disruptive start-ups in India and Southeast Asia. In addition to providing outstanding founders with early-stage capital, AWI offers access to an unrivaled set of support mechanisms for business-building, while also helping companies expand globally and open up new markets in the GCC/MENA region and beyond. ADQ is one of the region’s largest holding companies with a broad portfolio of major enterprises spanning key sectors of Abu Dhabi’s diversified economy.

B2B SaaS Firm Locus listed as a Sample Vendor in Gartner Hype Cycle for Transportation Industry, 2020

Locus, a global B2B SaaS company that automates human decisions in logistics, today announced its recognition in Gartner’s “Hype Cycle for Transportation Industry, 2020¹” as a Sample Vendor within the Last-Mile Delivery Solutions category. Gartner is a leading research and advisory company.

“These solutions are adaptations of traditional routing and scheduling, wherein a route could be replanned and a dispatcher would control the process. Many of these solutions use AI and machine learning to speed up the optimization process and predict occurrences and impacts based on real-time information,” said Gartner in the research report. 

The Locus platform uses deep machine learning and proprietary algorithms to offer smart logistics solutions like route optimization, real-time tracking, insights and analytics, beat optimization, efficient warehouse management, vehicle allocation and utilization. Locus also helps companies optimize their end-to-end supply chain network with its strategic consulting offering. 

Locus presently works with top clients across Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and India. It has offices in the USA, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The top management of the company includes executives from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Barclays Capital, Google, and BlueDart (a DHL company), and data scientists with PhDs from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois, among others.  

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made last-mile logistics all the more important. With increasing customer expectations, last-mile delivery technology will only become more critical for the success of companies, and in fact, will act as a key differentiator between brands,” said Nishith Rastogi, CEO, Locus. “We are really happy to be named as a Sample Vendor in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Transportation Industry, 2020, and to see Last-Mile Delivery Solutions receive a ‘high’ benefit rating.” 

Locus was also recently identified as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner "Market Guide for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling" report.²

The company has so far raised $29 million from tier-1 investors like Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, Blume Ventures, Exfinity Venture Partners & growX ventures, among others. 

Gartner subscribers can log in to read the full research on the website.

¹Gartner, “Hype Cycle for Transportation Industry, 2020,” Ivar Berntz, Venecia Liu, Thierry Kuperman Le Bihan, Pedro Pacheco, 13 August 2020.

²Gartner, “Market Guide for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling,” Oscar Sanchez Duran, Bart De Muynck, 23 June 2020. 

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About Locus

Locus is a deep-tech platform that automates human decisions in the supply chain to provide efficiency, transparency, and consistency in logistics operations. The platform uses deep machine learning and proprietary algorithms to offer smart logistics solutions like route optimization, real-time tracking, insights, and analytics, beat optimization, efficient warehouse management, vehicle allocation, and utilization. Locus powers more than two million deliveries daily across Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Europe, and North America. 

Gurugram based SaaS Firm O4S Raises Undisclosed Funding in Extended Pre-Series A Round

O4S, a three-year-old Gurugram-based SaaS Company, has raised an undisclosed amount in an extended Pre Series A funding by strategic investors. The company will use the funds to scale-up its product portfolio and business expansion in South East Asia and the Middle East regions, O4S said in a statement.

O4S, a three-year-old Gurugram-based SaaS Company, has raised an undisclosed amount in an extended Pre Series A funding by strategic investors. The company will use the funds to scale-up its product portfolio and business expansion in South East Asia and the Middle East regions, O4S said in a statement. The investors include Amit Singhal, former head of Google search, Subhrakant Panda, CEO, MD at Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys Ltd, Siddharth Bhavnani, Founder at Antares Legal and Bikram Singh Bedi, President Strategy and New initiatives at Grofers.

“O4S’s technology helps brands get greater visibility into product movement across their supply chain. Manufacturers can use the O4S offering to optimize their supply-chain, bringing numerous efficiencies to their business. I am delighted to support O4S in the next phase of their growth,” said Amit Singhal.

