IIT & IIM Alums Founded Online Poker Platform 9Stacks Raises ₹28 Cr from WaterBridge

9stacks, India's fastest growing online poker platform, has raised ₹28 crore (~ US$3.84 million) in a Series A Funding Round led by WaterBridge Ventures, an early stage venture fund, and the startup's existing pool of investors. This is the first Series A raised by any Indian online poker company, announced the startup in a press release.

Other niche players in daily fantasy sports/online rummy platforms like Dream 11 (Fantasy Cricket), Ace2Three (Rummy) and RummyCircle (Rummy) have previously raised institutional investment rounds for other segments of the rapidly growing Real Money Gaming market in India. However, 9stacks is the first Indian online poker company to raise an institutional Series A round.

In December last year, the startup had raised ₹10 crore in angel funding (Pre-Series A) from clutch of investors that include Swati Gupta (founder, IndustryBuying), Maheshwer Peri (founder, Careers360), Sanjay Singh (founder, Swas Healthcare), Kartik Sheth (chief innovation officer Airtel and CEO, Wynk), and Shubhajit Sen (ex-CMO, Micromax).

Started by IIT & IIM alums Sudhir Kamath, Pratik Kumar, Abhinav Nigam and Rishab Mathur in 2017, 9stacks is a professionally run Indian online poker platform and 100% legal in India. The platform was started with the ambition to provide an authentic, transparent and simple online poker experience, which would make poker a fun sport for everyone.

Launched in 2017, 9stacks claims to have a user base of 1 lakh+ subscribers. More than 30 lakh hands of poker are being played every month on its platform, with monthly gross transactions exceeding INR 35 crores approximately.

As a member of the All India Gaming Federation, 9stacks has also been a strong voice advocating poker as a game of skill. On its own platform, 9stacks recently launched India's first skills dashboard where gamers can carry out in depth analyses of their own strategy, and become better players.

9stacks users can play seamlessly across all platforms including iOS, Android, Windows and Macs.

"India is at the cusp of massive online gaming adoption with an exponential increase in players and revenue expected in this sector. Real Money Gaming will have a significant wallet share of online due to ubiquitous mobile access, increasing disposable income, convenience and superior user experience. Having said that, it is an execution heavy space and we therefore chose to back a highly professional and accomplished team of founders comprising of Sudhir, Pratik, Abhinav and Rishab. We are proud to partner with this founding team with great pedigree and a proven track record," said Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner, WaterBridge Ventures.

In August WaterBridge had invested in MedCords, an AI-enabled healthcare startup based out of Kota, Rajasthan with a technology center in Pune. Prior to this, Waterbridge led ₹3.5 crore funding of Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students.

"With Waterbridge Ventures becoming the lead investor in our Series A fund raise, we are delighted to announce that 9stacks is India's first online poker company to reach this funding milestone. This is a great sign of confidence in the 9stacks team, the systems and processes we've put in place, in addition to the rapidly growing market itself. We will use these funds to ramp up user acquisition, data analytics, machine learning, and product & market expansion. We want 9stacks to be the preferred platform for poker in India, especially for new players, where anyone can discover, learn and play poker, any time, anywhere," said Sudhir Kamath, CEO, 9stacks.

Recently, 9stacks took 25 of its users to Las Vegas for the 2018 World Series of Poker. '9stacks Team India' came out with flying colors, with two players finishing in the top 100 of the main event; the best ever finish by any Indian.

About 9Stacks' founders, Sudhir Kamath is an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus and ex-McKinsey consultant with over 17 years of experience. Prior to 9stacks, he was CEO of Suntera Energy, a privately held oil and gas exploration company. While, Pratik Kumar is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, with over 12 years of experience in e-commerce and online marketing. He was the CMO of Nykaa.com and founding team member of Zivame.com.

Abhinav Nigam and Rishab Mathur are also IIT Kharagpur alumni. Abhinav is an ex-BCG consultant, with over 12 years of experience with Accenture Strategy and the Boston Consulting Group.

