Speed-dating App NearGroup Raises $1.6 million In Seed Funding; Plans To Expand Its User Base In India

Speed-dating app NearGroup, which has millions of users in Philippines, India and Vietnam, has raised a whopping $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by Helsinki-headquartered venture capital firm Open Ocean, backer of startups such as Truecaller and EyeEm. The round also saw participation from other firms including Neotribe and BoostVC.

Starting its journey as a bot-based neighbourhood connect service that worked on FB Messenger, the firm changed its focus to being an online speed dating service in February this year.

Speaking to Economic Times at that time, Prashant Pitti, founder of Neargroup, discussed the reason for the big shift and revealed when he witnessed that the chat-based dating feature was becoming hugely popular, he decided to make the big move.

After witnessing a good traction in users from the US, Philippines and Vietnam, NearGroup now plans to focus its significant attention on building its reputation in the Indian market. The firm, which currently has about 34 lakh users, claims that it is seeing about 5 to 6 lakh new users coming on the platform every month.

In order to gain a major portion of the Indian dating market, the firm has launched a new feature.

"There is a social stigma which comes upon using a dating app and women do not wish to have an open dating profile which both their friends and relatives can see, so when a guy makes his profile on NearGroup messenger, his interests and thoughts can be viewed by women for them to send a chat request to, but the woman's profile details can't be viewed by guys, it is sort of a swayamvar for women," Prashant Pitti, CEO of NearGroup told ET.

In addition to this new feature, Neargroup has also got an India-specific marketing team onboard. It plans on increasing the team size as its Indian user base grows. The firm claims that it has already tested out this India specific feature among 15,000 users and have witnessed an increase in usage.

Digital Lending Platform CrediFiable Raises Seed Funding from Kae Capital

CrediFiable, a new age digital lending platform has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kae Capital. CrediFiable, which was launched this year, is focusing on the Personal Loan Segment for Salaried Professionals, providing loans ranging from Rs.50,000 to Rs.5Lakhs.

Through its data-driven proprietary underwriting model, CrediFiable caters to borrowers who have a Credit History or are New To Credit. It provides a final underwriting decision immediately to a potential applicant with disbursal taking up to 48hours. CrediFiable services the entire chain from sourcing the customer, credit scoring and conducting the verification process by leveraging India Stack.

“Salaried Professionals looking for personal loans are only concerned with three pain points, certainty of obtaining a loan, final loan package (quantum and interest rate) and speed. The CrediFiable underwriting model has been designed to address these three pain points without compromising on its Portfolio Risk. Our technology-enabled solution allows us to “Capture” the customer while simultaneously rejecting sub-prime candidates.” said Presha Paragash, Founder & CEO of CrediFiable.

Prior to CrediFiable, Presha was the co-founder of Sol Primero, which has invested in start-ups such as ZoRooms, Rapido. She has also worked with UBS in London and holds an MBA from Wharton and a graduate of LSE. Furthermore, the core team has deep and relevant experience in Financial Services and Technology and comes from premier institutions such as IIT, BITS and XLRI.

To date, CrediFiable has received more than 1,000 applicants and has tied up with 2 lending partners. “Our partnerships would allow us to disburse up to Rs.5crore a month.” said Presha.

“From an investor’s perspective, consumer lending represents an interesting dichotomy between a very large market and a highly competitive market. There are many segments in the personal loan market that are untapped and furthermore in most cases a decision is taken on the applicant’s bureau score. CrediFiable goes beyond the traditional bureau score and instead looks at many other traditional and non-traditional parameters when assessing the borrower. We feel that this allows them to reclassify borrowers and unlock value based on a “truer” assessment of super-prime and near-prime borrowers. “said Shubhankar Bhattacharya, Venture Partner at Kae Capital.

Tech-enabled Scooter Sharing Platform VOGO Raises Seed Funding

Bangalore-Based Vogo Automotive Pvt Ltd, which operates a tech-enabled scooter sharing platform, VOGO has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by the family members of the Murugappa, A.V. Thomas groups & Thiagaraja Groups. The funding round has also seen participation from Ajit Thomas, Chairman of A.V.Thomas group, Hari Thiagarajan, ED, Thiagaraja Mills, Muthu Murugappan, Business Head Nutraceuticals - EID Parry,Sriram Viji from Brakes India, Vishesh Rajaram from the VC fund, Speciale Invest, Karan Chandhok - Indian formula 1 driver and other HNIs. The funds will be used for building out the automated technology platform, innovation, building out the technology team and growing marketing efforts.

The company also announced the launch of India’s first automated pickup and drop scooter rental platform, and these scooters are called SPARK. Once customer books, he uses an OTP to get the key and start the scooter. Every smart VOGO scooter has been engineered by the VOGO team with a complex array of sensors which transmit millions of data points. VOGO can remotely track, monitor and control every Spark in real time and have made a mechanical scooter a connected intelligent IoT device. This ranges from vehicle health measurement via fuel and battery sensors, GPS for tracking, dicky and handlebar sensors and much more. This lets VOGO rebalance supply and demand, offer dynamic pricing and do intelligent bike allocation.

This now allows VOGO to offer 24/7 service & one-way travel at 50% of the price of autos and taxis. VOGO plans to scale this automated system across hundreds of pickup and drop locations in each city and raise a large institutional round in the coming months to build a large pan-India network.

According to Anand Ayyadurai, CEO, VOGO, "We started out by identifying an early adopter segment, college students & solving their commute problems. Now more than 15000 students across 15 colleges and four cities use VOGO: we see them substituting taxis and autos with us. We believe that what happened with China with cycle sharing will happen with India with scooter sharing. In 2017, we focused on building the automated IoT system to scale the business and now have end-to-end engineering capability across embedded systems, software development, and automotive space."

Launched in 2016 by Anand Ayyadurai, Padmanabhan Balakrishnan & Sanchit Mittal, VOGO is building a scooter sharing network that would enable urban commuters to rent scooters for short-haul and offer a quick and cost-effective alternative to cabs and autos. They are present in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Manipal & Mysore. The founders are from IIT-Bombay & IIM-Ahmedabad & have extensive experience across Flipkart, Amazon and Lazada. They get over 5000 orders a month and see a significant percentage coming from short trips and on weekdays.

