Akshay Kumar, Rana Daggubati, Collective Artists and Mahesh Bhupathi backed Social Swag Raises $3.5 Mn in Funding Led By IMEF and Unicorn India Ventures

Content Platform Social Swag raises $3.5 Million in Pre Series A

HNIs like Vinay Agarwal, Ritesh Deshmukh, Raghu Subramanian, Edward Menezes have also participated in the round along with The Shekama Family Trust and The Blume Founders Fund

Social Swag runs masterclasses, live learning sessions and personal shoutouts for curious learners

Top celebrities and achievers like Lara Dutta, Akshay Kumar, Abhinav Bindra, Bhavish Aggarwal and many more available on the platform as the masterclass speakers

New age content platform Social Swag, which is a collective brainchild of Akshay Kumar, Rana Daggubati Collective Artists and Mahesh Bhupathi has announced raising $3.5 million in a Pre Series A round. The round has been led by IMEF and Unicorn India Ventures, which has made its maiden announcement in a content creator economy specialist platform.

Some other HNI’s who participated in the round are Vinay Agarwal, Ritesh Deshmukh, Raghu Subramanian, Edward Menezes, The Shekama Family Trust, and The Blume Founders fund.

Started in 2020, Social Swag is building out a Celebrity/ influencer commerce platform and has been growing 40% m-o-m for the last 5 months and is poised to continue this trajectory as the online story in India continues to generate exciting outcomes.

Parth Gandhi who launched IMEF as an entertainment fund says, “We are backing various entertainment opportunities in India and with Social Swag’s offering across multiple products we believe they will become an outlier in the space. That is why we chose them as our first investment.”

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “As a fund, we strongly believe that the content creator economy is ripe for explosive growth. We have been tracking Social Swag for close to 6 months now and are very bullish on the moat they have been able to create vis-a-vis access to talent and building technology to make it accessible. We are excited to back them in their journey.”

Social Swag has multiple verticals of its offering like Masterclasses, Live learning and personal shout outs etc. The Company runs on a subscription model giving unlimited access to the curated content on the platform. Top celebrities and achievers like Lara Dutta, Bhavish Aggarwal, Abhinav Bindra, Akshay Kumar, Vicky Ratnani, Avinash Gowarikar are some of the most reputed names whose masterclasses are currently running on the platform. Social Swag aspires to build the biggest content platform which is made in India for the world.

Rana Daggubatti, an accomplished actor, entrepreneur & Co founder, Social Swag, says, “We are excited to welcome our new investors and our focus will remain to create a platform where various people will find relevant content for themselves across different products. These would be a mix of entertainment, self development, skill enhancement and passion content.”

According to a recent industry report, there are over 1,50,000 professional content creators in India who are able to monetize their services. The global content creators’ economy is estimated to be over $100 billion. Social Swag is rightly positioned to build its market leadership as the platform is backed by some of the most accomplished content creators and artists in India.

SNK Advisors advised Social Swag on the transaction.

About Unicorn India Ventures

Unicorn India Ventures is a Mumbai-based early stage fund house started in 2015 by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar. The Fund has also launched a UK India cross border fund for funding UK  startups looking to enter India. From its first Fund, UIV has invested in 18 companies like Inc42, Sequretek, Pharmarack, Genrobotics, NeuroEquilibrium, SmartCoin, Open Bank, Open app to name a few. Unicorn India has also announced Fund II, which is a Rs 300 crore fund launched in 2019 which has invested in 15 companies so far.

 About IMEF

IMEF (India Media & Entertainment Fund) is India's first AIF focused on investing in Media, Entertainment and Technology Industry. IMEF invests in Credit, Special Situations and Equity opportunities across a wide array of Media & Entertainment businesses, including filmed entertainment, events, media, gaming and technology. IMEF is founded by Parth Gandhi and Systematix Group (a diversified financial services company).

Kerala-based Software Defined Radio Startup Inntot Raises Seed Funding from Unicorn India Ventures

Unicorn India Ventures, an early stage VC fund, has announced another investment in Kerala -- an emerging hub for startups. The Fund has invested in Inntot, a software defined radio startup based in Kochi, Kerala. It is a seed-funding round, which marks Unicorn India as the first institutional investor in Inntot.