Rishab Mathur, on other hand has over 12 years of experience in technology. He was head of mobile technology for Nearbuy and CTO of 9monks and Blot Canvas.

[Top Image - YourStory.com]

IIT & IIM Alums Founded Online Poker Platform 9Stacks Raises ₹28 Cr from WaterBridge

9stacks, India's fastest growing online poker platform, has raised ₹28 crore (~ US$3.84 million) in a Series A Funding Round led by WaterBridge Ventures, an early stage venture fund, and the startup's existing pool of investors. This is the first Series A raised by any Indian online poker company, announced the startup in a press release.

Other niche players in daily fantasy sports/online rummy platforms like Dream 11 (Fantasy Cricket), Ace2Three (Rummy) and RummyCircle (Rummy) have previously raised institutional investment rounds for other segments of the rapidly growing Real Money Gaming market in India. However, 9stacks is the first Indian online poker company to raise an institutional Series A round.

In December last year, the startup had raised ₹10 crore in angel funding (Pre-Series A) from clutch of investors that include Swati Gupta (founder, IndustryBuying), Maheshwer Peri (founder, Careers360), Sanjay Singh (founder, Swas Healthcare), Kartik Sheth (chief innovation officer Airtel and CEO, Wynk), and Shubhajit Sen (ex-CMO, Micromax).

Started by IIT & IIM alums Sudhir Kamath, Pratik Kumar, Abhinav Nigam and Rishab Mathur in 2017, 9stacks is a professionally run Indian online poker platform and 100% legal in India. The platform was started with the ambition to provide an authentic, transparent and simple online poker experience, which would make poker a fun sport for everyone.

Launched in 2017, 9stacks claims to have a user base of 1 lakh+ subscribers. More than 30 lakh hands of poker are being played every month on its platform, with monthly gross transactions exceeding INR 35 crores approximately.

As a member of the All India Gaming Federation, 9stacks has also been a strong voice advocating poker as a game of skill. On its own platform, 9stacks recently launched India's first skills dashboard where gamers can carry out in depth analyses of their own strategy, and become better players.

9stacks users can play seamlessly across all platforms including iOS, Android, Windows and Macs.

"India is at the cusp of massive online gaming adoption with an exponential increase in players and revenue expected in this sector. Real Money Gaming will have a significant wallet share of online due to ubiquitous mobile access, increasing disposable income, convenience and superior user experience. Having said that, it is an execution heavy space and we therefore chose to back a highly professional and accomplished team of founders comprising of Sudhir, Pratik, Abhinav and Rishab. We are proud to partner with this founding team with great pedigree and a proven track record," said Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner, WaterBridge Ventures.

In August WaterBridge had invested in MedCords, an AI-enabled healthcare startup based out of Kota, Rajasthan with a technology center in Pune. Prior to this, Waterbridge led ₹3.5 crore funding of Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students.

"With Waterbridge Ventures becoming the lead investor in our Series A fund raise, we are delighted to announce that 9stacks is India's first online poker company to reach this funding milestone. This is a great sign of confidence in the 9stacks team, the systems and processes we've put in place, in addition to the rapidly growing market itself. We will use these funds to ramp up user acquisition, data analytics, machine learning, and product & market expansion. We want 9stacks to be the preferred platform for poker in India, especially for new players, where anyone can discover, learn and play poker, any time, anywhere," said Sudhir Kamath, CEO, 9stacks.

Recently, 9stacks took 25 of its users to Las Vegas for the 2018 World Series of Poker. '9stacks Team India' came out with flying colors, with two players finishing in the top 100 of the main event; the best ever finish by any Indian.

About 9Stacks' founders, Sudhir Kamath is an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus and ex-McKinsey consultant with over 17 years of experience. Prior to 9stacks, he was CEO of Suntera Energy, a privately held oil and gas exploration company. While, Pratik Kumar is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, with over 12 years of experience in e-commerce and online marketing. He was the CMO of Nykaa.com and founding team member of Zivame.com.

