Blockchain Startup New Street Raises $2 Mn from Unitus Ventures

Bangalore-based New Street Technologies, which builds and operates blockchain-enabled platforms for financial institutions, has raised $2 million in seed round of funding led by Unitus Ventures (formerly known as Unitus Seed Fund), an impact venture fund, reported several media outlets.

Other investors who also contributed in the round included the Mohit Davar, the chairman of the trade body International Association of Money Transfer Networks and some other angel investors.

The startup will use the fresh capital to expand its business and expand its footprints in India and other regions including middle east and South East Asia.

Founded in 2017, by former Citigroup executive Sajeev Viswanathan along with Mohit Davar, chairman of the International Association of Money Transfer Networks, New Street Technologies connects stakeholders in the financial services industry through a blockchain network.

"We have started the product in partnership with a bank in Nepal, but we are in conversations with UNCDP (United Nations Capital Development Fund), which wants to take our lending based on remittance product to other remittance corridors as well,” said Vishwanathan.

Earlier this month, Gurgaon-based blockchain startup Insino Ventures raised an undisclosed amount of angle funding from a pool of HNIs.

Last month, Zebi, a leading Hyderabad-based blockchain company, had acquired Element42, a Bangalore based blockchain start-up, to bolster the strength of its in-house blockchain engineering talent while adding new products and customers.

Bengaluru-based Uber-for-Work Startup Awign Raises ₹5 Crore Funding Led By Unitus Seed Fund

Bengaluru-based Awign, a platform allows companies to outsource business functions to remote workforce, including students, has raised funding amounting to ₹5 Crore. The funding round was led by Unitus Seed Fund, a leading social impact investment firm, reported LiveMint.

Founded in July 2016 by IIT Ropar alumni -- Annanya Sarthak, Gurpreet Singh and Praveen Sah, Awign enables firms to outsource aspects of their core operations and sales that require human workforce in distributed locations and converts them into project-based internship programs offered to students.

The fresh funding raised will be used by the startup to improve its products and for outreach -- pitching to more corporates and tapping students.

Earlier in August 2017, the startup had raised Rs 90 lakh ($140,000) from a clutch of angel investors including IIT Ropar, Imanpreet Singh Arora, Sidharth Rozario and entrepreneur Saurabh Abichandani.

"We are currently operational in 130 cities in India and manage everything without ever physically visiting any city. We want to completely turn our service into product and influence career paths for a million students. The funds would be instrumental in both scaling our outreach and improving our product,” said Gurpreet Singh, co-founder of Awign.

“We are excited to be working with Awign to support their growth. Majority of business operations in India continue to be offline-driven, requiring high-intensity human intervention at all stages. Awign’s strong technology-enabled platform and a growing network of well-trained college temp workforce have successfully streamlined these operations, minimized turnaround time and completely eliminated setup and operation costs in multiple locations,” said Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner at Unitus Seed Fund.

About Unitus, it is being said that with its investments in over 14 startups in its active portfolio, Unitus Seed Fund has improved the lives of over 1.2 million people at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).

The firm is currently raising its second fund of $50 million and plans to back between 25 and 30 startups in education, health care and financial technology by 2021.

Milind Shah, Former MD of Medtronic India, Joins Unitus Seed Fund as Healthcare Venture Partner

Unitus Seed Fund, India’s leading impact venture fund investing in early-stage startups innovating for the masses, today announced the joining of Milind Shah as a Healthcare Venture Partner.

Milind Shah is a Proven Healthcare Operational Executive in the Indian Sub-Continent.

Milind brings to Unitus Seed Fund over three decades of leadership experience in sales, marketing, and corporate planning positions across varied businesses, including healthcare and speciality chemicals with global industry majors like Medtronic, Henkel, 3M and Shell.  As Managing Director & VP Indian Sub-continent with Medtronic plc, a global leader in the medical technology industry, Milind led the operational and strategic plans for this region for 11 years. Milind was also a member of Medtronic’s global executive committee and a recipient of the prestigious Wallin award that recognises Medtronic leaders for business growth and talent development. Under Milind’s leadership, Medtronic India achieved and sustained market leadership across several businesses and delivered strong double digit revenue growth.

Milind brings a deep understanding of the healthcare eco-system, a strong network of relationships amongst upper echelons of medical technology companies and hospital chains, as well as hands on experience in developing & executing strategic plans, business model innovations and M&A.