Founded in 2014 by Rajith Nair and Prasanth Thankappan, Inntot Technologies, is a technology driven company with prime focus on enabling cost effective next generation digital media receivers. Inntot has Software enabled IP Solutions for Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM and DRM+) Receivers, DAB/DAB+ Receivers, ISDB-T Digital Television. Inntot Technologies is all set to play a pivotal role in the Analog Sunset of AM and FM broadcast radio transmission paving way to Digital Radio Transmission in the near future.

This is Unicorn India’s sixth announcement in the State The Fund invested in five startups — Genrobotics, Perfectfit and SectorQube, Bank Open and Clootrack early this year.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “Over the last one year, as a Fund, we have been on a look out for next gen tech startups and investment made by us clearly reflect our intent to find such growing startups and invest in them. Kerala, in that respect, has surprised as we have seen our investments going to startups which are working on cutting edge technology like IoT, 3D, Robotics and now digital radio receivers.” Investment in Inntot is inspired by the success that we have seen in new age tech startups who are not chasing the tempting matrix but building a product from ground up and opening up a completely new market for themselves rather fighting for a small piece of a big pie, he adds.

Started in 2014, by Rajith Nair and Prasanth Thankappan, with 36 years of cumulative experience across consumer electronics and automotive entertainment in companies like Philips, Wipro, LSI Logic and ISRO. Inntot aims to bring down the cost of digital radio receivers substantially for OEMs or ODMs. The Company has developed a software-based solution, which will enable them to achieve this vision without using specialized hardware chipsets. Inntot has already sold first SDR license to Telechips Inc, a South Korean company that sells system on chip products used in automotive entertainment systems and consumer electronics. Due to Inntot’s competitiveness, its solution is now being considered by OEMs and ODMs in Asia for their future Digital Radio Receivers, which indicates at a healthy pipeline of potential clients for the Company.

Rajith Nair, Co-founder and Managing Director, Inntot Technologies, says, “Our mission is to facilitate a seamless switchover from Analog Radio Broadcast (AM and FM) to Digital Radio Broadcast by providing high quality and cost effective Digital Radio Receiver solution that enables mass acceptance. Collaboration of Inntot with a technology savvy investor like Unicorn India, who shares our view, will accelerate our mission. ”

Inntot is the only company in India today working on SDR based end to end digital radio receiver software stack that could make digital receiving solutions for home and car audio affordable. The Company pegs the demand at close to 7.5 million for such devices over the next three years in India and Asia alone. The funds raised in this round will be used for procuring hi-tech testing equipment, enhanced marketing efforts, solution field testing and hiring key personnel in critical functions like marketing, sales, and software.

Unicorn India Ventures has also taken a board seat in the Company. Aayush Jain, Principal, Unicorn India Ventures has been appointed as the Board Member in Inntot.

Kerala-based Software Defined Radio Startup Inntot Raises Seed Funding from Unicorn India Ventures

Unicorn India Ventures, an early stage VC fund, has announced another investment in Kerala -- an emerging hub for startups. The Fund has invested in Inntot, a software defined radio startup based in Kochi, Kerala. It is a seed-funding round, which marks Unicorn India as the first institutional investor in Inntot.

Founded in 2014 by Rajith Nair and Prasanth Thankappan, Inntot Technologies, is a technology driven company with prime focus on enabling cost effective next generation digital media receivers. Inntot has Software enabled IP Solutions for Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM and DRM+) Receivers, DAB/DAB+ Receivers, ISDB-T Digital Television. Inntot Technologies is all set to play a pivotal role in the Analog Sunset of AM and FM broadcast radio transmission paving way to Digital Radio Transmission in the near future.

This is Unicorn India’s sixth announcement in the State The Fund invested in five startups — Genrobotics, Perfectfit and SectorQube, Bank Open and Clootrack early this year.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “Over the last one year, as a Fund, we have been on a look out for next gen tech startups and investment made by us clearly reflect our intent to find such growing startups and invest in them. Kerala, in that respect, has surprised as we have seen our investments going to startups which are working on cutting edge technology like IoT, 3D, Robotics and now digital radio receivers.” Investment in Inntot is inspired by the success that we have seen in new age tech startups who are not chasing the tempting matrix but building a product from ground up and opening up a completely new market for themselves rather fighting for a small piece of a big pie, he adds.