Abhinav Nigam and Rishab Mathur are also IIT Kharagpur alumni. Abhinav is an ex-BCG consultant, with over 12 years of experience with Accenture Strategy and the Boston Consulting Group.

Rishab Mathur, on other hand has over 12 years of experience in technology. He was head of mobile technology for Nearbuy and CTO of 9monks and Blot Canvas.

[Top Image - YourStory.com]

WaterBridge & Infoedge Invests in Kota-based MedCords, An AI-Enabled Healthcare Startup

Early stage venture fund, WaterBridge Ventures, announced today that it along with Infoedge has invested an undisclosed amount in MedCords, a startup based in Kota, Rajasthan with a technology center in Pune. MedCords is working predominantly in Rural India taking a patient first approach with a vision of making healthcare accessible, affordable and efficient for all by leveraging cutting edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science technologies.

The company aims to become the "real time" healthcare decision making tool for citizens, organizations and state governments to eradicate problems and implement efficient healthcare processes. The funds will be used to expand the team, further develop the technology platform and to expand the scope of operations to new geographies.

More than 85% people in India do not have their medical records organized and at one place. 80% people living in villages have to travel 60 kms for the consultation and out-of-pocket expense on healthcare in India is close to 60% of total spends. The founders have seen the healthcare scenario first hand and after extensive research of 3 years across 800 villages of Rajasthan, MP, UP & Bihar and 2 pilots, they began developing MedCords in late 2016 and we went live in May 2017.

MedCords is founded by Nikhil Baheti, Saida Dhanavath & Shreyans Mehta. The startup is currently operational in Kota and Jhalawar districts with a technology center in Pune. They are a digital health partner for the Smart City Kota project and are a recipient of prestigious Bhamashah Technofund funding under Rajasthan Government’s Istart Program.

MedCords’s co-founder Nikhil Baheti, explaining the product said, “MedCords is a cloud-based, ML powered ecosystem that connects and enables various stakeholders of the healthcare ecosystem. The ecosystem facilitates, amongst other things, remote consultations and follow-up consultations with doctors and intelligent digitization of users' medical records and on-demand availability of such records. The venture aims to create IP out of medical data and advanced analytics to create efficient healthcare decision systems for doctors, hospitals and the government.”

Shreyans spoke about the journey and said, “The biggest challenges initially which we faced was that there was no benchmark which we had to follow, most of the people in rural areas either did not have smartphones or they had a very limited know how of how to operate them- but they were in dire need of a solution. So, we had to build a solution which was ultra-simple and addressed to 80% of India’s Population.”

Saida added that “The healthcare ecosystem is extremely fragmented and to stitch it together for the users is an exciting challenge that we wake up to solve every day”.

“The challenge of providing effective health care to India’s rural population is a massive one. We are impressed by the MedCords team’s passion and technology driven approach to solving this problem. We are privileged to partner with Shreyans, Nikhil and Saida on their journey”, said Sarbvir Singh, Managing Partner, WaterBridge Ventures.

In March this year, Waterbridge led ₹3.5 crore funding of Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students.

Founded in 2016, by investment veterans Manish Kheterpal (ex Providence, Actis, Rho Ventures) and Sarbvir Singh (ex Capital18, Citi), WaterBridge Ventures is an early stage venture fund with a founders first philosophy. The first fund with a corpus of $40M has a portfolio of 15 start-ups and tends to be the first institutional investor backing strong and persistent founders leading technology disruption across sectors. WaterBridge has invested in several market leading companies such as Unacademy, Chalo, ZipLoan, MagicPin, Social Cops and Dataweave.

Gurgaon-based Ed-Tech Startup Doubtnut Raises ₹3.5 Crore In Funding Led by WaterBridge Ventures

Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students today announced that it has raised a pre-series A round amounting to ₹3.5 crore led by WaterBridge Ventures with participation from Omidyar Network. The startup plans to use the capital to expand its platform, add more subjects, support more Indian languages and accelerate the development of several exciting new product features.

