Mumbai-based AI Startup i3Systems Raises $1 Mn from Unitus Ventures

Mumbai-based i3systems, a healthcare machine learning product company, with a particular focus on the insurance clients, has raised $1 million (Rs 6.75 crore) from Unitus Ventures, a marquee impact investment firm.

The other investors who participated in the round includes two of startup’s existing investors -- Behram Vakil, founding partner of AZB Partners, one of India’s top law firms, and Jerxis Vandrevala, founder of Sanchez Computers.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds towards partnering with the country’s top 20 life and health insurance companies, and process 1 million policies through its digital platform.\

Founded in 2016 by IIT-Bombay alumni - Dr Mallesh Bommanahal, Varzavand Batliwala, and Ravi Chandibhamar (IIT-Hyderabad), i3Systems builds machine learning solutions for healthcare businesses. The startup's first product, DataMD automates Health/Life insurance underwriting, and creates a real-time structured database which in turn is useful in advanced analytics, accurate health-risk prediction, fraud identification and superior customer experience for App-driven healthcare companies.

Speaking on investment in i3Systems, Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, partner at Unitus Ventures, said, "We first met i3 Systems through our StartHealth competition. What resonated well with us was how their medical data science and natural language processing technologies' could transform India's microinsurance industry,” said

The latest investment comes less than two weeks after Unitus Ventures, which was formerly known as Unitus Seed Fund, announced the first close of its second fund at Rs 100 crore. Fund-II has a target corpus of Rs 300 crore.

It my be recalled that, last month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has invested in a healthcare chatbot Visit, which is also powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Last December, health-tech startup KiViHealth raised $400K funding from Claris Capital and Chandigarh Angels.

Speaking about funds for early-stage startups working in healthcare, recently India's largest hospital chain Apollo Hospitals has launched seed fund for healthcare startups in India. According to a report published by Nasscom in last November, funding in healthcare tech segment has witnessed 129% increase in funding from $70 million in FY17 to $160 million in FY18. Attributing to the increased traction in these segments to innovation.

Via - Economic Times

Mumbai-based AI Startup i3Systems Raises $1 Mn from Unitus Ventures

Mumbai-based i3systems, a healthcare machine learning product company, with a particular focus on the insurance clients, has raised $1 million (Rs 6.75 crore) from Unitus Ventures, a marquee impact investment firm.

The other investors who participated in the round includes two of startup’s existing investors -- Behram Vakil, founding partner of AZB Partners, one of India’s top law firms, and Jerxis Vandrevala, founder of Sanchez Computers.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds towards partnering with the country’s top 20 life and health insurance companies, and process 1 million policies through its digital platform.\

Founded in 2016 by IIT-Bombay alumni - Dr Mallesh Bommanahal, Varzavand Batliwala, and Ravi Chandibhamar (IIT-Hyderabad), i3Systems builds machine learning solutions for healthcare businesses. The startup's first product, DataMD automates Health/Life insurance underwriting, and creates a real-time structured database which in turn is useful in advanced analytics, accurate health-risk prediction, fraud identification and superior customer experience for App-driven healthcare companies.

Speaking on investment in i3Systems, Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, partner at Unitus Ventures, said, "We first met i3 Systems through our StartHealth competition. What resonated well with us was how their medical data science and natural language processing technologies' could transform India's microinsurance industry,” said

The latest investment comes less than two weeks after Unitus Ventures, which was formerly known as Unitus Seed Fund, announced the first close of its second fund at Rs 100 crore. Fund-II has a target corpus of Rs 300 crore.

It my be recalled that, last month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has invested in a healthcare chatbot Visit, which is also powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Last December, health-tech startup KiViHealth raised $400K funding from Claris Capital and Chandigarh Angels.

Speaking about funds for early-stage startups working in healthcare, recently India's largest hospital chain Apollo Hospitals has launched seed fund for healthcare startups in India. According to a report published by Nasscom in last November, funding in healthcare tech segment has witnessed 129% increase in funding from $70 million in FY17 to $160 million in FY18. Attributing to the increased traction in these segments to innovation.

Via - Economic Times

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."

Unitus Seed Fund launches India Impact Acceleration Program for early-stage startups in India

Unitus Seed Fund which has just become a $20 million seed-stage investment fund and based in Bangalore and Seattle invests in startups serving large, underserved low-income populations in India. USF help startups "prepare for growth" via seed funding, strategic & operating support, providing critical connections, and securing growth capital.

Unitus Seed Fund's has announced the launch of India Impact Acceleration Program intends to improve and accelerate the early-stage impact startup ecosystem across India with a three-part approach:

1. Finding impact entrepreneurs from cities representing all of India by hiring "startup scouts" in 8 or more different cities to meet entrepreneurs and connect them with funding and incubation resources early in their development cycle.