Milind joins Unitus Seed Fund with a mandate of furthering healthcare innovation for India’s billion plus population by investing in 8-10 innovative and scalable healthcare businesses. In line with this aim, Unitus Seed Fund has earmarked INR 100 crore to invest in healthcare and also has launched the AmpHealth program, providing non-dilutive catalytic capital of up to INR 1.75 crore (USD $250, 000) to fund immediate pre-commercialisation coupled with up to INR 3.5 crore (USD $500, 000) of seed capital. Unitus is also currently running the fourth edition of its annual StartHealth competition, offering cash prize and access to expertise to the best  AI, analytics, devices and home health early-stage startups.

Further, Milind will also work closely with Unitus’ investees to prepare them for growth and follow-on funding by providing access to global healthcare practitioners, teaching and operating medical facilities.

“Chronic diseases are responsible for over 50 per cent of deaths in India. Yet, public expenditure on health remains one of the lowest, globally. Startups are making significant inroads by reducing financial barriers and accelerating innovation to make healthcare more accessible and affordable”, said Milind Shah, Healthcare Venture Partner, Unitus Seed Fund.

“Unitus Seed Fund’s strong healthcare focus, mentorship and global industry connections will deeply benefit startups, helping them launch their products, raise additional funding and scale faster. I am excited to partner with Unitus Seed Fund and utilize my experience to advance healthcare, particularly to India’s low-income masses.”

Unitus Seed Fund Joins Hands With Delhi Angels As Their Institutional Investment Partner

Unitus Seed Fund (USF), India’s leading impact venture fund, today announced that they have joined hands with the Delhi Angels™ as their official Institutional Investment Partner. Under this partnership, Delhi Angels™, led by Shivam Ahuja, and USF together will provide a host of benefits to early stage startups like curation and mentorship. Roped in experts will offer specialised guidance to startups belonging to varies sectors like healthcare, education, Agri-Tech, Fintech and eCommerce.

The partnership is poised to present a great opportunity to young and high potential startups to get access to industry expertise and a readily available institutional investment ticket ranging from 1-3 Cr!

The aim of this partnership is two-fold. Delhi Angels™ aim at facilitating deal flow access to potential investment opportunities while USF is looking at an increased outreach from diversified activities.

Shivam Ahuja, Founder, Delhi Angels commented, “Delhi has been among the frontrunners of the booming startup culture in India for a while now. Second only to Bengaluru in terms of most active startups, the Delhi startup ecosystem has witnessed remarkable achievements and we have led this journey. We believe that the partnership with USF will serve as a catalyst to this growth path. Together with USF we aim at helping high potential early stage startups in curation, mentoring and guiding.”

“As India’s most active early stage institutional investor, USF already has a reputation of investing in innovative educational startups and wishes to tap into the potential and competitive advantage that the rising number of Indian youth present!” Quoted Pratyush Kukreja, Startup’s Scout at Unitus Seed Fund.

Recently, the Delhi Angels™ team successfully helped Let’s Reach, an all-round web push notification solution raise USD 100K from Vcommission.

EdTech Startup Cuemath Raises $4M from Sequoia India and Unitus Seed Fund

Delhi-based Cuemath, an edtech startup focused on math learning for primary school students, has raised $4 million in funding from Sequoia India and existing investor Unitus Seed Fund. The startup plans to use the funds to expand its teacher network across its target geographies.

Cuemath is a sophisticated math learning program for young students (grades KG to 8), which comprehensively covers every aspect of math learning. Founded in 2013, the startup uses gamified learning to teach maths, along with supervision by the teachers. It currently operates in Bengaluru, Delhi , Mumbai , Pune , Hyderabad and Chennai . The students have to attend one hour classes thrice a week. Cuemath's teachers, around 1,200 now, are primarily well-educated women who are homemakers, but are looking for options to employ their skills.

Going forward, the company plans to get to 5,000 teachers on board by March 2017. The firm had raised an undisclosed amount from Alok Mittal, former managing director of Canaan Partners in August.

Cuemath founder Manan Khurma said, “Our positioning is simple – that we are razor focused on math….Our ambition is to expand our unique math learning program to various cities in India and other geographies outside of India. We are looking at a 4-5x growth in the number of teachers and 20x growth in students by the end of March 2017.”

Other players operating in the edtech space are Vidyanext, Genius, Flipclass and Vedantu. Byju’s, which offers learning programmes for Class 6 to 12 students and preparation programmes for competitive exams, alone raising $75 million in March, compared to the $70 million that all the education startups raised last year, according to startup tracker Tracxn.