According to Vishesh Rajaram, Speciale Invest, "Short-haul and last mile commute are large components of urban commute and sized in billions of dollars. Current options for cars, auto are expensive, and buses are inconvenient. Vogo is disrupting this segment by offering a more efficient, automated and cost-effective option of scooter sharing and renting. They operate an asset light model and have a differentiated product road-map that puts them ahead of the pack."

Bored Elon Musk Launches Seed Fund; Here's How Entrepreneurs Can Pitch Him Directly

While developing unique ideas is a difficult task in itself, the harder part is successfully getting those ideas into the market. In order to ensure that their million dollar idea actually makes them millions, a lot of aspiring and struggling entrepreneurs turn to people who have been playing in the filed for quite sometime. One of such personalities is Elon Musk.

The South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor, who is currently working on redefining transportation on earth and in space through Tesla Motors and SpaceX recently announced the launch of the Bored Elon Seed Fund.

According to Musk, everyday he finds his inbox full with mails from aspiring entrepreneurs asking for help with their inventions and products. But, his busy schedule seldom provides him with time to reply to these mails and he ends up ignoring them majority of the times. Realising that being one individual, he can only scale his time and knowledge so much, he decided to give back to the universe by coming with the Seed Fund.

A message published from Musk on producthunt.com calls for the world's greatest and worst product builders to pitch Musk their ideas directly on Twitter using the hashtag PitchBoredElon. The message, which was published on 17th August, 2017, also revealed that a week from the publication of the message, Musk will himself be selecting the best three entries and their respective creators will receive an early stage investment of five million seedlings of Kentucky Bluegrass in exchange for 0 per cent of their company.

Through this fund, Musk aims to make the universe a better place to live in. The winners of the contest will win themselves not only enough resources to cover roughly 325 square meters of dirt, but they will also get an opportunity of joining a community of some of the brightest minds in the world of tech.

So, get started, get pitching using #PitchBoredElon. Pitch your ideas here.

Touchkin Raises $1.3M in Seed Funding for Its Mental Health Chatbot ‘WYSA’

Wysa, a little penguin that sits in your phone and helps you face whatever life throws at you, has raised a total of $1.3 million in seed funding from early stage investment firm Kae Capital and angel investors.

Created as an AI coach for behavioural and mental health, Wysa offers evidence-based techniques through empathetic, anonymous conversations. So far, it has had over 3 million conversations with people from 30 countries. “In the last month, three people wrote to us to say that Wysa saved their life. It blew our minds that by providing an empathetic ear, even an AI bot could help people hold on when they felt they had no one to turn to,” said Jo Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO.

Wysa’s AI may not replace therapists, but it can reach people across barriers of geography, culture and language. It may be the only hope for many in countries like India, where there are less than 5,000 mental health professionals to serve 1.2 billion people. Globally, mental health is the leading cause of disability. In 2010, this cost the economy $2.5 trillion in health costs and lost productivity, more than half of total global health spending. In high income countries, less than 30% of people with mental illness receive treatment, and this is 10% in low and middle-income countries.

Wysa started as a side project for healthcare AI start-up Touchkin, and soon acquired a life of its own. Ramakant Vempati, co-founder, shares, “Our technology passively detects behavioural health issues from smartphone sensors and engages them through chat.  In a trial with basic smartphones in semi-urban India, we could predict depression in people with diabetes to a 90% accuracy.  Excited, we followed up to see how this helped the patient. The findings were stunning: less than 3% of patients took support from a therapist in spite of their doctor’s recommendation, because of stigma and lack of access. Diagnosis of depression was not enough in itself- it felt like we were building fire alarms, when what we needed were fire extinguishers. However, sharing how they felt with a chatbot helped patients significantly and we saw depression symptoms reduce by 45% over 12 weeks. So, Wysa was born.”

Wysa collaborates with researchers across the world to validate its clinical efficacy. Dr Becky Inkster, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar, School of Social Work, Columbia University has been working with Wysa to bring it to disadvantaged groups that are hard to reach.  She said, “What sets this approach aside from other Big Data collection approaches is its ability to simultaneously guide clinical care while being driven by the needs and desires of the individual. One of the most stimulating challenges for integrating AI technology into mental health support and social psychiatry, as I see it, will be how to incorporate culture, preferences and empathy into the AI experience.”

Wysa supports a variety of behavioural health use cases including anxiety, smoking cessation, diabetes and disability support, to reduce healthcare costs and improve adherence. Vidushi Kamani, Venture Partner at Kae Capital and an investor in Wysa, said, “Combining passive sensing technology with a personalised AI coach changes the economics of the behavioural health and wellness industry globally. With Wysa, providers can increase the number of people supported per coach by 10-100X, with increased engagement, better monitoring and improved self-management.” Touchkin is taking Wysa to the insurance sector through its collaboration with Swiss Re, one of the leading reinsurance companies globally.

Wysa has been a part of Swiss Re’s Insurtech accelerator in 2016, Facebook’s global incubation program FbStart, and has won an innovation award from WASME and the MSME Ministry, Government of India.

Relocation Services Provider Flytta Raises Seed Funding from Corvus Ventures

Hyderabad-based startup, Flytta has recently raised an undisclosed seed investment from Corvus Ventures led by Mr. Mahesh Reddy, Managing Partner. Flytta is redefining the relocation experience for employees in the corporates. At present, the working professionals are more mobile than ever and they are relocating to other cities in search of career opportunities. FLYTTA is the one stop relocation shop that takes the stress out of the relocation process for the professionals building strong partnership with their corporates and tie ups for inventory management with gated communities and other standalone properties.

Incubated by Nasscom 10K Startups, Flytta was started by Rahul Kanuganti and Gokulavasan in January 2016. Announcing the investment, Rahul Kanuganti, the company CEO said that “the corporates in India hire the best and brightest resource from across the country and the world, FLYTTA is a preferred partner for all such corporates to help their employee relocatefrom other cities and make them comfortable in their new community. The investment will be used to build alliances with more corporates and create targeted relocation offerings.”

The investor, Mr. Mahesh Reddy of Corvus Ventures said that “for corporates, relocation is a time-consuming process. We strongly believe that Flytta brings with it the easy relocation solutions with their strong understanding of business operations”.