With this funding, Sarbvir Singh, Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, will join Doubtnut's Board of Directors and Omidyar Network will also appoint a Director to the Board.

Founded in 2016 by IIT-Delhi alumni Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar, Doubtnut is a multi-lingual online learning platform for students. With its Android app, students can find the answer to a question by simply clicking the image of the question on the app. The application uses advanced artificial intelligence technologies to decipher the question from the image and consequently serve the corresponding video solution from Doubtnut’s library. The company has created one of the world’s largest library of curriculum specific educational content videos.

Tanushree Nagori, cofounder of Doubtnut said, "Aditya and I are passionate about improving the level of education in India. We sincerely believe that good education is a fundamental right of every child and we, at Doubtnut, are committed to provide world-class education in the most economical way possible to every student in India."

“Doubtnut aims to impart world class learning to students by leveraging cutting edge technology, such as Machine Learning driven Math Image Recognition, and burgeoning information inclusivity in India," added Aditya Shankar, cofounder at Doubtnut.

Sarbvir Singh, partner at WaterBridge Ventures said, "We believe that a student first, multi lingual approach is needed if educational initiatives are to work at scale in the country. Students need on-demand solutions to problems in a language that they can understand. We look forward to working with Aditya and Tanushree to make their vision a reality".

"Doubtnut’s innovative solutions will meet the needs of millions of Indians students by providing real time answers to their questions,” said Namita Dalmia, principal at Omidyar Network. “We met Aditya and Tanushree through the accelerator program we supported with Village Capital in 2017. They are highly capable and passionate entrepreneurs who leveraged the program and substantially refined their product and business model. We are excited to be part of the next step of their journey.”

Speaking about WaterBridge Ventures, it is a venture capital firm investing in early stage ventures. With with offices in Delhi and Bengaluru, WaterBridge invests across seed to Series A stages with a first investment cheque size of up to $1 million and is generally the first institutional investor in promising startups. WaterBridge also has a Scout program where it engages with Founders at a very early stage of their ventures. In last May, it participated in $7 million funding of hyperlocal discovery startup MagicPin. Prior to that it also participated in $1 million funding of Unacademy,an Indian free online learning platform.

The Ed-Tech startup space is seeing a lot of activities of late. To recall, last month, an another edtech startup from Bengaluru IMAX Program has raised $13.5 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Ventures and existing investor Aspada.

In the same month, former CEO and co-founder of Infosys Shibulal has launched EduMentum — an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

In January, an another Ed-tech start up GreyAtom has raised a $1M funding round led by early-stage fund Pravega Ventures. In the same month, Bengaluru-based enterprise platform for educational institutions CollPoll has raised its pre-series A funding round led by Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE).

In November 2017, AEON Learning Private Limited, which is backed by Kris Gopalkrishnan, acquired Acadgild, an online edtech startup, for $10 million in an all stock deal.

In the same month, an another edtech startup Perspectico raised seed funding from Delhi University and Government of Delhi Incubator.

Additionally, AICTE tied-up with Fourth Ambit, a Kerala-based edtech startup, to connect over 10,000 tech insitutes across India through online portals.

Gurgaon-based Ed-Tech Startup Doubtnut Raises ₹3.5 Crore In Funding Led by WaterBridge Ventures

Gurgaon-based Doubtnut, a multi lingual online learning platform for students today announced that it has raised a pre-series A round amounting to ₹3.5 crore led by WaterBridge Ventures with participation from Omidyar Network. The startup plans to use the capital to expand its platform, add more subjects, support more Indian languages and accelerate the development of several exciting new product features.

With this funding, Sarbvir Singh, Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, will join Doubtnut's Board of Directors and Omidyar Network will also appoint a Director to the Board.