AddressHealth Raises $1.5M in Series A Funding

AddressHealth, Indian primary healthcare network exclusively for children, has announced $1.5 million in Series A funding led by Gray Matters Capital with participation from existing investor, Unitus Seed Fund. The company, which runs innovative school-based neighbourhood clinics and school health programs, will use the investment to expand the model to other schools in Bangalore & other geographies. As per estimates from Unified District Information System for Education, there are more than 2 lakh schools in urban India, a large number of them catering to low and middle income population. Bangalore alone has nearly 2,500 private, unaided schools. By leveraging partnerships with schools, AddressHealth is able to reduce costs associated with retail healthcare while simultaneously increasing the reach of affordable preventive healthcare.

The disruptive 'School Clinic' model

AddressHealth, which is currently Bangalore's largest school health provider, has reached more than 1 lakh children through on-site services and screening programs to identify health issues and provided early intervention to prevent them from suffering as young adults.

Mrs. Sashi Anand, Principal of Pratibha Bala Mandira school said, “I am very glad that our institution is associated with AddressHealth since 2011. A team of committed doctors and nurses are providing comprehensive health programs which comprise thorough health check-ups, health education to students and teachers, environmental audit, counselling and nutrition audit.”

Schools can play a crucial role in pediatric health and their position in providing inclusive health care is a concept that is finding traction, not just in India, but worldwide. “School health programs save lives,” said Hesky Kutscher, Founder & CEO, Caredox, a free digital health tools startup for K12 public schools in the US which recently received $4.3M in venture capital and debt funding.

“With its disruptive market-based model for pediatric healthcare, AddressHealth has served more than 100,000 children already; what I believe to be a fraction of their future potential,” said Bob Pattillo, veteran impact investor and CEO & Founder of Gray Matters Capital. “We are excited to partner in their growth story and scale across India to serve the masses effectively.”

“We believe that the unique and powerful service delivery model in partnership with schools will help AddressHealth scale effectively, not only in providing curative care, but also in providing preventive intervention for infectious & non communicable diseases,” said Dave Richards, Managing Partner at Unitus Seed Fund. “We are happy to partner with them in their growth story as they make India’s children healthier.”

Experienced Healthcare Services Team

AddressHealth was founded by doctor entrepreneurs Anand Lakshman and Anoop Radhakrishnan.

Dr. Anand Lakshman has significant experience leading public health programs that reached more than 1.14 crore (114 million) children. Dr. Anoop Radhakrishnan has been involved with setting up 2 startups soon after his MBA from IIM – Lucknow. The goal of the founders is to address the health of at least 4 lakh children by 2018.

“The funding allows us to expand the reach of our unique model of healthcare, which leverages schools, to deliver comprehensive primary healthcare to children proactively, at a low cost,” said Dr Anand Lakshman, CEO of AddressHealth. “We will use technology to further expand our reach, reduce costs and promote proactive preventive health action by parents and schools, to make children healthier and happier,” added Dr Anoop Radhakrishnan, co-founder of AddressHealth.

Reiterating the importance of preventive care, one of the parents whose child was treated by AddressHealth, Mrs. Megha, said, “Thanks to AddressHealth, my child is now active in sports and I am now confident about him playing out in the open without the fear of an asthma attack. This is possible now as we know what triggers an attack and we are able to safely avoid it.”

Unitus Capital acted as the financial advisor to this transaction while K Law was the legal advisor.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Unitus Seed Fund To Launch Its Second Fund of $50M To Invest in 50 Startups

Bengaluru-based investment firm Unitus Seed Fund is launching a second fund of $50 million to invest in around 50 startups with each company receiving between Rs 1 crore and Rs 3 crore. The fund invests in startups based on their potential impact in sectors like education, healthcare, fintech and agriculture. The firm is expected to get the first tranche of the new fund by the third quarter of the calendar year.

The first fund of the Bengaluru-based investment firm was $23 million that was established in 2012 and its investors included Gates Foundation, Ranjan Pai, Mohandas Pai and others. As per reports, most of the participants in the first fund are also expected to invest in the second fund. The new fund will be raised from existing investors with increased proportion from the Indian investors who had contributed one-third of the first round.