Founded in 2016 by Divay Kumar and Shreyans Sipani, O4S offers manufacturers technological solutions to optimize downstream supply chain operation and brand protection. O4S brings warehouses, distributors, retailers, and consumers on an easy to interact, mobile app-based platform helping organizations optimize planning and production. O4S currently has over thirty clients across industries in India and the Middle East region including eight Fortune 500 companies.

“O4S has helped us bring micro-level visibility, right from our production, till warehouses and even retail stores,” said Nikhil Agarwal, MD Campus Activewear.

“These are exciting times for O4S. The value we bring to our clients is evident from the increasing demand for our product portfolio from existing clients and interest shown by new clients. Next-gen technologies such as IoT and Machine Learning are going to be key to our growth. We will utilize the new funds to enhance the technological capabilities of our product and expand our global footprint,” says Divay Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO at O4S.

Previously, O4S had raised $2.1 Million in July this year in a Pre Series A funding round led by Venture Highway.

Feature your B2B SaaS Startup on Startup Europe India Network

Startup Europe India Network (SEINET), the Europe and India focused Startup ecosystem builder has just launched B2B SaaS Startup listings on its platform. Marketplaces for consumer discounts and easy to find consumer offerings are numerous but not a whole lot for enterprise Startups.

A number of B2B Startups are building some cool tools and solutions that can save cost and deliver great solutions in the enterprise ecosystem; but finding the right enterprise offering is quite an ad-hoc process.

To address this challenge, SEINET is now featuring B2B Startups discounts, offers and free trials. SEINET platform is frequented by Corporates, Startups and. Now Startups can take advantage of the potential customer traffic by featuring their offerings.

To be featured, a B2B Startup should be (a) operating a minimum of one-year (b) revenue generating (c) and list a discount, free trial or an offer for a potential client. The B2B SaaS Startups that are relevant to Europe and Indian markets are invited. All qualified Startups can have one-year free listing on SEINET. One of the first Startups to list is Alore – a SaaS startup building growth tools for SMBs and now offers 50% discount for 6 months through SEINET.

Praveen Paranjothi, Managing Director and founder of SEINET says: We are building the new age online ecosystem with SEINET.  An age where funding and great talent can seamlessly connect to hack Startup growth; Focused on tech and impact ecosystems in Europe and India, we have also built a great set of invite-only Trusted Experts Network encompassing folks who have done growth, tech and investment hacking. Experts such as Head of Data Science at HSBC, Head of AI at Surplus, Partners at VC firms and the likes.

In the line-up of these efforts, we now seek to address the challenges a B2B SaaS startup faces, the long sales cycle and startup discovery in the enterprise sector. If we can help streamline the Startup offerings and help reduce the sales cycle, we would be adding immense value in this space.

AI-based SaaS Startup Spyne Raises Seed Funding led by Smile Group, Others

Spyne, an AI-based SaaS startup that helps creative professionals such as photographers and corporations to smartly leverage their content for business growth, has raised seed funding led by Smile group and other angel investors participating.

The recent funding will be used to build deeper technology solutions to streamline and distribute massive offline content photographers have.

Launched in July 2018, Spyne is founded by Sanjay Kumar (IIT Kharagpur) and Deepti Prasad (Delhi School of Economics). “Our vision is to build a single platform for creative professionals, businesses and consumers across the globe to achieve their creative goals in the most effective manner. The digital photography industry is worth nearly $110B, with millions of photographers working as freelancers on various photography assignments, producing billions of images/videos every day. There is a huge scope of innovation in the ways how content is stored, edited and distributed to clients and social media platforms presently.” says Sanjay.

The team is already working on a full spectrum of features - Face detection, auto-tagging of millions of photos with relevant text to make them crawled by Google; and AI-based Photo & Video editing solution to reduce the edit time of projects from days to minutes.

“The world speaks the language of visuals. Instagram’s growth is the biggest example. On one hand, you have creative professionals that require intuitive solutions to become more productive. At the other, you have businesses that need plenty of high-quality content to drive conversions.” says Deepti.