Founded in 2016 by IIT-Delhi alumni Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar, Doubtnut is a multi-lingual online learning platform for students. With its Android app, students can find the answer to a question by simply clicking the image of the question on the app. The application uses advanced artificial intelligence technologies to decipher the question from the image and consequently serve the corresponding video solution from Doubtnut’s library. The company has created one of the world’s largest library of curriculum specific educational content videos.

Tanushree Nagori, cofounder of Doubtnut said, "Aditya and I are passionate about improving the level of education in India. We sincerely believe that good education is a fundamental right of every child and we, at Doubtnut, are committed to provide world-class education in the most economical way possible to every student in India."

“Doubtnut aims to impart world class learning to students by leveraging cutting edge technology, such as Machine Learning driven Math Image Recognition, and burgeoning information inclusivity in India," added Aditya Shankar, cofounder at Doubtnut.

Sarbvir Singh, partner at WaterBridge Ventures said, "We believe that a student first, multi lingual approach is needed if educational initiatives are to work at scale in the country. Students need on-demand solutions to problems in a language that they can understand. We look forward to working with Aditya and Tanushree to make their vision a reality".

"Doubtnut’s innovative solutions will meet the needs of millions of Indians students by providing real time answers to their questions,” said Namita Dalmia, principal at Omidyar Network. “We met Aditya and Tanushree through the accelerator program we supported with Village Capital in 2017. They are highly capable and passionate entrepreneurs who leveraged the program and substantially refined their product and business model. We are excited to be part of the next step of their journey.”

Speaking about WaterBridge Ventures, it is a venture capital firm investing in early stage ventures. With with offices in Delhi and Bengaluru, WaterBridge invests across seed to Series A stages with a first investment cheque size of up to $1 million and is generally the first institutional investor in promising startups. WaterBridge also has a Scout program where it engages with Founders at a very early stage of their ventures. In last May, it participated in $7 million funding of hyperlocal discovery startup MagicPin. Prior to that it also participated in $1 million funding of Unacademy,an Indian free online learning platform.

The Ed-Tech startup space is seeing a lot of activities of late. To recall, last month, an another edtech startup from Bengaluru IMAX Program has raised $13.5 million from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Ventures and existing investor Aspada.

In the same month, former CEO and co-founder of Infosys Shibulal has launched EduMentum — an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation.

In January, an another Ed-tech start up GreyAtom has raised a $1M funding round led by early-stage fund Pravega Ventures. In the same month, Bengaluru-based enterprise platform for educational institutions CollPoll has raised its pre-series A funding round led by Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE).

In November 2017, AEON Learning Private Limited, which is backed by Kris Gopalkrishnan, acquired Acadgild, an online edtech startup, for $10 million in an all stock deal.

In the same month, an another edtech startup Perspectico raised seed funding from Delhi University and Government of Delhi Incubator.

Additionally, AICTE tied-up with Fourth Ambit, a Kerala-based edtech startup, to connect over 10,000 tech insitutes across India through online portals.

Unacademy Raises Additional $1M from Blume Ventures, Stanford Angels India and Marquee Angels

Unacademy, Indian free online learning platform, has raised additional $1 million in their second round of external investment. In April 2016, they raised their first round of funding worth $500k. The current investment round is being led by Blume Ventures, along with Stanford Angels India, WaterBridge Ventures, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Tandon, Ashish Tulsian, Tracxn Labs and most of their existing investors participating in the round.

Unacademy is India’s largest free online learning platform that allows educators to create courses using their app on various subjects, including exclusive content for various competitive exams. Their vision is to get the best minds of the country share their knowledge in an easily comprehendible form. More than 100 educators have created 200+ courses in the last eight months since the launch of their platform Unacademy.in. The platform attracts more than 1M video views monthly now, their growth so far has been mostly organic.

“What started as an experiment has today become one of the most reliable sources of online education. From content specific to competitive examinations to basic English learning techniques, we are in a process to make Unacademy the one-stop destination for online courses across myriad fields and subjects. From IAS topper 2016, Tina Dabi, to India’s first woman IPS officer, Kiran Bedi, we aim to get courses from only the best on our platform. Within two months, the Unacademy Create app will be made available to all, so anyone across the world can create lessons in any language they like. After a thorough screening process, we will make the relevant lessons available on our platform that will be free for all to see,” says Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy.