FLYTTA helps the employee relocate with ease by providing major services likehouse rental, packers and movers, assistance with gas, internet connections and other home services, also suggestcity experiences to enjoy. Over the last 6 months, FLYTTA has helped over 500 employees to relocate hassle-free to Hyderabad from major cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Pune and Bengaluru etc.Flytta is now the relocation partner for more than six corporates from in IT, Healthcare and Banking at national and international level. The relocation industry is valued at Rs 6000 crore in india and is expected to grow by 20% annually. The average rate of relocations in a corporate is 15% as per the NASSCOM Study.

By personalizing the relocation experience for every corporate based on their requirement and preferences, the company has been able to generate good review for its work.

"Flytta was unbelievably helpful in the relocation of our employees. The effort from the team is commendable, they will go an extra mile to make sure the relocation process is hassle-free. Although a starter in this space, they are very professional and easy to work at all times. I highly recommend their services to corporate,” said Surya Bodepu-Head Facilities and Admin(India)- Apollo Health.

C2C eCommerce Platform ForeverShop Raises $300K in Seed Funding

Bangalore-based Teamleaf Software Pvt. Ltd which runs an C2C base E-Commerce app, ForeverShop has raised around $300,000 (Rs 2 Crore) in seed funding from a clutch of angel investors.

ForeverShop was founded by an international team in 2016: the Indian team mainly focuses on marketing, operation and customer service; the team in Beijing focuses on product development. It is a free and powerful e-commerce platform for millions of small and individual business owners across India. It aims to empower them to own a Free Online Shop and have a vision to change the Indian e-commerce landscape.

The money will be used to upgrade the product, expand seller base in Tier II and tier III cities, and build more business relationship with logistics and payment gateway partners. “We have invested lots of money on product development because we aim to build the best app for small/individual sellers in India. Many sellers are not familiar with smartphone usage and running own online shop, so we help them to own a shop and use it easily with ForeverShop with excellent user interface and user experience” said Shathyan Raja, the president of ForeverShop.

Beta launched in Jan 2017, and official launched in June 2017. It is a free app that not just aggregates sellers, but transforms them into entrepreneurs. Sellers need only a smartphone with internet to create an own online shop. It contains feature like own online website, products listing, categories, payment, order & customer management, marketing tools etc. ForeverShop have already got more than 1000 sellers during the beta launch period from metro cities. With official launch, they plan to help more sellers from tier II and tier III cities.

“India is the fastest growing e-commerce market in the world and recently big investments happened in e-commerce sector. However, they focused more on B2C, which benefits only big sellers. 60% Indian economy contributed by SMEs and around 2 million SMEs is looking to start their own online shop. ForeverShop designed to empower these people to benefit more with power of internet as the internet not only benefit big companies, but also all the small/individual sellers.

Mr. Shathyan Raja had his first stint with marketing and e-commerce during college days and started his own online furniture sales and rent website. He is a sales and marketing specialist with a proven track record of achieving sales and revenue excellence. He is a strategic thinker and a disciplined executor with excellent entrepreneurship skills and driven by high determination and plans to expand his realm in e-commerce pan India to make this online selling place available and accessible throughout the nation.

According to a recent report, online resellers space has been projected to grow to $48 Bn-$60 Bn by 2022. The number of online small/individual sellers will increase from the current 2 Mn to 21-23 Mn by 2022. Also, the market share of SMEs is expected to rise from 1.2% to 5.4% of the Indian retail market.

Mumbai Based Fintech Startup Market Pulse Raises Seed Funding from Lead Angels

Mumbai based fintech startup, Market Pulse Technologies has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Lead Angels Network and Chatur Ideas platform. The company plans to use the funding to expand its product coverage to other financial markets and build a strong tech team.

Founder of Market Pulse, Amit Dhakad stated “We are pleased to have strategic investors embark on a journey with us to empower the investing world. We have built the right product for Traders in the Indian commodities market and this round of funding will help us broaden our influence and impact on the larger financial industry.”

Market Pulse is set out to democratize and provide everyone with access to Financial Market Data & Insights in a way that's easy, intuitive and highly personalized.

It caters to investor population in India including Traders, Investors, Businessmen and Market Enthusiasts.

The app is a fresh take on the way information is made available to the user. This is reflected in its innovative and user-friendly features. The app is Tailor-Made for every user, thus enhancing user experience & enabling informed decisions.

“User experience is most critical for a consumer facing product and the focus of the Market Pulse team on this should take them to great heights. Lead Angels is pleased to share its experience with the team and assist them in every way possible to reach their potential” said Sushanto Mitra Founder & CEO, Lead Angels.

In just 15 months, Market Pulse has empowered over over 100K+ traders in the commodities markets in India. Today, Market Pulse is a rare app to have garnered a 4.7 rating on Google Play Store and in just 6 months, was ranked among the top Financial Apps on Play Store. Users have praised the accuracy, speed and reliability of the platform along with it’s constant improvements and developments.

The company is primarily a tech company and has built the entire platform in-house. It’s home-grown technology gives it complete control over reliability and enables it to provide a sophisticated platform to everyone for free.

Spinny Secures Seed Funding From Blume Ventures, Indian Angel Network And Others

Gurgaon-based online retailer, Spinny has secured $1 million in seed funding from Blume Ventures and Indian Angel Network. FreeCharge co-founder’s Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon also participated in this round. The startup plans to utilise freshly infused funds primarily for strengthening their technology and expansion of hubs.

Commenting on the investment, Arpit Agarwal, Principal, Blume Ventures said “We did extensive research into the pains consumer go through the buying and selling of used cars in India. Despite the presence of vertical-focused classifieds, the needs of the market are largely unfulfilled as the issue of trust still remains. We found Spinny to be the only company willing to get their hands dirty in solving the problem from the ground up. On top of it, the credentials of founders make them easily the best early-stage team playing in this market.”

Founded by IIT Delhi alumni Niraj Singh and Ramanshu Mahaur along with former Flipkart executives Ganesh Pawar and Mohit Gupta, Spinny was launched in mid-2015. According to the company, they have strategically chosen Delhi-NCR as its target market as it accounts for 18% of India's used cars market. Further, it also represents a good amount of depth in all segments of the market - from those buying on a budget to those dealing in the supercars. In 2016, Spinny acquired Gurgaon-based Hopcar.

