Let’s Barter India Raises Angel Round, Led by ‘Scale Ventures’

Let’s Barter India, world’s largest community for barter on Facebook, raises the angel round led by “Scale Ventures”. They have raised an undisclosed amount from Scale Ventures and Sanjay Choudhary of Crowdinvest. The team aims to use this funding amount to fuel the growth rate of Let’s Barter, reach out new markets with the app and build a strong team to spread the concept of barter, enabled via technology.

Delhi-based Scale Ventures, a brainchild of Nilesh Rathi of ‘Rathi Group of Companies’ and Rahul Narvekar, ex- CEO, IndianRoots is a leading venture capital firm that invests primarily in early-in-revenue startups. Both the founders started the company with a mindset of not just funding the start-up but giving the right kind of mentorship, which is far more vital at an early stage of a start up. Scale Ventures had formally signed an agreement to acquire Guerrilla Ventures.

On this occasion, Mr. Rahul Narvekar, Co-Founder, Scale Ventures said, “I have known Pooja and Sahil since I have been a part of Innov8. I had attended Let’s Barter’s event in Chandigarh and realized that the venture is scalable and has potential in India. We feel that the start-up is niche but will connect with the youth of the nation as it follows the very unique module of barter. We will suggest Let’s Barter ideas to scale their business by indulging in meaningful tie-ups with e-commerce portals, restaurants and dating sites.”

Commenting on the first round of funding, Pooja Bhayana, Co-Founder, Let’s Barter India said, “We are ecstatic about our association with Scale Ventures. The funds shall be utilised for scaling up across different cities of India, educating the market about tech enabled bartering and building a strong backbone team to fuel Let's Barter. From a strategy point of view, we have so much to learn from amazing leaders like Rahul Narvekar and Nilesh Rathi.”

“We are very happy to have gained trust of the industry leaders like Rahul Narvekar and Nilesh Rathi” said Sahil Dhingra, Co founder, Let’s Barter India. He added “Our vision is to take the concept of barter, and the Let’s Barter app, to all cities and towns of India. We are building an alternate avenue for Indians to get more value of their used goods, and services, rather than selling it for low prices on classified sites.”

Let’s Barter India was formed in September 2015 as a Facebook group and the app was launched in August 2016. Headquartered in New Delhi, it is spearheaded by Pooja Bhayana and Sahil Dhingra, the two co-founders. The inspiration was to create more avenues for used products rather than selling them at a low value. The vision of the company is to be the platform for C2C exchanges & used goods and promote barter of services.

Let’s Barter India runs a Facebook group with over 1, 83,000 members, a community of likeminded people that barter with each other. This has reached this height without any marketing spend. It is now world’s largest community for bartering on Facebook. As a next step to making bartering easy, they recently launched a successful hybrid mobile application with its Android and iOS versions. The process of bartering services and products has been prevalent in India since time immemorial and they expect to bring back this concept of adding value to used goods to the present times.

The India Network Acquires Udaipur Based Coworking Hub MagicSpace

Scale Ventures’ The India Network – a platform aimed at boosting startup activity in Tier II and Tier III cities – has acquired Udaipur-based MagicSpace – a coworking space company in a part cash and part equity deal.

Post-acquisition, founder Vinav Bhanawat will join The India Network as a co-founder. While another co-founder Pallav Nahar will hold part equity for the coworking space.

MagicSpace was launched three months ago by Vinav and Pallav with an aim to help bootstrapped startups in Tier II and Tier III cities. It plans to bridge the existing gap in these cities for startups and further help them to scale, market and acquire funds. It has launched its first co-working space in Udaipur and has plans to launch more in other cities in the coming months.

“We, as entrepreneurs, have faced a lot of struggle coming from a small city due to lack of proper mentorship. The idea was to fill this gap with MagicSpace and help budding startups collaborate and create magic,” said Vinav.

Before MagicSpace, Vinav had co-founded three startups: NMCorp Pvt. Ltd, an IT company, in 2012; Territory Of Fashion, an online apparel store, in 2014; and NonMovingInventory.com, an online marketplace, in April 2015. He also represented India at Silicon Valley-based Blackbox Connect 14 Accelerator Program in February 2016.

At present, there are eight startups associated with MagicSpace. “One is Yelo Bag – a bag which can be turned to an unbreakable table top, powered with a LED that gets charged at night. Another is ChicsConnect – women-centric application and community trying to bring in lots of aspiring women entrepreneurs. It is already live in 30 cities. These are some examples of really good startups we were mentoring at MagicSpace, and they will now be part of India Network,” added Vinav.

When asked about the challenges faced while implementing the concept of a co-working space in a small city like Udaipur, Pallav said,

“Getting the space was difficult, especially in Udaipur, a Tier II City where there is still a lot of conventional thought process among the business community. It was a challenge to convince people to give the space for multiple startups instead of one large company but it all finally ironed out.”