2. Partnering with up to five leading business incubators/accelerators to help create more venture-ready graduates of those incubators, enabling faster time-to-market and more scalability.


3. Deploying Unitus’ growing Catapult Partner and Venture Advisor networks to help businesses thrive, achieving their aspirations for scale, impact, and profitability.

Sourcing Across India - Finding the best entrepreneurs

The majority of Unitus Seed Fund's existing investments are from South India. USF are investing to grow its presence and relationships across multiple metros in India in order to find and support the best entrepreneurs wherever they are based!

In addition to USF team in Bangalore, USF is also hiring Startup Scouts in 8-10 cities in India in order to make more investments beyond South India. Startup Scouts will coordinate with USF's ongoing India city roadshow as the connections with entrepreneurs, investors, and other startup ecosystem players in each city grows.

India Business Incubators - Preparing entrepreneurs to be venture capital-ready

USF stated on its website that very few business incubators and accelerators in India have produced startups that have received venture capital investment and USF in accordance with its India program, is looking to partner with up to five of India's best incubator leaders to help them train more entrepreneurs to build plans that are attractive for venture capital investment.

Eligibility criteria:

• Incubator currently training entrepreneurs of whom at least a few per cohort are looking to serve low-income populations


• Companies operating in the sectors in which we focus


• A sincere desire for assistance to access global best-practices, improve curriculum and extend mentoring opportunities

Incubator in India which meets the criteria above, can get in touch with Unitus Seed Fund here.

Unitus Seed Fund is India's most active seed-stage impact investor has a total of USD $20 million for its India-focused Micro VC fund.

The funds will be invested in early-stage startups operating in India in sectors including healthcare, education, agriculture, skill development/livelihoods, technology and basic necessities. Unitus Seed Fund has already announced 13 investments in India, mostly in south of India.

To get funded from Unitus Seed Fund, startup may go here

Unitus raises $20 mn funds, to invest in 40 startups in next 2 years in India

Unitus Seed Fund, which is a Seed stage impact investor, has been successful in raising an astonishing sum of $7 million in a fresh round of funding from a cluster of individual and institutional investors.  This fresh funding of $7 million has taken the total fund tally to $20 million.

Micro VC fund got its funding from many United States based foundations which included Wadhwani Foundation, Deshpande Foundation, Sorenson Impact Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and Lemelson Foundation.  The new Individual investor members include Concur CEO Steve Singh, Amazon Executive Diego Piacentini, McKinsey executive Dilip Wagle, Microsoft executive Soma Somasegar, Nagesh Pabbisetty, Bharat Shah and Anoop Gupta, Lance Fors, financial services executive Geeta Iyer and  Social Ventures Partners leaders Todd Vogel and others.

"We plan to invest in upto 40 startups over the next two years that impacts the lives of low income population. There is a dearth of seed capital in this segment of the market, making the investment opportunities very attractive. We invest anywhere between Rs 50 lakhs and Rs 1 crore in startups and pick up a significant minority stake" said Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, who is a partner in Unitus Seed fund, in a statement to The Times of India. He further added that the fund has plans of raising a sum of $5 million from India based investors over the period of  couple of months.

Earlier Unitus Seed Fund announced that it will invest in 30 Gujarat based startups

Unitus Seed Fund has already invested in 13 startups which include mGaadi, which is a mobile solution for hailing auto rickshaws, Hippocampus Learning Centre, which provides pre-school and after school tutoring programs for children, Addresshealth, which is a paediatric healthcare centre and Caravan Craft, which is selling contemporary merchandise made by traditional Indian artists.

Most recent investment of Unitus in India is Jiffstore - a Bangalore-based m-commerce platform for grocery retailers.


According to Dave Richards, who is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Unitus, the fund believes that there is a great opportunity to be able to invest in a whole new generation of budding entrepreneurs who are working towards building disruptive new businesses which serve the low-income market of India.

The fund has also successfully launched a programme which aims to accelerate early-stage startups targeting low income groups in India.

Unitus raises $20 mn funds, to invest in 40 startups in next 2 years in India

Unitus Seed Fund, which is a Seed stage impact investor, has been successful in raising an astonishing sum of $7 million in a fresh round of funding from a cluster of individual and institutional investors.  This fresh funding of $7 million has taken the total fund tally to $20 million.

Micro VC fund got its funding from many United States based foundations which included Wadhwani Foundation, Deshpande Foundation, Sorenson Impact Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and Lemelson Foundation.  The new Individual investor members include Concur CEO Steve Singh, Amazon Executive Diego Piacentini, McKinsey executive Dilip Wagle, Microsoft executive Soma Somasegar, Nagesh Pabbisetty, Bharat Shah and Anoop Gupta, Lance Fors, financial services executive Geeta Iyer and  Social Ventures Partners leaders Todd Vogel and others.