Started in 2014, by Rajith Nair and Prasanth Thankappan, with 36 years of cumulative experience across consumer electronics and automotive entertainment in companies like Philips, Wipro, LSI Logic and ISRO. Inntot aims to bring down the cost of digital radio receivers substantially for OEMs or ODMs. The Company has developed a software-based solution, which will enable them to achieve this vision without using specialized hardware chipsets. Inntot has already sold first SDR license to Telechips Inc, a South Korean company that sells system on chip products used in automotive entertainment systems and consumer electronics. Due to Inntot’s competitiveness, its solution is now being considered by OEMs and ODMs in Asia for their future Digital Radio Receivers, which indicates at a healthy pipeline of potential clients for the Company.

Rajith Nair, Co-founder and Managing Director, Inntot Technologies, says, “Our mission is to facilitate a seamless switchover from Analog Radio Broadcast (AM and FM) to Digital Radio Broadcast by providing high quality and cost effective Digital Radio Receiver solution that enables mass acceptance. Collaboration of Inntot with a technology savvy investor like Unicorn India, who shares our view, will accelerate our mission. ”

Inntot is the only company in India today working on SDR based end to end digital radio receiver software stack that could make digital receiving solutions for home and car audio affordable. The Company pegs the demand at close to 7.5 million for such devices over the next three years in India and Asia alone. The funds raised in this round will be used for procuring hi-tech testing equipment, enhanced marketing efforts, solution field testing and hiring key personnel in critical functions like marketing, sales, and software.

Unicorn India Ventures has also taken a board seat in the Company. Aayush Jain, Principal, Unicorn India Ventures has been appointed as the Board Member in Inntot.

Neo-Banking Startup Open Raises Pre-Series A Funding from Unicorn India Ventures, Others

Fintech startup Open, which offers a digital banking service for small businesses, announces its pre-series A funding led by Unicorn India Ventures and Recruit Co. Ltd, through its investment subsidiary RSP India Fund LLC. Existing investors ISME-ACE and Vaibhav Domkundwar’s BetterCapital AngelList syndicate also participated in the round.

The startup had earlier raised investments from Citrus Pay founders Amrish Rau & Jitendra Gupta, TaxiforSure founder Apremaya Radhakrishnan, Chiranth Patil of BetaPlus Ventures, Archana Priyadarshini of Unicorn India Ventures and Vaibhav Domkudwar’s BetterCapital AngelList Syndicate.

Founded in May 2017 by serial entreprenuers Anish Achuthan, Mabel Chacko and Ajeesh Achuthan along with ex-TaxiforSure CFO Deena Jacob, Open offers a digital current account in partnership with banks that offers all the features of a traditional bank account with integrated tools to automate finances for small businesses. The account has all the tools that’s required by a small business to send and receive payments combined with an AI based accounting engine, that automates bookkeeping and expense management.

Apart from enabling the businesses to run their finances effectively, the platform also offers an APIs for developers to integrate banking and payments into their business workflows. The startup which has about 1000 customers is also getting ready to launch an innovative business expense card with an attached credit-line called DUO for enabling pay-outs and employee expense management for employees. Open has currently partnered with 7 Banks for powering the banking services on the platform.

According to Anish Achuthan, Co-founder & CEO of Open, “Banking is broken for the 51 million small businesses as traditional business banking services have not focused on the needs of these businesses. This presents us with a large opportunity to disrupt this segment in partnership with banks. The funding will help us accelerate customer acquisition and growth as we target to onboard 2 lakh small businesses into the platform in the next two years. Further the funding will be used to enhance our core platform to launch new products on lending and wealth management using AI and financial analytics.”

Speaking on the investment, Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says, “Fintech in India is one of the fastest growing sectors because technology can play an enabler in taking banking solutions at affordable rates to the unbanked population. Open’s business model of extending traditional banking services through digital route is a unique proposition within fintech and this prompted us to lead the round.”

What is Neo-Banking

A Neo-Bank is an institution that provides checking, a prepaid debit card and some form of savings account without the traditional brick-and-mortar buildings or put simply, a ‘neobank’ is a bank sitting on a 100% digital and mobile platform (so no branches). It usually includes features like mobile deposits, P2P payments, mobile budgeting tools and real-time digital receipts.

In India, Neobanks are relatively new concept and Paytm Payments Bank, Fino Payments Bank, DigiBank (India) by DBS and Open are few neobanks operating in India. Open claims that it is Asia's first neobank for SMEs

FinTech Startup SmartCoin Raises $2 Mn in Pre Series-A Funding Led By Shanghai-based VC

Bangalore-based fintech startup, SmartCoin, has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Unicorn India Ventures, which is an existing investor in the company, also participated in the round, along with ISME ACE, a leading fintech accelerator, announced the startup in a press release sent to IndianWeb2.