She further adds “Let’s just take photographers as an example. Most of them still use DVDs and USBs to share their content with customers. Some have moved onto cloud-based solutions. But, can the photographers deliver personalized experiences to the people viewing the content? Can an AI solution understand the photographer’s subjective enhancements on the images and replicate the same over the photographer’s next batch of images? Spyne is exploring this route.”

The company is already on a high growth path. It has signed up more than 700 photographers in the last 10 months of launch and is looking to scale till 3000+ by the year-end. Spyne platform has enabled the photographers to share 10M+ images with their clients, generating 5000+ favorable reviews for photographers, unprecedented in the domain.

Spyne management team comes with a vast product, technology & marketing experience. Before launching Spyne, Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO was leading the large Product and Technology teams at Oyo, Amazon, Yatra, and Fashionandyou. He has over 12 years of experience in building and scaling technology products to billions of users on a global scale. Deepti Prasad, the Co-Founder, comes with 10+ years of consulting experience and is the person behind content marketing and digital branding. Raunak Panpalia, who heads product, brings a rich 9+ years of experience in building enterprise products. Vivek Vishnoi leads the sales & operations team, which is responsible for high profile corporate partnerships.

SaaS Platform Jumpstart Raises Funds from Venture Catalysts

Mumbai-based Jumpstart, a SaaS platform for customer-driven demand generation, has raised undisclosed amount in funding from Venture Catalysts, India's first integrated incubator.

Founded in 2017, by Raghav Soni, who is former Chief Marketing Officer of CredR, Jumpstart is modern marketing platform (SaaS) that helps offline businesses & brands at multi locations to attract more customers and increase repeat business. The platform helps to drive -- Online Discovery, Social Commerce and Customer Interactions impacting Purchase decisions, Brand visibility and Customer experience.

According to Jumpstart website, the platform is being used by over 4000 businesses.

Dr. Apoorv Sharma, Founder of Venture Catalysts, said in a statement to LiveMint, "umpstart, in its role as the facilitator of local enterprises develop a strong online presence to reach out to more consumers effectively, fits this role perfectly. It is led by two well-experienced founders and a skilled core team that knows the needs of different fast growing consumer and B2B startups well."

Mumbai-based Venture Catalysts is a homegrown startup incubator and it typically invests $25,0000 – $1.5 million in early stage startups that have the potential to create enduring value for over a long period of time.

Recently, Venture Catalysts joined hands with MEHUB, a media startup incubator, for reaching out to startups operating in the space of technology driven Media & Entertainment & Edutech and offer them an environment conducive to growth comprising infrastructure, professional consulting, finance and business opportunities aligned to guaranteed expansion.

In February this year, Venture Catalysts announced its expansion in Europe, the UK. For same, Venture Catalysts partnered with JPIN, a Euro-Asia focused VC, a startup mentor and a global advisory, to build the largest Euro-Asia corridor for angels to invest and nurture early stage ventures.

Tiger Global to Invest in 5 Indian SaaS-based Startups in Next Month

Tiger Global Management is likely to invest in as many as 5 SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies in India in May including Locus, a logistics management software company, reported Livemint citing two people familiar with the development.

According to the report, Tiger Global will evaluate SaaS bets at all stages—not just early but even series B and beyond. While a few of them are sub-$20 million cheques, there are 1-2 other SaaS companies the New York-based firm is talking to for Series B and C financing.

Tiger Global’s latest fund Tiger Global Private Investment Partners XI of $3.75 billion, which it had closed in October last year, will focus on consumer internet, cloud computing, industry software and direct-to-consumer companies in India, China and the US.

Tiger Global has now started giving term sheets to several SaaS companies in India.

In this month, the New York-based hedge fund has already invested in Innovapptive, a Houston and Hyderabad-based connected workforce platform for asset intensive industries, and in CleverTap, a marketing automation and analytics platform. Last month, it led the $42 Mn funding of Ola Electric Mobility, the Electric Vehicle (EV) unit of ANI Technologies that owns the home-grown cab-hailing firm Ola. Prior to this, it had invested in expense management software Fyle, facilities management software startup Facilio.