Unitus has backed startups like DriveU, Hippocampus, Blowhorn, iBreastExam, Jack on Block, Labinapp, and BetterPlace among others. Eight of its portfolio companies have raised Series A funding, two have raised Series B and one startup is about to raise Series C investment. “In good companies, we plan to participate in follow on fund raising as well,” Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner of Unitus, said.

Recently, another early stage investor Deepak Shahdadpuri-led investment firm DSG Consumer Partners made the first close of its second fund at $35 million, with 40% participation from its existing investors. Alibaba-backed Chinese mobile internet company UCWeb has also announced a $20 million funding program for Indian startups producing games and apps. And, India’s high-profile technocrats and investors including T V Mohandas Pai, Rajiv Mody, Naganand Doraswamy (CEO – TiE-Bangalore) as well as descendents of notable Patni family – Amit and Arihant Patni, have joined hands to form a Rs 125-crore fund, Ideaspring Capital, to back product startups in the country.

Unitus Seed Fund To Launch Its Second Fund of $50M To Invest in 50 Startups

Bengaluru-based investment firm Unitus Seed Fund is launching a second fund of $50 million to invest in around 50 startups with each company receiving between Rs 1 crore and Rs 3 crore. The fund invests in startups based on their potential impact in sectors like education, healthcare, fintech and agriculture. The firm is expected to get the first tranche of the new fund by the third quarter of the calendar year.

The first fund of the Bengaluru-based investment firm was $23 million that was established in 2012 and its investors included Gates Foundation, Ranjan Pai, Mohandas Pai and others. As per reports, most of the participants in the first fund are also expected to invest in the second fund. The new fund will be raised from existing investors with increased proportion from the Indian investors who had contributed one-third of the first round.

Unitus has backed startups like DriveU, Hippocampus, Blowhorn, iBreastExam, Jack on Block, Labinapp, and BetterPlace among others. Eight of its portfolio companies have raised Series A funding, two have raised Series B and one startup is about to raise Series C investment. “In good companies, we plan to participate in follow on fund raising as well,” Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner of Unitus, said.

Recently, another early stage investor Deepak Shahdadpuri-led investment firm DSG Consumer Partners made the first close of its second fund at $35 million, with 40% participation from its existing investors. Alibaba-backed Chinese mobile internet company UCWeb has also announced a $20 million funding program for Indian startups producing games and apps. And, India’s high-profile technocrats and investors including T V Mohandas Pai, Rajiv Mody, Naganand Doraswamy (CEO – TiE-Bangalore) as well as descendents of notable Patni family – Amit and Arihant Patni, have joined hands to form a Rs 125-crore fund, Ideaspring Capital, to back product startups in the country.

StartHealth Is A New Initiative To Help Early Stage Healthcare Startups To Raise Capital

StartHealth - the new technology driven healthcare program is being launched by a team including Manipal Hospitals and Narayana Health and is supported by investor Unitus Seed Fund, PATH, an international non-profit organisation, and one of the world’s premier bio-pharmaceutical company, Pfizer. The team has got together with an investor to offer up to Rs 10 crore in awards and funding to early-stage start-ups that seek to boost access to reasonable technology-driven healthcare products and amenities for low-income grade mass in the country.

Unitus Seed Fund have been in talks with several early staged healthcare start-ups for some time now and StartHealth is now being considered to be the stepping stone required to develop these start-ups by investing in their early stages and helping them to come up with terms of a massive supply-demand gap in healthcare sector in India. The major problem Unitus will emphasise to solve using technology will be to enhance the accessibility and affordability of the healthcare products in India as the demand is enormous.

Interested health care startups in India can Apply here for StartHealth program and may even get funded.

This coming year, five start-ups are expected to get selected for Rs 50 lakhs of non-dilutive capital to fund immediate pre-seed business growth and hands-on support from PATH, Manipal Hospitals and Narayana Health's staff. They will also get access to expert networks of Pfizer and Unitus in India and globally and facilities of Manipal Hospitals and Narayana Health for pilots and market testing.

Providing appropriate platform to healthcare technology entrepreneurs for evaluating the prototype situations with proper and expert clinical solutions is one of the major solutions that this initiative will try to come up with in near future.

Areas of interest for healthcare innovation for StartHealth partners are low-cost diagnostic and monitoring devices connecting doctors and patients, healthcare cloud IT solutions and innovations for use in labs or clinical settings to improve the quality of care at lower levels of healthcare system, such as primary care clinics.