In a span of eight months, over 300,000 students have benefited from over 2,400 online lessons and specialised courses on cracking various competitive examinations, on our platform. Our success stories include thousands of students who have cracked toughest of examinations, improved their ability to speak and write better and increase their knowledge. Some of our students have today become educators on Unacademy and that is what we call a true educational revolution. India is home to 19 per cent of the world’s youth and we are empowering them to take on the world in a manner that classrooms will never do. Our vision is to partner with the brightest minds and have courses on every possible topic in multiple languages so that the whole world can benefit from these courses.

Karthik Reddy,Managing Partner, Blume Ventures, says, “Unacademy presents a great example of the beginnings of an incredible shift in India’s Internet—the ability of millions of new internet users using smartphones as their only access device to create and consume high quality curated educational content as easily as laying hands on a textbook. And the product is designed for both lightweight production and consumption—in that it’s ingenious. This can change learning to an entirely different plane and kill a lot of ineffective institutional frameworks. And it’s an absolutely crack team of young founders for whom all else, including the IAS, didn’t compare to the ambitiou” goal and impact that an Unacademy can have. This is why we think tech can be such a game changer even in education in this country.”

Sachin Bansal, Executive Chairman, Flipkart, says, ”Education and learning from the best suited teachers and professionals is a global problem, which, I believe, Unacademy solves seamlessly with its interactive and intuitive content. In a short span of eight months, the founding team has proved that leveraging technology to empower its educators and students is a problem that can be solved effectively at scale. I am impressed by the ease with which educators can speedily upload videos and touch a billion lives with effective lessons. I am confident that the strong founding team of Unacademy is well positioned to truly disrupt traditional classroom teaching with more impactful content, and I am proud to back the venture.”

Kiran Bedi, Lt Governor, Puducherry, and also an educator at Unacademy, says, “ It took me ten minutes to make a video lesson on ’Time management and productivity’ on the Unacademy Create app, and impact a million lives with my learning. The overwhelming response from students, along with the simplicity with which the app has been designed, encourages working professionals to share their experience. It is an unconventional way for students to get the perspective of real life challenges and lessons and makes me believe everyone can be a teacher. I urge Unacademy to conduct lessons and workshops in Puducherry. Unacademy cuts across boundaries. It’s truly global and in one’s own hands.”

Private Equity Veteran Manish Kheterpal Launches $15M Fund to Focus on the Pre-Series A to Series-A Space

Private equity veteran Manish Kheterpal has floated a $15-million early-stage fund, WaterBridge Ventures that will focus on the pre-Series A to Series-A space. The fund is looking to bet on startups utilising technology at their core, and spread across sectors, including consumer focused mobile apps in media and telecom, ed-tech, health tech and fin-tech.

The Sebi-registered, India-domiciled fund, will primarily look to invest between Rs 75 lakh and Rs 3.5 crore in 12-15 ventures, and has a fund life cycle of 5-7 years. While taking about his plans to launch this fund, Manish said, "This is the best time to launch a new fund because the entrepreneurial activity has not come down as the ecosystem is maturing more now, and some froth is coming out."

The fund amount has been largely backed by a number of family offices, high net-worth individuals and companies, however, their names are still undisclosed.

WaterBridge Ventures, which has made its first close at $5 million, is the latest VC fund to be launched in 2016. "It helps that VCs have tightened the tap for later stages of funding, as those help with entrepreneurs driving sharper business plans in earlier stages, valuations are more realistic and conversations are more sensible," Kheterpal added.

Just today, early stage investment firm Blume Ventures has also hit a third close of its second venture capital and expects to complete the fund raising process in July. The firm has made more than 20 investments from the new fund in the last 13 months.

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