SmartCoin lends small-to-mid-sized ticket loans to mobile users after building a SmartCoin credit score, which is backed by data science and machine learning. The company raised seed funding from Unicorn India Ventures last year.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder and CEO, SmartCoin, says, “We have seen a sharp uptick in growth over the past year and have successfully disbursed over 50,000 micro loans. More importantly, we have been able to open credit access for people who were not able to tap the formal channels and were otherwise dependent on personal networks and loan sharks. With this round, we expect to grow the momentum and further scale 10X over the next 6–12 months. Having specialists as investors, who are passionate about micro-lending, on board will only help us cover more ground not only in India but globally too."

Accion Venture Lab is the world’s leading seed-stage investor in fintech for the underserved. Accion Venture Lab invests capital in, and provides support to, innovative fintech startups that increase access to, improve the quality of, or reduce the cost of financial services for the underserved at scale.

“SmartCoin illustrates how innovative lenders are leveraging data, mobile access, and India’s digital infrastructure to extend loan access for the financially underserved,” says Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. Paarul Dudeja, Director of Investments for India, Accion Venture Lab adds, “SmartCoin exemplifies what we at Accion Venture Lab look for in a partner, with its strong entrepreneurial team that is driven by the mission of providing increased access to credit through nano lending to the underserved by using an all-digital platform to expand its reach.”

SmartCoin was started by IIT/IIM alumnus Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh, and Jayant Upadhyay in 2016, who comes with around a decade of work experience across finance and technology domains.

“We invested in SmartCoin last year as we saw an immense potential in the business. Over the course of the year, we have realized the ability of the team to scale its operations rapidly given the right ammunition. Thus, being able to raise top dollar from two of the world’s largest markets is a testament to our belief in the team,” says Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures. “We expect the Company to continue its growth trajectory and at Unicorn India, we believe in backing potential winners. Thus, we decided to participate in this round,” she adds.

The Company is already working with several partners for disbursing loans and has achieved strong organic growth. SmartCoin plans to further invest in technology and grow its team as it continues with its expansion plans, with an aim to cover a much larger customer base.

FinTech Startup Fundings in Last Few Months -

Just yesterday, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

Last month, a Mumbai based fintech startup Fincash.com raised $150,000 in funding from angel investors including like Mohammed Khan (Founder of Rediffusion), Sameer Narayan (ex- Fund Manager BNP Paribas), among others. Prior to that, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding from investors including Social Capital, JS Capital LLC (the family office of Jonathan Soros), and Horizons Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners.

Last November, an Artificial intelligence-powered fintech startup Active.Ai raised $8.25 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator.

Other fintech start-ups that have raised funds recently include ZipLoan, Cash Suvidha, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

To recall, according to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech and healthcare are most funded segments of startups in India, in past one year. The total number of startups in the fintech space has gone up to 360 from 275 in 2016, thus registering 31% growth in the number of startups.

Top Image - e27.co

FinTech Startup SmartCoin Raises $2 Mn in Pre Series-A Funding Led By Shanghai-based VC

Bangalore-based fintech startup, SmartCoin, has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from a top Shanghai headquartered VC fund and Accion Venture Lab. Unicorn India Ventures, which is an existing investor in the company, also participated in the round, along with ISME ACE, a leading fintech accelerator, announced the startup in a press release sent to IndianWeb2.

SmartCoin lends small-to-mid-sized ticket loans to mobile users after building a SmartCoin credit score, which is backed by data science and machine learning. The company raised seed funding from Unicorn India Ventures last year.

Rohit Garg, Co-founder and CEO, SmartCoin, says, “We have seen a sharp uptick in growth over the past year and have successfully disbursed over 50,000 micro loans. More importantly, we have been able to open credit access for people who were not able to tap the formal channels and were otherwise dependent on personal networks and loan sharks. With this round, we expect to grow the momentum and further scale 10X over the next 6–12 months. Having specialists as investors, who are passionate about micro-lending, on board will only help us cover more ground not only in India but globally too."

Accion Venture Lab is the world’s leading seed-stage investor in fintech for the underserved. Accion Venture Lab invests capital in, and provides support to, innovative fintech startups that increase access to, improve the quality of, or reduce the cost of financial services for the underserved at scale.