Tiger Global, which is one of the early backers of India’s flourishing startup ecosystem, had slowed down their investments for several years in India, but now with their new fund, investments in India have picked up pace. "Now that there are high-quality SaaS companies in India, Tiger is bullish on them," said the Livemint report

Globally, the fund has invested in companies such as China’s Udesk, which is an enterprise platform for intelligent customer service. It has also invested in US-based Green Bits, a company that makes point-of-sale software for cannabis retailers.

In November last year, Tiger Global had led the $3 million Series A funding round of Checkmate, a platform that helps small & medium sized restaurants to integrate with multiple online ordering plaforms, founded by a Delhi University alumnus.

To recall, in February this year, two former Tiger Global executives -- Ravi Venkatesh and Edwina Yeo, had launched a new set of venture funds called 'Tanglin Venture Partners', which is also backed by local internet entrepreneurs in India including Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Facebook’s Asia Pacific head Dan Neary.

Zoho Acquires SaaS-based HR Tech Startup ePoise

Zoho, a global SaaS-based suites giant, has acquired Bengaluru-based ePoise Systems, a HR Tech startup that offers a cloud based SaaS solution, for an undisclosed amount.

Zoho's 40 plus business applications in areas of CRM, HR,
Finance, Office productivity and Customer Service are used by 45
million users globally. They are available separately and under a single
user license as Zoho One.

Founded in 2013, by alumni of London Business School - Sachin Agrawal and Bishan Singh, ePoise automates multiple screening steps for each role, including a set of assessments leading to a video interview, thus bringing significant efficiency to the hiring process for high volume recruiters, says a press release from Zoho.

Founders of ePoise (L-R) -
Bishan Singh & Sachin Agrawal

Backed by Orios Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund, ePoise eVAL is an asynchronous video interviewing product from ePoise Systems. ePoise has raised a total of $500,000 in funding over 2 rounds.

"The combination of
Zoho's global footprint and depth of product portfolio and ePoise
product capability and talent will add value to our customers. We are
open to such technlogy-focused acquisitions. We look for whether the
acquisition plays well into our existing product portfolio, and more
importantly, if there is a cultural fit at a team level," said Sridhar
Vembu, CEO, Zoho

"We are excited about being part of Zoho. It gives us an opportunity to make an impact at scale." said Sachin Agrawal, CEO of ePoise.

To recall, just few days back Zoho has revealed about a stealth startup backed by its co-founder Sridhar Vembu. Called Signalchip Innovations , the
semiconductor manufacturing startup has built India’s first indigenous "Made in India" semiconductor chips that could be used in 4G/LTE and 5G NR Modem applications.

Email Collaboration SaaS Startup Hiver (Grexit) Raises $4 Mn from Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital

San Jose, California and Bengaluru-based Software as a Service (SaaS) application, Hiver (formerly Grexit), that helps organizations collaborate from their email inboxes, has raised $4 million (~ Rs.30 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital.

The startup will use the freshly raised funding for product development, as well as for expanding its global customer base.

Notably, this funding round is the first round of equity financing raised by the startup since November 2011, when it raised $130,000 in seed funding from the Citrix Startup Accelerator, The Morpheus and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Post this funding, Gaurav Chaturvedi, venture partner at Kae Capital, and Rajesh Raju, manning director at Kalaari Capital, will be joining the Hiver's board of directors.

"We believe Hiver has the potential of becoming a product that is synonymous with productivity for businesses," said Chaturvedi of Kae Capital.

Founded by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumni, Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, Hiver was started in mid 2011 with an aim to build a collaboration tool that would let them stay in their inboxes and yet get work done efficiently.

[caption id="attachment_126832" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Bangalore Team of Hiver
(Image - Hiver @Twitter)[/caption]

The app was previously known as GrexIt, however in September 2015, the company changed its name to Hiver to avoid a naming conflict with the term Grexit being used to refer to the probable exit of Greece from the Eurozone. The company however retains GrexIt, Inc. as its legal name.