“Spinny stands for ‘Car buying & selling with Absolute Trust’. We are bringing radical change to the way pre-owned cars are bought and sold in India. For car owners looking to sell out their cars, Spinny offers simplicity, value and speed of sale that is unprecedented in the used car market till now. Using data from real transactions, we can best predict the selling price of a car as per its true condition and can make a quick offer. This reduces the time to close the deal. It also ends the uncertainty and hassles usually associated with options to sell in the open market,” said Niraj Singh, Founder and CEO, Spinny.

Spinny’s technology which is used in the smart price engine combined with the expertise in assessment of used cars is a perfect combination for ensuring that buyers, sellers and auto financiers are able to meet their expectations.

According to Singh, to entice buyers, the company presents them only high-quality cars with complete transparency about car's true condition and history. As a testimony of company's firm commitment to transparency and fair pricing, every car comes with a 5-day money-back guarantee. The company also provide service warranty with its cars to make the buying and owning experience as good as like buying a new car.

More than 40 Lakh cars exchange hands every year and this market is growing at more than 20% per year. Despit the presence of a large number of offline and online platforms, the buyers and sellers find it troublesome to transact with confidence. Through its revolutionary full stack operating methods and strong technology integration Spinny is looking to streamline the experiences of both sellers and buyers.

Earlier, Blume Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund that backs startups with both funding as well as active mentoring and support had pumped in a $1.2 million in co-working and shared office space provider BHIVE Workspace in a fresh round of funding.

Dr. Ritesh Malik, Founder of Innov8 & Project Guerrilla, Invests in Pumpkart

Dr. Ritesh Malik, founder of Innov8 & Project Guerrilla has invested an undisclosed amount in Chandigarh based startup ‘Pumpkart’.

Pumpkart is India’s largest online niche platform for selling water pumps. started by KS Bhatia in 2014. Water pump industry is growing at a 15% annual rate & bound for growth as water scarcity hits developing nations like India.

Mr. Bhatia has the vision to create the less known & non-exciting pump industry into a technology led high moving consumer good. With his vision to sell pumps by educating customers & creating a deeply penetrated distribution network, Bhatia has created an apple style store in Chandigarh which sells pumps of various brands including his own.

When asked about the news, Mr. Bhatia says, “It's great to have Dr. Ritesh Malik on board in our vision to solve one of India’s most challenging problems, water. India is exporting pumps to over 100 countries in the world but still, the domestic market is highly fragmented. Our focus is not to deviate from our core which is the pump industry & revolutionize the way pumps are being bought & used in the country”.

Pumpkart is also experimenting with Pumpkart Services, a platform to service the pumps bought from the platform. Bhatia mentions that after sales service in the pump industry is horrendous, & creating a technology platform for farmers etc. which are the largest consumers of water pumps helps them keep their log of inefficient pumps as low as possible in turn improving the outcome of their crops.

Dr Ritesh Malik said “Mr. Bhatia has an industry experience of over 17 years & his passion for changing a niche vertical like water pumps is commendable. I was moved by the sheer passion & focus he has for a non-glamorous product like water pumps. He’s one of the most determined entrepreneurs I have met in my life”.

Earlier this year, Sundar Pichai mentioned ‘Pumpkarts’ example in his visit to India, & appreciated Bhatia for his vision of converting a traditionally run offline business into an online business.

Video Learning Platform VideoKen Raises $1M Funding in the Seed Round

VideoKen, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning based platform for video based collaborative learning, has raised $1 million from a bunch of angel investors.

Started in January 2017 by Manish Gupta, former VP & Director, Xerox Research India and Ashish Vikram, former VP of Engineering at Flipkart, the company has raised funds from LG Chandrasekhar, chairman of Sutures India and Sashi Reddi, partner at US based SRI Capital LLC, along with a few current and former executives of Flipkart including Ravi Garikipati (CTO), Hari Vasudev (SVP), Surojit Chatterjee (SVP) and Ashish Agrawal (SVP). Ajay Lavakare, president and co-founder of Stanford Angel Network has also participated in this round. Other investors include Akash Garg (Angel investor and Director of engineering at Uber San Francisco) in addition to other US and Hong Kong based investors.

Microsoft is also supporting VideoKen with Azure Cloud Credits through the Microsoft BizSpark Plus Program as part of their Startup Initiatives coupled with Technology Mentoring.

The platform is built on a foundation of strong research, conducted at Xerox Labs over the last 3 years. The company had purchased all IP rights from Xerox and has multiple patents, currently pending for approval at US Patent and Trademark Office.

VideoKen is a video-based social learning platform, that provides unique capabilities for automatic indexing, search, curation and sharing of educational videos, which can be used to support personalized learning. Potential target audience of the company includes enterprises which recognize the value of lifelong learning for their employees, training organizations and independent trainers who want to use a world class platform, and educational institutions which are at the forefront of adopting modern pedagogy techniques.

The company has started selling in the Indian market. It has signed 5 deals of varying sizes and is in the process of signing agreements with 5-6 additional customers including corporate, educational and training institutions. VideoKen has also begun a pilot in the US, and plans to go after the international markets (especially the US and Europe) later this year.

The platform works on a subscription based model, currently offered at a very low rate to give high value proposition to its clients. “We charge a low subscription fee per learner, roughly equivalent to the price of a single lunch, to support learning for an entire year," said Manish Gupta, CEO.

The company plans to use this funding to further enhance the world-leading AI capabilities of the VideoKen learning platform and to invest in sales activities to reach out to enterprise customers.

Ashish Vikram, Chief Technical Officer said, "We are adding capabilities for social learning, gamification, and personalization to support more effective engagement with learners and improve their learning outcomes. Later on, we also plan to add support for analyzing a broader class of videos".

Tech Enabled Salon Chain Be U Salons Raises Rs 4 Cr in Seed Funding

Be U Salons, an Asset-Light Tech Enabled Salon Chain, a part of the Delhi-based Gingerpan Swapkart, announced today that it has raised Rs 4 crore (US$600k) from a consortium of investors from UAE, Singapore and India.