“SmartCoin illustrates how innovative lenders are leveraging data, mobile access, and India’s digital infrastructure to extend loan access for the financially underserved,” says Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. Paarul Dudeja, Director of Investments for India, Accion Venture Lab adds, “SmartCoin exemplifies what we at Accion Venture Lab look for in a partner, with its strong entrepreneurial team that is driven by the mission of providing increased access to credit through nano lending to the underserved by using an all-digital platform to expand its reach.”

SmartCoin was started by IIT/IIM alumnus Rohit Garg, Amit Chandel, Vinay Kumar Singh, and Jayant Upadhyay in 2016, who comes with around a decade of work experience across finance and technology domains.

“We invested in SmartCoin last year as we saw an immense potential in the business. Over the course of the year, we have realized the ability of the team to scale its operations rapidly given the right ammunition. Thus, being able to raise top dollar from two of the world’s largest markets is a testament to our belief in the team,” says Archana Priyadarshini, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures. “We expect the Company to continue its growth trajectory and at Unicorn India, we believe in backing potential winners. Thus, we decided to participate in this round,” she adds.

The Company is already working with several partners for disbursing loans and has achieved strong organic growth. SmartCoin plans to further invest in technology and grow its team as it continues with its expansion plans, with an aim to cover a much larger customer base.

FinTech Startup Fundings in Last Few Months -

Just yesterday, Cash Suvidha, a Delhi-based fintech startup, raised $1 million pre-Series A funding from Initia Holdings Ltd.

Last month, a Mumbai based fintech startup Fincash.com raised $150,000 in funding from angel investors including like Mohammed Khan (Founder of Rediffusion), Sameer Narayan (ex- Fund Manager BNP Paribas), among others. Prior to that, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions raised $13.2 million in its Series A funding from investors including Social Capital, JS Capital LLC (the family office of Jonathan Soros), and Horizons Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners.

Last November, an Artificial intelligence-powered fintech startup Active.Ai raised $8.25 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator.

Other fintech start-ups that have raised funds recently include ZipLoan, Cash Suvidha, Kissht, Shubh Loans, Stashfin, LoanMeet and others.

To recall, according to a NASSCOM report published in November 2017 Fintech and healthcare are most funded segments of startups in India, in past one year. The total number of startups in the fintech space has gone up to 360 from 275 in 2016, thus registering 31% growth in the number of startups.

Top Image - e27.co

Boxx.ai Raises $500K in Pre-Series A Funding Round Led By Unicorn India Ventures

Unicorn India Ventures, a Mumbai-based VC firm and a clutch of well known angel investors including Venky Krishnakumar (Former COO and CFO, Citibank APAC), Suresh Shankar (Founder and CEO, CrayonData) and Vivek Bhargava (CEO, DAN Performance Group) have invested $500K in Boxx.ai, a Bangalore-based Artificial Intelligence-backed analytics start-up. The round has been led by Unicorn India Ventures.

Boxx.ai was launched in July 2016 by IIT alumni Ajay Kashyap, Prakhar Raj and Shitiz Bansal. The Founding team comes with over a decade of experience in leadership roles in data science, technology and product development.
Boxx.ai builds products that use Artificial Intelligence to solve critical analytics problems quickly and at affordable costs.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says, “The present digital world, we live in; data is ubiquitous. Mining data using Artificial Intelligence is what will provide the cutting edge to businesses in the future. However, for long, analytics has carried a tag of being premium or demanding too much investment upfront in people and technology. Therein only large corporates could invest in analytics. Boxx.ai aims to change that by simplifying analytics and productizing many processes making it cost effective for companies. We view Boxx.ai as being able to productize and democratize analytics. This is what interested us to invest in the company.”

AIDA is Boxx.ai’s first product. AIDA’s proprietary algorithms predict what each customer is likely to buy in future, and then deliver personalized customer experiences across all marketing channels (emails, app notifications, browser notifications, Facebook and on the website or app). In Boxx.ai's experience with different clients, this leads to increase of over 40% in sales.

AIDA enables Internet companies to provide personalized products (for e-commerce companies), personalized content (for news portals and blogs), improved matchmaking (for matrimonial/dating, job portals) and targeted ads (for publishers with substantial inventory).