In a statement to a business daily, Niraj Ranjan Rout, co-founder and chief executive of Hiver, said, "With this investment, we will fuel our efforts to realise our vision of making Gmail a powerful collaboration platform that businesses can use for sales, support and their internal functions."

Before co-founding Hiver, Raut was also a co-founder of Mobilcules, a Noida-based firm that builds innovative and sophisticated products primarily for start-ups/new ventures in the US, Europe and India. Raut then exited Mobicules in January 2011 to focus on Hiver. Nitesh Nandy was also formerly at Mobicules as Technical lead and project manager

Hiver is now used by thousands of companies globally including Harvard University, and US-based vacation rental companies Hubspot and Vacasa. The app is one of the most loved products built for Gmail and G Suite.

Source - Economic Times

Email Collaboration SaaS Startup Hiver (Grexit) Raises $4 Mn from Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital

San Jose, California and Bengaluru-based Software as a Service (SaaS) application, Hiver (formerly Grexit), that helps organizations collaborate from their email inboxes, has raised $4 million (~ Rs.30 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital.

The startup will use the freshly raised funding for product development, as well as for expanding its global customer base.

Notably, this funding round is the first round of equity financing raised by the startup since November 2011, when it raised $130,000 in seed funding from the Citrix Startup Accelerator, The Morpheus and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Post this funding, Gaurav Chaturvedi, venture partner at Kae Capital, and Rajesh Raju, manning director at Kalaari Capital, will be joining the Hiver's board of directors.

"We believe Hiver has the potential of becoming a product that is synonymous with productivity for businesses," said Chaturvedi of Kae Capital.

Founded by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur alumni, Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, Hiver was started in mid 2011 with an aim to build a collaboration tool that would let them stay in their inboxes and yet get work done efficiently.

[caption id="attachment_126832" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Bangalore Team of Hiver
(Image - Hiver @Twitter)[/caption]

The app was previously known as GrexIt, however in September 2015, the company changed its name to Hiver to avoid a naming conflict with the term Grexit being used to refer to the probable exit of Greece from the Eurozone. The company however retains GrexIt, Inc. as its legal name.

In a statement to a business daily, Niraj Ranjan Rout, co-founder and chief executive of Hiver, said, "With this investment, we will fuel our efforts to realise our vision of making Gmail a powerful collaboration platform that businesses can use for sales, support and their internal functions."

Before co-founding Hiver, Raut was also a co-founder of Mobilcules, a Noida-based firm that builds innovative and sophisticated products primarily for start-ups/new ventures in the US, Europe and India. Raut then exited Mobicules in January 2011 to focus on Hiver. Nitesh Nandy was also formerly at Mobicules as Technical lead and project manager

Hiver is now used by thousands of companies globally including Harvard University, and US-based vacation rental companies Hubspot and Vacasa. The app is one of the most loved products built for Gmail and G Suite.

Source - Economic Times

Prime Venture to Increase its Funding Portfolio in Logistics, SaaS-based Startups

Seed-stage focussed venture capital firm, Prime Venture Partners, which recently close its third fund at $60 million in March this year, is planning to increase its focus on start-ups working in the logistics and SaaS (software as a service) segment, beside it usually invest in.

Launched in 2011 by serial entrepreneurs Amit Somani, Bala Parthasarathy, Sanjay Swamy and Shripati Acharya, Prime Venture, which was earlier known as AngelPrime, is known for investing in edtech, fintech and healthcare-based startups targeting global markets. In its total portfolio of 20 startups, Prime Venture has 9 fintech startups it has invested in that shows that the firm has been bullish on financial technology and now it want to focus on Logistics and SaaS-based startups which are based out of India but targeting overseas markets.

Sanjay Swamy, co-founder and managing partner at Prime Venture Partners, said in a statement, "Our theme is usually if the sector is getting digitised and whether the firm has a compelling use case. In this regard, besides financial services, you will see a lot from us in the health care, logistics and education spaces."

"We are quite bullish on startups in the SaaS segment, which are based out of India and are selling overseas. Probably, we will do some deals in this segment next year," he said.