"We plan to invest in upto 40 startups over the next two years that impacts the lives of low income population. There is a dearth of seed capital in this segment of the market, making the investment opportunities very attractive. We invest anywhere between Rs 50 lakhs and Rs 1 crore in startups and pick up a significant minority stake" said Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, who is a partner in Unitus Seed fund, in a statement to The Times of India. He further added that the fund has plans of raising a sum of $5 million from India based investors over the period of  couple of months.

Earlier Unitus Seed Fund announced that it will invest in 30 Gujarat based startups

Unitus Seed Fund has already invested in 13 startups which include mGaadi, which is a mobile solution for hailing auto rickshaws, Hippocampus Learning Centre, which provides pre-school and after school tutoring programs for children, Addresshealth, which is a paediatric healthcare centre and Caravan Craft, which is selling contemporary merchandise made by traditional Indian artists.

Most recent investment of Unitus in India is Jiffstore - a Bangalore-based m-commerce platform for grocery retailers.


According to Dave Richards, who is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Unitus, the fund believes that there is a great opportunity to be able to invest in a whole new generation of budding entrepreneurs who are working towards building disruptive new businesses which serve the low-income market of India.

The fund has also successfully launched a programme which aims to accelerate early-stage startups targeting low income groups in India.

M-Commerce platform Jiffstore get funding from Unitus Seedfund

Bangalore-based m-commerce platform for grocery retailers - Jiffstore has got an undisclosed amount of funding from Unitus Seed Fund however Economics Times reports that the funding size estimated at between $50,000 (Rs 31.10 lakh) and $150,000 (Rs 93.30 lakh). Jiffstore will use the capital to further develop its technology platform and to expand its customer base of small shops.

Jiffstore platform helps local grocery shops and supermarkets to go online without investing much in technology, it helps them connecting with customers though a mobile app that offers online ordering and home delivery.

This is Unitus Seed Fund's third m-commerce investment so far in year 2014 following investments in mGaadi (m-commerce solution for ordering auto rickshaws) and Medypal (online marketplace for healthcare services).

"Retail in India is expected to reach INR 45 lakh crore (US$770 billion) by 2015. Ninety two per cent of the retail market is unorganised – mostly in small shops. We see a fantastic opportunity for a cost-effective m-commerce solution to automate these shops, help them compete, and delight their customers," said Shameel Abdulla, CEO of Jiffstore.

Jiffstore claims that it is seeing 30 per cent month-over-month order growth rate and is looking to bring on many new stores in the coming months. India has an estimated 1.5 crore kirana stores and small shops.

Jiffstore was founded in 2013 by 4 software engineers - Aswin Ramachandran, Sandeep Seenath, Satish Basavaraj, and Shameel Abdulla.

Jiffstore is currently available at 25 locations in Bangalore only, after this funding Jiffstore is expected to expand its services in other locations in India. Currently Jiffstore provide both Android and iPhone app to allow you to order from your phone and get free home delivery in 1 hour.

Unitus Seed Fund to invest in around 30 Gujarat based start-ups

Unitus Seed Fund, a $13 million seed-stage investment fund based in Bangalore and Seattle is planning to invest in around 30 Gujarat based startups in various sectors such as - healthcare, education, clean energy and agriculture sectors.

Unitus will be investing anywhere around Rs.50 lakh to Rs.1.5 crore in each start-up working for the base of economic pyramid (BoP) in and around Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

In April this year Unitus already announced that Unitus Seed Fund is going on the road in India visiting 6 cities over the next 4 months (April-July) targeting to invest up to 7 crore in startups.

Unitus Seed Fund is investing up to 150 crore in early stage impact businesses - aka BoP Startups - in India over the next 3 years. Currently Unitus have 10 companies in their portfolio such as - Caravan Craft, Commerzpoint, Gocoop, Istar, Milaap, Smile Merchants and Welcare.

Unitus in on a visit to Ahmedabad since 5 May 2014 and organizing events and discussions in association with TiE Ahmedabad and Center for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM-Ahmedabad.

After Ahmedabad Unitus is going to visit Pune (May 26–30), Coimbatore (June 16–20), Mumbai (July 21-25) and
Delhi from July 28-August 1. Apart from Ahmedabad Unitus had already visited Kolkata in April.



For every entrepreneur building a business serving the base of the economic pyramid populations in India and operate from (or can get to) any of the cities mentioned above, they can sign-up for roadshow here to meet and probably get funded by Unitus.

Unitus will help startups "prepare for growth" via seed funding, strategic & operating support, providing critical connections, and securing growth capital.

In a past few months, Unitus Seed Fund have made seed investment in healthcare sector of India such as Welcare - affordable eye screening to prevent blindness, Medypal – online healthcare marketplace and Smile Merchants – affordable dental clinic chain outside big metros.