Unitus Seed Fund, along with its investing partners, will also provide capital of Rs 1 crore to help the start-ups for growing their business and raising more capital.

Dipika Matthias, Director of PATH's Global Health Innovation Hub initiative said "Through our partnership with Unitus, we can improve the efficiency of identifying and pursuing due diligence on such groups, as well as the effectiveness of helping them to develop and scale their businesses."

USF Launches Speed2Seed,To Help Early-Stage Startups Raise Capital

Indian startups have a reason to rejoice. Unitus Seed Fund has launched a nationwide program to help India based startups raise seed and angel capital for their businesses. The program called Speed2seed aims to help early stage Indian startups grow and realize their potential by helping them raise venture capital.

Social Investor Unitus has already signed on eleven business incubators and accelerators as its partners for the program. Startup Oasis, Catalyzer, IIM Calcutta, Khosla Labs and Deshpande Foundation are some of the famous names signed by Unitus. Over the next two years, the program partners want to achieve a dramatic increase in the number of their graduates receiving venture money within six months of their graduation. The current industry average for Indian incubators is less than five percent graduates in the same time frame. On the other hand, with an industry average of twenty five percent, accelerators are more successful than incubators.

The Bangalore and Seattle based fund plans of working with its Speed2seed partners for a period of two years over multiple program cycles to develop broader investor networks, experiment with new ideas, implement curriculum enhancements, better leverage advisors and refine recruitment strategies. It will also try to teach young entrepreneurs how to effectively pitch their business ideas and plans to venture seed funds and early stage angel investors.  The 2012 established seed fund will facilitate its Speed2seed partners with best domestic and international practices along with great peer learning opportunities.

"Our main contribution, to this program will be to assemble global best practices as knowledge partners to accelerators and incubators and the findings from this survey will be available to our partners. We will be bringing in different content modules, sample documents and regular pitch sessions, to startups on how investors think so that they can better prepare and rapidly understand how to build a venture investable business. We will augment existing programs at our partners," said Will Poole, co-founder, managing partner at Unitus Seed Fund in a statement to the Economic Times.

Unitus even plans to invest in these companies when they are venture ready. The program partners will also be introducing companies under the Speed2seed program to investors.

Unitus Speed2seed program is a part of its India Impact Acceleration Program, which is made possible in part by United States Global Development Lab, a program of USAID.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpKYE-ldolM?rel=0&controls=0&w=700&h=394]

USF Launches Speed2Seed,To Help Early-Stage Startups Raise Capital

Indian startups have a reason to rejoice. Unitus Seed Fund has launched a nationwide program to help India based startups raise seed and angel capital for their businesses. The program called Speed2seed aims to help early stage Indian startups grow and realize their potential by helping them raise venture capital.

Social Investor Unitus has already signed on eleven business incubators and accelerators as its partners for the program. Startup Oasis, Catalyzer, IIM Calcutta, Khosla Labs and Deshpande Foundation are some of the famous names signed by Unitus. Over the next two years, the program partners want to achieve a dramatic increase in the number of their graduates receiving venture money within six months of their graduation. The current industry average for Indian incubators is less than five percent graduates in the same time frame. On the other hand, with an industry average of twenty five percent, accelerators are more successful than incubators.

The Bangalore and Seattle based fund plans of working with its Speed2seed partners for a period of two years over multiple program cycles to develop broader investor networks, experiment with new ideas, implement curriculum enhancements, better leverage advisors and refine recruitment strategies. It will also try to teach young entrepreneurs how to effectively pitch their business ideas and plans to venture seed funds and early stage angel investors.  The 2012 established seed fund will facilitate its Speed2seed partners with best domestic and international practices along with great peer learning opportunities.

"Our main contribution, to this program will be to assemble global best practices as knowledge partners to accelerators and incubators and the findings from this survey will be available to our partners. We will be bringing in different content modules, sample documents and regular pitch sessions, to startups on how investors think so that they can better prepare and rapidly understand how to build a venture investable business. We will augment existing programs at our partners," said Will Poole, co-founder, managing partner at Unitus Seed Fund in a statement to the Economic Times.

Unitus even plans to invest in these companies when they are venture ready. The program partners will also be introducing companies under the Speed2seed program to investors.

Unitus Speed2seed program is a part of its India Impact Acceleration Program, which is made possible in part by United States Global Development Lab, a program of USAID.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpKYE-ldolM?rel=0&controls=0&w=700&h=394]