The fund raise was led by Gaurav Kachru from 5 ideas Startup Superfuel and has received participations from Sundeep Singh Sahni, Founder Lazada Group and former VP Ola New Initiatives Jatin Aneja, Partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas Bikramjiet Kukreja (owner of one of the first Be U Salon outlets) and Arun Malhotra, a serial entrepreneur, among others.

Be U was founded in October 2016 by Vikas Johari who is the Founder & CEO of the firm, Co-Founder and CTO, Shailendra Nagvani and Co-Founder and COO, Jigyasa Gupta. The Salon Chain started its operation in December 2016, through its first outlet. Be U operates in the B2B2C space and aims to fix the gap between the demand and supply in salon industry through both, on-ground operations and advanced technology. Customers can expect standardized services, affordable prices, trained professionals, branded products, clean and hygienic outlets and app-based transactions.

The chain currently has 20 outlets operating across Delhi-NCR and services approximately 250 customers per day. It has attended to more than 15,000 customers till date. Be U Salons now aims to open over 100 outlets in FY 2017 across multiple cities in India. The raised funds will be used to further consolidate Be U's position as one of the fastest growing tech enabled salon chain in North India. It would also be used to strengthen the back-end operations and tech infrastructure, build core talent and marketing of the current and new stores.

Speaking on the occasion, Vikas Johari, CEO and Founder, Be U Salons and a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits, commented, “Around 90% of the Indian salon industry comprises of standalone outlets, where most of them suffer from lack of a back-end infrastructure, standardization, technological automation, intelligent pricing, branding and marketing, amongst many others. We are here to provide a support ecosystem to bring them out of the crisis.”

Jigyasa Gupta, Co-Founder and COO, Be U Salons, also reiterated, “Today, customers expect a certain quality and pricing, at multiple levels, but finds it difficult to find a match due to the extremely unorganized and unexpected nature of this industry; Be U aims to mediate this gap. We wish to create a brand which fills the unexpectedness between the consumers and the salon owners, via trust, training, intelligent pricing and technology.”

“Currently this industry works in a data vacuum, we at Be U, aim to change this and bring the data into the open, accessible to all the stakeholders involved. We are building the missing link between the salon owners, customers and salon employees, through technology; which holds the deep solutions to all of their concerns and challenges. We are excited to solve the problems of one of the oldest and largest profession on this planet - through technology.” Says Shailendra Nagvani, Co-Founder and CTO, an IIT Roorkee alumnus.

A KPMG Wellness Sector report released in November 2016 projected that the size of India’s beauty and wellness market would nearly double to Rs 80,370 cr by 2017-18 from Rs 41,224 cr in 2012-13. Technavio's analysts forecast the Professional Salon Care market in India to grow at a CAGR of 27.07 per cent over the period 2013-2018. These figures corroborate the fact that this market has immense potential.

Juno Clinic, an Online and Offline Mental Health Startup, Raises Rs 8 Cr in Seed Round

Mumbai-based Juno Clinic (Davman Technology Services Pvt. Ltd.) an online and offline start-up focused on mental health counseling and treatment, has raised Rs. 8 crores from well-known serial entrepreneur Atul Nishar (Founder of Hexaware Technologies & Aptech Computers), the family office of Sunita and Neeraj Bhargava (Founder of Zodius Capital), Vikas Khemani (President & CEO, Edelweiss Securities Limited) and other individual investors as a part of a Pre-Series A fund raising round.

According to recent estimates by The Lancet Study, in India only 1 in 10 people with mental health disorders receives evidence-based treatment. The biggest challenge that stops being people from seeking professional help for issues such as depression, anxiety or relationship conflicts is the social stigma attached with seeking help from professionals. Further, there is a dearth of trained professionals in India as most psychiatrists and psychologist operate only in the top metros. Understanding the need gap, the Company launched its online counseling clinic in January 2016, that allows counseling through online video connection, phone or chat, and has also started offline counseling clinics in Mumbai, with the first two clinics set up in Khar and Powai.

Juno Clinic, which started as a brain child of Davesh Manocha, Anuraag Srivastava, Arun Kumar and a renowned psychiatrist Dr. Vishal Sawant in Jan 2016, operates on a unique model that provides online (video/telephonic/chat) counseling as well as in-person counseling out of their clinics in Mumbai. The Company is not an aggregator for service providers but hires senior psychologists and psychiatrists full time, all of whom adhere strictly to American psychiatry protocols. The company currently has a medical team of 35.

Speaking on the funding, co-founder Davesh Manocha said, “We are privileged to have such seasoned investors believe in Juno Clinic. The company will use the funding proceeds to expand into both domestic and international markets online, increase the physical footprint within India and launch new B2B based products offerings that will ensure comprehensive solutions to all mental health problems.”

“We believe that only through the full-stack model, where we employ our medical team can ensure quality clinical services promise to our customers. We have a top class medical team, which gets further training on important aspects of online counseling”, Anuraag Srivastava co-founder of the Company added.

Online counseling holds a lot of promise, as it overcomes the barriers that usually prevent people from seeking treatment, such as social taboo, lack of access to quality therapists and hectic schedules. Further, the anonymity and comfort of not being seen by anyone makes it a compelling proposition for those who want counseling but are unable to get that.

Fashion and Lifestyle Discovery Platform SummerLabel Raises Rs 1 Cr in Seed Funding

SummerLabel, the upcoming fashion and lifestyle discovery platform has closed a seed round of funding totaling Rs 1 crore through multiple angel investors based out of Silicon Valley and India. The start-up is looking to invest the funding in building technology infrastructure, expanding its team and build a more robust network of private labels, users and influencers.

Guragon based start-up was found in October 2015 by Apaksh Gupta (25); a successful serial businessman from Chandigarh along with his co-founder Vanya Mishra (25), a former Miss India World. The start-up serves its 7,500+ registered users by letting them explore and connect with millions of home-grown private labels across the country. Building a one-stop fashion destination for its users, SummerLabel features extensive profiles of these lesser known home-grown private labels across the country. From their specialties, to store locations, price range and details as helpful as store opening and closing timings. SummerLabel equips a user with all desired information in one place and helps them make a well-informed buying decision by publishing reviews, ratings and catalogues of these stores.