Synup, a provider of SaaS-based solutions that enables local businesses to manage their online presence, counts Prime Venture as its major investor. Last September, Synup raised $6 million in a financing round led by Vertex Ventures, in which Prime Venture also participated being an existing investor.

Swamy however also confirms that the firm would continue to invest in fintech space as well.

Last week, Prime Ventures participated in $3 Mn funding round of Bangalore-based Quizizz, which is an e-learning app. Prior to this -- in May this year -- it led $4.2 Mn funding of Bangalore-based mfine, an app-based on-demand healthcare service provider.

Notably, Prime Venture was also an investor in ZipDial — a mobile marketing firm — which was acquired by Twitter in 2015.

In January this year, Prime Venture Partners also participated in Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding.

Via - Business Standard

Prime Venture to Increase its Funding Portfolio in Logistics, SaaS-based Startups

Seed-stage focussed venture capital firm, Prime Venture Partners, which recently close its third fund at $60 million in March this year, is planning to increase its focus on start-ups working in the logistics and SaaS (software as a service) segment, beside it usually invest in.

Launched in 2011 by serial entrepreneurs Amit Somani, Bala Parthasarathy, Sanjay Swamy and Shripati Acharya, Prime Venture, which was earlier known as AngelPrime, is known for investing in edtech, fintech and healthcare-based startups targeting global markets. In its total portfolio of 20 startups, Prime Venture has 9 fintech startups it has invested in that shows that the firm has been bullish on financial technology and now it want to focus on Logistics and SaaS-based startups which are based out of India but targeting overseas markets.

Sanjay Swamy, co-founder and managing partner at Prime Venture Partners, said in a statement, "Our theme is usually if the sector is getting digitised and whether the firm has a compelling use case. In this regard, besides financial services, you will see a lot from us in the health care, logistics and education spaces."

"We are quite bullish on startups in the SaaS segment, which are based out of India and are selling overseas. Probably, we will do some deals in this segment next year," he said.

Synup, a provider of SaaS-based solutions that enables local businesses to manage their online presence, counts Prime Venture as its major investor. Last September, Synup raised $6 million in a financing round led by Vertex Ventures, in which Prime Venture also participated being an existing investor.

Swamy however also confirms that the firm would continue to invest in fintech space as well.

Last week, Prime Ventures participated in $3 Mn funding round of Bangalore-based Quizizz, which is an e-learning app. Prior to this -- in May this year -- it led $4.2 Mn funding of Bangalore-based mfine, an app-based on-demand healthcare service provider.

Notably, Prime Venture was also an investor in ZipDial — a mobile marketing firm — which was acquired by Twitter in 2015.

In January this year, Prime Venture Partners also participated in Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding.

Via - Business Standard

5 Month Old Edtech Startup Leverage Secures Seed Funding

An online platform for higher education, Leverage has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a bunch of investors, including Arjun Mehta, former CFO at American Express India; Kashyap Deorah, founder, Hypertrack; Sadashiva NT, a former chief financial officer of Babajobs and Anand Sankeshwar, Managing Director, VRL Logistics.

The company plans to utilize freshly infused funds towards its product development and to grow its team size.

The startup was founded in April 2017 by Akshay Chaturvedi who was the alumnus of Indian School of Business along with and Rajiv Ganjoo. Prior venturing into the startup world, Chaturvedi used to work with Babajobs as a senior executive.

Being headquartered in Delhi, the startup that operates in the higher education space runs a career assessment and mentorship programme. Leverage states that it matches students with over 2,500 colleges outside India through its panel of 100-plus experts. If we talk about the technology, the firm uses machine learning to help students build academic profiles, including writing papers and filing for patents for the selection process. Not only this, Leverage offers UnivGateway, a Saas-based tool to universities to help them admit the right students.

Earlier in July 2017, Gamified edtech startup PlayAblo had secured $600k funding led by ABI-Showatech (India) Ltd. In the same month, Thinkerbell Labs, which builds literacy devices for the visually impaired had raised an angel investment of Rs 1.3 Crore from Indian Angel Network and Anand Mahindra.