Ajay Kashyap, Co-founder, Boxx.ai, says, "AIDA is built around its core ‘Individual identities’ philosophy. Every customer is important and different. AIDA’s algorithms find hidden patterns within the data to cater to sparse data, are constantly learning with every new piece of data adding a nuance to the personalization, and are genetically evolving to ensure that the most relevant parameters are selected in every scenario. All of this is to ensure that marketers can reach out to each and every individual customer with an unprecedented level of personalization."

Boxx.ai is currently working with an array of clients in the online space, including fashion websites, online grocery, education portals, gifts and deals marketplaces.

The Company plans to utilize the newly raised funds to upgrade its technology and algorithms platforms, and to expand the product portfolio.

Archana Priyadarshini, Venture Partner, Unicorn India Ventures will be joining the board and will be working closely with the team.

Unicorn has done the first close of their maiden fund. The Fund has already announced investments in startups like Grab on Rent, Inc42, NeuroEquilibrium, Vanity Cube, Roder, Pharmarack, SmartCoin, Sequretek and now Boxx.ai.

GrabOnRent Raises Pre-Series A Investment from IvyCap Ventures and Unicorn Ventures

GrabOnRent, the largest on-demand product rental marketplace in India, today announced that it has raised pre-series A funding from the IvyCamp platform. IvyCap Ventures is a lead investor in this round with Unicorn India Ventures participating as co-investors. Founded in September 2015, the company is an early mover in this space and focuses on connecting rental product suppliers with consumers facilitating product discovery, quality assurance, smooth payments and logistics support through the platform which otherwise is cumbersome in the offline rental industry.

GrabOnRent helps users rent products across categories like furniture, appliances, cameras, adventure gear and even helps event planners by providing event supplies on rent. The young company also enables renting of cool gadgets such as Pebble Smartwatch, Kindle e-book readers and Hoverboards. It believes that having access to products is more useful than ownership of the product. Renting as a solution helps customers who are looking to use products for a shorter or unsure duration. Also, it provides an end-user to try a product before buying at a fraction of the cost. With rising and unstable economy, renting forms an integral part of sharing economy and is set to shape the future economy.

The founding team comprises of three IIT Guwahati graduates who have worked across firms like Flipkart Logistics and Hewlett Packard. The core team has strong capabilities across product, technology and operations. The funding is primarily for aggressive customer and vendor acquisition along with further product development.

Speaking on the occasion, Shubham Jain, Co-founder and CEO of GrabOnRent said, “Consumer facing businesses are hard to build but with a huge influx of people in the urban areas, the target segment for GrabOnRent is strengthening ever since. Lending and sharing is natural, but it is limited to households. GrabOnRent envisions to extend alternate usage methods to its consumers who do not want to hold too many assets. Accessibility to products is the king."

In India, the product rental industry is extremely disorganized. There are offline players who rent used-goods but are yet to look at renting as a viable earning alternative to selling. The platform educates and empowers such vendors to make their products available to a much larger audience via the GrabOnRent platform. The GrabOnRent platform helps them in reducing logistical hassles and enables secure payments along with offering financing and insurance options.

Shubham highlighted the latent demand in the consumer market. He says, "The major focus of the company is to generate awareness towards viability of renting products. One doesn't need to scratch their head in deciding in favor of renting against buying if the duration of usage is limited. Our suppliers are quick to adapt to our technologies and we foresee more suppliers joining the platform in the coming months."

“We got connected with GrabOnRent through the IvyCamp platform, we know the rental market is a very large opportunity, and we believe GrabOnRent has created a differentiated business model to address this market segment. It helps that several macro factors that have converged today make this business attractive – be it a highly mobile urban demographic that is the initial target market or even the increasing comfort levels with online transactions in general. All this, coupled with GrabOnRent unique team strengths and capabilities, have been continuously reflected in the company’s growth since inception, and we are excited to partner with them in the next phase of this journey. This is amongst the first few investments of IvyCap Ventures Trust Fund II and forms part of our early stage strategy, through which we have allocated INR 60 Cr. for early stage investments via the IvyCamp platform.” said Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner of IvyCap Ventures. “In addition, we are also looking forward to adding significant value to GrabOnRent through our network of relationships.”

Bhaskar Majumdar Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures said “We have been observing and interacting with the GrabOnRent team and seen them develop their business proposition for over six months. As a thesis, Unicorn believes in the shared economy and we see this trend growing larger in India given the macro-environment and the demography.  As always, we shall be integrally involved in scaling up the business which we feel can take multiple dimensions”.