SummerLabel has an ‘omni-channel discovery mechanism’ where the user can not only find the complete information about the offline private stores but can also explore unique stores that sell exclusively through their websites.

Commenting on having successfully raised its first funding Apaksh Gupta, Founder, SummerLabel said, “We are excited to have our investors on-board with us and it is gratifying to see the trust they have bestowed in SummerLabel and its team. The idea is to build a platform where fashion enthusiasts can come together to discover home-grown private labels and share the latest fashion and lifestyle trends. With this funding coming in we are focusing on building the best-in-class Influencer Marketing Tool, PoS and Loyalty programme tool for the home-grown private labels that will help them increase their revenues. We will also focus on expanding our team and the SummerLabel community.”

SummerLabel Co-founder Vanya Mishra expressed her thoughts on raising the seed funding and said,” The rise in disposable income amongst fashion conscious youth and professionals, given along with the smartphone penetration and access to relevant content has created a huge market for the boutique start-ups such as ours. We at SummerLabel are helping bridge the gap of access by providing unique marketing tools, giving a digital identity to some really extraordinary yet unexplored fashion labels and celebrating style in a never before way. We thank our investors for the faith in our idea. ”

SummerLabel has a community of nearly 7,500 registered users and has tie ups with over 120 stores across the country. The start-up aims to reach a revenue of Rs.25 – Rs.35 lakhs by the end of the calendar year 2017.

Dekkho Raises $1.2M in Seed Funding; Set to Disrupt the Video Streaming Space

Dekkho, a new-age streaming platform, has raised $1.2 million from seven marquee angel investors in one of the largest seed funding rounds in India. The company offers a viewing experience that is uncluttered and curated, has high-quality content sourced from leading content providers from India and abroad, consumes less internet bandwidth, offline viewing facility, offers exclusive access to new content, and – above all – is free. Established in March 2016, Dekkho is the brainchild of Tanay Desai and Vinay Pillai.

Dekkho currently has over 12,000 hours of programming, which is made available by partnering directly with top digital channels such as Sony Music, Being Indian, Zee Music, Blush, Miss Malini, Times Group, ScoopWhoop, AIB, East India Comedy and Culture Machine. Content from national and international artists such asColdplay, Beyonce, Badshah, Papon, ArjunKanungo, Micheal Jackson, Sia and Chain Smokers is also available on the platform, as is regional content in six Indian languages. By making such a diverse content catalogue available for free, Dekkho gives its users an opportunity to enjoy entertainment across the board without worrying about the costs of multiple OTT subscriptions.

Speaking on the launch, Tanay Desai, Co-founder, Dekkho, said, “Smartphones have become the first screen for new-age Indian viewers, especially when it comes to fresh entertainment. We are looking to revolutionise the way entertainment is consumed and delivered in India and create India’s first social video network, where users are closely connected to their favourite content creators. Indian consumers are far from paying for online content. We aim to create a sustainable, three-way ecosystem for content producers, advertisers, and users through a free-to-use service. We feel premium consumption will be primarily driven by three key factors – content diversity, user experience, and availability before anywhere else. Moreover, users will no longer have to find a compromise between quality and affordability with the launch of Dekkho.”

“Content producers will eventually have to rely on a third party aggregator with stronger technology expertise. With a strong focus on young Indian viewers and their entertainment requirements, Dekkho will be the perfect platform for content developers to deliver their content to their target audiences. Through our team’s extensive global OTT experience, we understand the pulse of a young Indian viewing audience. This makes us confident that we will soon become the default destination for all online video-based Indian entertainment content across Android, iOS, and web platforms,” adds Vinay Pillai, Co-founder, Dekkho.

Dekkho reaches out to 2 million social media users on a monthly basis prior to launch. It has partnerships with several premium content developers who benefit from greater discoverability, better monetisation, and cost-saving on tech investments enabled by it. Strategic partnerships with brands such as Paytm, Mobikwik, Lava, LeEco, and Micromax allow Dekkho to extend its diverse array of rich entertainment content to users in its partner ecosystems. The long-term vision is to create a video streaming culture through adaptive transcoding and subsidised data tariffs with multiple telecom service providers over the next five years.

Venture Catalysts Makes Seed Investment into Supr Daily, a Habit-Forming App

Underlining its commitment to promoting disruptive start-ups across market segments, Venture Catalysts, India’s leading & fastest growing seed investment and innovation platform, has enabled an undisclosed seed investment into Supr Daily, an innovative, habit-forming app. Venture Catalysts angel investors Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, Krishna Jhunjhunwal and Anirudh Damani led the investment round.

Founded in 2015 by Puneet Kumar (alumnus, IIT-Bombay) and Shreyas Nagdawane (alumnus, IIT-Bombay and IIM-Bangalore), Supr Daily is a subscription brand that delivers daily consumable goods such as milk, bread, eggs, coconut water etc to its users every morning. The company follows a direct-to-consumer model adopted from the daily milk use-case in India to make deliveries, which has allowed it to bring down the delivery cost per order to as low as INR 1-3 as compared to the e-commerce benchmark of INR 50. Its novel business model has enabled Supr Daily to already achieve operational profitability, and was instrumental in helping it secure a previous seed investment from Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, two of the leading names in the Indian entrepreneurial and angel investment landscape.

Speaking on the investment, Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, said, “What the team at Supr Daily is doing in the daily needs market is extremely unique. By building an exceptional delivery infrastructure from scratch, they have already taken the last mile delivery cost down by more than 90%, something which a lot of other habit forming apps and e-commerce players are still struggling with. We are extremely excited to add such an innovative venture to our portfolio of investee companies, and will be paying close attention to its future growth and scale.”

Several other angel investors also participated in the funding round, including prominent names such as Dheeraj Jain (partner at Redcliffe Capital) and Harsh Rajgarhia (Overnite Express).

"Supr Daily’s model is very uniquely Indian. The team has figured out the supply chain part so early on, which is usually the hardest and the most important part in any e-commerce business," said Kunal Bahl, Co-founder & CEO, Snapdeal.