Shantilal Ji Mehta, a leading real estate developer in Udaipur and also the owner of the building said, “The concept of The India Network was very interesting. The possibilities of bringing growth to aspiring entrepreneurs and finding our very own Unicorn got me excited. The India Network will definitely change the city’s business landscape”.

Founded by the ex-CEO of Indianroots, Rahul Narvekar and Rathi scion, Nilesh Rathi – Scale Ventures was announced in August 2016. The fund has also acquired the portfolio of Delhi-based Guerrilla Ventures. Also, it made its first investment in Indore-based B2B IT service aggregator company EngineerBabu recently.

The Indian Network was launched a few months back by Narvekar with an aim to create a startup ecosystem in Tier II and Tier III cities of India. It will not only provide physical infrastructure for the startups to function but also much-needed mentorship and support to scale their businesses to new heights.

The acquisition of MagicSpace is the first step in this direction. The first coworking space which is based out in Bhopalpura, Udaipur has been rebranded as The India Network.

A firm believer of not burning cash, Rahul mentioned in a press statement that even with The India Network, the coworking space has been profitable with complete focus on the balance sheet. “Next, The India Network centre would be in Indore, followed by Gurugram, Jaipur, and Kota. People no longer want to buy or own things. They want to rent it on a per-use basis or by the hour. The biggest expense today for startups is real estate and The India Network bridges that gap,” he added.

EngineerBabu, an Indore Based IT Services and Products Company, Gets Seed Funding from Scale Ventures

EngineerBabu, an Indore based IT Services and Products Company has recently raised a seed amount of funding from Scale Ventures. From Facebook page to company generating millions of revenue EngineerBabu is all set to turn its bootstrapped venture into an International Organization.

Co-founded by two best friends Mayank Pratap and Aditi Chaurasia and later on joined by Avdhesh Solanki, EngineerBabu is a service provider company which is filling the gaps of demand and supply in IT industry. “The flashback of how I managed to fetch an investment for my company, still gives me goose bumps. This was bit of a journey, I would say. But after all, it’s the journey that matters. Destination achievement is the final fruit.” Says Mayank Pratap, Co-founder of EngineerBabu.

Mayank was the only engineer from his village when he used to go back, people called him EngineerBabu. Inspired from movie 3 idiots, he created a Facebook page, added Amir Khan’s photo on that and named it as Engineerbabu. He wanted to do something like Amir khan. He then started helping engineers and consulting students without charging them through his Facebook page. Soon things went viral, he got 2.5 lakh users in just two months. When he came to Bangalore, his friend told him that if he needed any help he could ask EngineerBabu and the EngineerBabu would definitely help him. That’s how it started. Half the day, he was teaching to fund his product, and the other half day he was working on his product. Mayank laid the foundation of EngineerBabu. After a month that company escaped leaving students in bizarre.

EngineerBabu started as a product-oriented company and soon turned into service provider due to lack of funds. The company was bootstrapped entirely from the personal savings of Co-founders. As Avdhesh Solanki, Co-founder, and CTO of EngineerBabu joined the two, they shifted their focus more on developing products for start-up. “As Avdhesh is one of the best developers in India, who built excellent products for start-ups, AI Based, Robotics and Automobile Domain. Our dream seems to become a reality” shares Mayank.

EngineerBabu helped many start-ups like thrillophilia, Justride, Maalgaadi, hoppingo and worked with many big brands such as Yourstory, Wittyfeed, Samsung.

Initiated with belief, Clueless about the path to progress, it was only the co-founders perseverance that led them kept going. Gradually, the family tree of EngineerBabu had started growing and expanding simultaneously. “We were not a new outsource company to the startups we were startup that was dying to get ideas to next level. We built many ideas for our product that would help us in getting a funding. But turning 3 of us into 60 employee company was a real struggle” said Adit, Co-founder and CEO of EngineerBabu.

Initially Working on 20:80 Ratio fashion. 20% Regular clients handled by themselves and 80% outsourcing, the ratio has declined gradually and it is most reciprocal of it.

EngineerBabu created a subscription based platform where they connect filtered client to expert companies. The select best companies from India named “Spartans” who are excellent in delivering work. They are also into creating AI Based requirement gathering platform to collect project information from a client. Right now, they have 250+ Paid subscribers, and 240+ are in the waiting list.

They also help their vendors by providing various training to improve email writing, business communication, tech enhancement etc.

EngineerBabu is now planning to open international sales offices in USA, UK, Singapore and Saudi with Investment money. With the trust of Scale ventures, EngineerBabu is ready to acquire more customers, compete with big brands of IT and give services alike.