Supr Daily’s doorstep delivery and convenient management of subscription has driven great consumer traction, allowing it to serve close to half a million orders till date. Currently active in many parts of Mumbai, the platform will be using the funds raised through this round to scale up its pan-Mumbai operations in the next 6 months.

Shreyas Nagdawane, Co-founder, Supr Daily, said, “The key characteristic which sets aside this market is that the consumption behaviour is very high repeat and the market is already accustomed to a subscription based model”.

“Our full stack approach in terms of sourcing, distribution and last mile delivery has enabled us to deliver delightful consumer experiences while making positive contribution margins on each delivery" added Puneet Kumar, Co-founder, Supr Daily.

Online Jewellery Marketplace VivoCarat.com Raises $50K in Seed Funding

VivoCarat.com, a leading online jewellery marketplace in India, has raised $50K in seed funding from a group of individual investors in November 2016. The funds will be used for product development, team building, and marketing.

Founded in early 2016 by Ritesh Oza and Abhijith Shetty, Mumbai-based VivoCarat is an online marketplace of diversified jewellery brands that showcases striking and spectacular products at an affordable price. It offers a range of new-age contemporary jewellery items, suitable for both special occasions as well as daily wear.

“Each product at VivoCarat is listed into collections considering the needs of the customers and sourced from group of handpicked jewelers renowned for their design excellence and aesthetics. We add a minimum of 100-150 new designs on the site every month and will continue to bring more varieties for customers across the country. VivoCarat has successfully managed to join hands with more than 30 reputed brands across Mumbai & other cities like Jaipur, Surat, Kolkata and New Delhi.” said Ritesh Oza, CEO and Co-founder at VivoCarat.com.

The seeds of VivoCarat were sown when Ritesh saw his friend struggling with finding an engagement ring. As Ritesh explains, “Every store that we went to, be it branded or local, had limited options for designs. They didn’t even have a catalogue for ‘make to order’ rings. Digging deeper, I saw that in India there isn’t a shortage of quality jewellers or design options but a complete apathy towards understanding the needs of the customer. So, learning from this experience, when we started building the catalogue at VivoCarat, we selected products not based on categories, but based on collections. There is no point in displaying a fancy ring to someone who’s looking for a daily-wear ring.”

Ritesh further adds, “Also, being a marketplace in jewellery has its own added advantages. Since we don’t hold any inventory, it helps us revamp our product line and featured jewellers based on the time of the year and changing trends. Unlike retail jewellers, who try to sell an item to clear stocks; our focus remains on understanding and evolving as per the needs of the customer.”

When it comes to brand collaboration, VivoCarat has successfully managed to join hands with reputed brands that deliver some of the best craftsmanship, believe in authenticity and innovative designs. Besides from providing an online platform to the associated brands; it also helps accelerate their business by providing them a host of value added services.

A new feature called ‘Jewellery LookBook’ will be launched in early 2017, is something that both founders are excited about. The LookBook will reach out to the crowd and educate them with the latest news, jewellery in trend, tips, fashion nooks and much more. Ritesh informs, “Although jewellery is big in India, the younger generation is not updated with the latest trends, or for that matter even the traditional designs. A piece of jewellery is valued for the story behind it and we want to be part of that story telling.”

VivoCarat ensures all the gold products are B.I.S hallmarked. Also, all diamond products are G.I.A, I.G.I, I.G.L and S.G.L certified. It also provides free shipping on every order and easy return and exchange policy.

ten3T, Medical Grade Wearable Device Startup, Raises Seed Funding Led by Pi Ventures

Bangalore based medical grade wearable device startup, ten3T announced that it has raised an angel round of funding from Pi Ventures. The round also saw participation by a group of angels, including V. Krishna Prasad, Co-Founder of Qikwel, Bhupen Shah and other angel investors from the Valley and Bangalore. ten3T has developed its first wearable medical device ‘Cicer’, which will make cardiac health easily accessible to everyone.

ten3T builds wearable medical devices that collects and integrates medical grade data in real time. Besides manufacturing the devices, it deploys, manages and analyzes the data with predictive functioning. Each wearable device will include multiple sensors to collect clinical grade data, continuously streaming signals from ECG, pulse, SpO2, respiratory rate and temperature – all gathered within 30 seconds, all analyzed and reported in real time. ten3T will manage and analyze the continually streaming data on an intelligent cloud based platform to provide accurate medical grade data to doctors with analytics and predictive modeling. ten3T will be an end-to-end operator of the real time ECG monitoring business – building the hardware, software, data storage and data analytics.

ten3T founding team comes with rich experience in medical and biomedical fields. It is co-founded by Dr. Sudhir Borgonha, a physician and an entrepreneur (graduate of St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore and the Sloan School of Management, MIT) and two biomedical engineers - Rahul Shingrani, (Marquette University) comes with years of research and development experience in the medical device space and Prasad Bhat who has experience in regulatory and quality systems in medical devices.

Dr. Sudhir Borgonha, Co-founder & CEO, ten3T, says, “Medical care continues to be traditionally managed. With technological advances, there is an urgent need to build more powerful diagnostic capabilities coupled with interpretative tools. ten3T integrates its proprietary hardware and software to build convenience, cost benefits and intelligent reporting to the physician and patient. It is our vision to make cardiac care preventive, predictive and accessible to all.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner of pi Ventures, adds, “We are very excited to partner with the talented team at ten3T. Sudhir and his team have done some path breaking work in bringing out a compact and medical grade device. We believe that Cicer will make ECG and cardiac health monitoring easy, intelligent and more accessible for all, across India and globally. At pi Ventures, we are looking to support disruptive product companies in the Applied AI, ML and IoT space and ten3T presents a very compelling case.”

The funds will be deployed to beta test the company’s first device, Cicer in multiple healthcare settings, including doctors in private practice, nursing homes and for at-home monitoring.

Cicer monitors real time ECG, respiration, pulse and temperature and streams them simultaneously in real time to the doctor’s tablet and the nursing station. This empowers a number of smaller nursing homes without an ICU to offer ICU equivalent services when patients are walking around or even in their homes. Cicer can be used to get a Spot ECG i.e. an instant reading or can be worn for hours (similar to a Holter monitor). The device is a self-enclosed, wireless 9 cm wide smart patch that is held against the chest for 20 seconds to generate an instant ECG or worn for several hours for continuous monitoring.

Rahul Shingrani, Co-founder & CTO, says, “Being self-enclosed, the device requires little training. Collecting large volumes of clinical grade data will help us build predictive tools, bringing artificial intelligence into the clinic”.

In India, given the fact that 30% of deaths are caused with cardiac issues at the core and lack of an adequate number of cardiologists, we are on our way to claiming the unfortunate distinction of being the cardiovascular disease capital of the world with 70 million cases by 2025. As such we need to find unique ways to accurately monitor and diagnose cardiac function. ten3T will do just that by being an end-to-end operator of the real time ECG monitoring business – building the hardware, software, data storage and data analytics.

FITPASS Raises $1M in Seed Funding from Mumbai Angels and Others

FITPASS, the all-access pass to gyms and fitness studios, has raised $1 million in seed funding from Mumbai Angels and a consortium of Delhi and Bangalore based Angels.

FITPASS, a pioneer in the fit-tech space in India, breaks all the barriers to fitness for its consumers. Priced at only Rs.999 a month, this all-access app based pass is not only significantly cheaper than a regular gym membership but also provides its users freedom from long term contracts and yearly upfront payments. Available on iOS & android, FITPASS is economical, convenient and offers every workout imaginable, ranging from gym workouts, yoga, zumba, pilates, spinning to kickboxing, MMA and many more. With the highest density and largest partner network of gyms and fitness studios, FITPASS users can work out anywhere, anytime close to their homes, offices, neighbourhood markets, etc. Co-founder Arushi Verma points out that “with fitness being increasingly top of mind, FITPASS’ model has low customer acquisition costs, loyal users and low churn rates, contributing to a strong and sustainable business model”.

FITPASS has been at the forefront of innovation to create a sustainable health and fitness ecosystem in India. Despite bootstrapping for 12 months, FITPASS successfully established itself as the undisputed category leader. While pure information portals such as Fitternity and Gympik raised capital early on, FITPASS has far surpassed such indirect and other direct competitors with its tech-first approach, which has allowed it to grow rapidly without burning cash. A data driven company, FITPASS believes in solving everything through tech with limited human intervention to enhance the user experience.

Publicly available data on Appstore and Google confirm that FITPASS commands the highest number of app downloads in India and is the #1 ranking web platform in the country compared to its competitors. FITPASS attributes its ever-increasing traction to its holistic offering from easy access to workouts to personalised diet plans, health and nutrition products, fitness accessories and everything else one needs to get fit and stay fit.

A participating investor expressed that “unlike many start-ups, FITPASS is both cash generative and profitable. Every 10,000 users means Rs.1 crore in topline for the company! With the fitness industry growing at 25% year-on-year and the spend on fitness estimated at c.$16.6 billion, FITPASS’ one-stop-shop offering makes it an attractive investment.”

FITPASS co-founder, Akshay Verma, explains how fitness is an assistance oriented service segment that requires a lot of customisation and enhancement for each individual user – “there is no one size fits all in fitness.” With regards to the utilisation of fresh capital, Akshay further adds – “this curated assistance can only be provided through deep tech – we are working on this and will be launching many exciting features offering highly personalised fitness management tools to our users. Simultaneously, there is an exciting product being rolled out for our partners that allows them to bring new approaches for their customers and make data driven informed business decisions for themselves. We are changing the game in India!”. With 1,250+ gyms and fitness studios currently in its partner network in Delhi NCR, scaling up their operation and expansion to other cities is also a priority for FITPASS.

The investor also added that “the FITPASS team has great potential as it is made up of real product people focused on generating insights, understanding the problems and investing time into finding efficient solutions.”

Pet-Related Information Provider TailsLife Raises Seed Funding

Bangalore-based online pet-related information provider TailsLife has raised an undisclosed amount in seed round of funding from investors including Encube Venture Partners, Mohan Kumar of Norwest Ventures, V Balakrishnan of Exfinity Ventures, Satish Tembad, Vineet Jain and Nishanth Ramkutty.

The newly raised funds will be used to enhance the product and technology, scale up to new cities, as well as to hire talent for tech, design, sales and operations. Founded in November 2015 by Ramesh and Kanishk Lihala, TailsLife provides content and services for pet care needs. The app is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

V Balakrishnan of Exfinity Ventures, said, “With rising disposable income and pet ownership, India is one of the fastest growing pet markets in the world. What India lacks is an integrated ecosystem where pet owners can get all their needs fulfilled in a common single platform. Being a pet owner myself, I am happy to be invested in Tails life which provides an unique, unparalleled market place experience for all pet owners. The team at Tails life is passionate and are committed to make it a great success.”

Suresh Kumar, Partner, Encube Ventures Partners LLP, said, “The pet care space has seen tremendous growth and largely the solutions that a pet parent is looking for is fragmented. TailsLife can a play a significant role and add a lot of value by bringing everything on a single platform to a pet parent such as myself.”

Founded in October 2015 by Balaji Ramesh, Prachi Gupta, and Dushyant Rao, TailsLife aims at making pet parenting easier and happier by providing content specific to the breed and age of your pet and easier access to vet, grooming and boarding services.

Last year, Tailslife launched the beta version of its app in Bangalore, Coimbatore and Chennai. "So, post the immediate organic downloads in both android and iOS, we started working on the next version which offers tailored content specific to the breed and age of the dog/cat by experts, booking of services, interactive Forum and vaccination reminders. We have also developed a backend portal that would help pet service providers to manage their appointments seamlessly, we are providing it for free at the moment," added Balaji Ramesh, co-founder and CEO,TailsLife.

The latest version of the app have come up with a really clean UI along with easy navigation functionalities and advanced features. It offers its customers to customised their content feed. Once customers registered their pet’s breed and age with TailsLife, customer will automatically get informative articles that are more relatable to their age and type. Also, with a click of a button customer can get in touch with the best spas, salon services, boarding kennels and more. It also provides dedicated pet forum which is totally dedicated to customer’s pet.

User can virtually shake a leg with other pet parents and share their story. Apart from this user can also share and view interesting pet stories from around the world.

Other startups who operating in this space include DogSpot.in and Heads Up For Tails (HUFT) among others.