YC backed Better Opinions Raises $2.5 Mn from Metaplanet VC and Others

YCombinator, Taurus VC, Original Capital, Tremis Capital, Super Capital also participated in the round.

Funds raised to be used for building and expanding the product and tech teams, marketing to accelerate business scale up

Better Opinions is a trading platform which allows users to trade their opinions and earn real money. The Company has over 6,00,000 users who have traded ₹10cr+ on the platform.

Better Opinions, a Y-Combinator backed company, has raised $2.5Mn from investors including Metaplanet VC and Goldwater Capital. The investors participating in the seed round include YCombinator, Taurus VC, Original Capital, Tremis Capital, Super Capital, and other investors, including angel investors.

Better Opinions is an app that operates in the realm of the prediction market and allows users to trade their opinions with real money on events in various categories such as cricket, cryptocurrency, politics and entertainment. Prediction markets are a relatively new asset class where users can trade on future unknown events and earn money. Since its launch, Better Opinions has expanded from continuous double auction trades, where users can trade on yes/no outcomes, to polls, where users can choose from multiple options to trade. Better Opinions also plans to add a social layer on to trading, to make trading more accessible, fun and educational. Within a span of 6 months, Better Opinions has had over 600,000 users and has covered over 14,000 events.

Samay Jain, Co-founder CEO & Soumyajit Das, Co-founder CTO, Better Opinions

Better Opinions had previously raised an amount of $700K in their pre-seed round from investors including Soma Capital and Java Capital.

The funds raised will be used to build & expand the product and tech team, towards marketing and user growth. Soumyajit Das, Co-founder CTO, says, “Some of our investors’ portfolio companies include The Boring Company, TikTok, Reddit and Binance. It’s heartwarming to see such investors having faith and belief in our product and team. The funding will also help with our tech and infrastructure scale up plans.”

Samay Jain, Co-founder CEO, Better Opinions, further added, “The funds will also be used to make Better Opinions a trading cum social platform. We have so far seen an excited user base, who are eager to trade and invest in our platform, and their demand for more events and categories is a testament to the potential of our product. Our vision from here is therefore not only to create a stock market of opinions and make trading accessible to all, but to build a social platform where our users can trade and engage”.

Speaking on the investment, Rauno Miljand, Managing Partner, Metaplanet, says, “Better Opinions developed and operated real cash prediction market is contributing greatly to increasing critical and accountable decision-making abilities and financial literacy of their user base. It is rare to see ventures having a positive impact on epistemic hygiene while also appealing to the mass market - Better Opinion is one of few.”

Better Opinions was also part of the W22 batch of YCombinator. The team consists of founders, Samay Jain and Soumyajit Das, who are former employees of Gojek. The team also consists of graduates from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and NALSAR, among others.

Kaagaz Bags Funding From Y Combinator, Reaches 10 Mn Downloads

Kaagaz, launched as a document scanning app in June 2020, announced today that it has had 10 Mn Downloads and has been accepted into the accelerator program by Y Combinator (W’22). With over 2.5 Mn monthly active users, Kaagaz today has evolved to be a top productivity & office tool on Google Play Store.

Started as a document scanning app, Kaagaz over the past 18 months has evolved into a Documents Super App with features such as Document Scanner, PDF Reader, PDF Editor, Design Creator & Cloud Storage. With the diverse feature set and easy-to-use interface, it is getting popular among ‘Solopreneurs’ - freelancers, single-person businesses, shop owners, etc., - helping them run their businesses digitally from their phones without needing a computer.

“For over 500 Mn users in India, their smartphone has become the gateway to a digital lifestyle. Even though they don’t have a computer, with the help of various tools built by Kaagaz, they can take care of all the documentation-related tasks for their businesses, work, school & life in general, easily! Our aim is to empower these users & help them be part of the mainstream digital economy”, says Snehanshu Gandhi, CEO of Kaagaz.

The vision of Kaagaz is to become Mobile ‘Office’ for Bharat users & eventually target a global audience who have come to the digital world with a mobile phone.

With the recent funding from Y Combinator, Kaagaz aims to move swiftly towards its vision by making its feature set more diverse and rich. On the recent funding, seed investor, Pravega Ventures says - "As Bharat users start using their smartphones for work, they are going to need the right tools. Kaagaz is addressing this by building mobile-first tools with a backbone of Cloud that are very easy to use. Their rapid growth in the last 1 year is a testament to how large an opportunity this is & how well-positioned Kaagaz is, to be a leader in this category."

About Kaagaz Apps

Kaagaz Apps is founded by three young entrepreneurs Snehanshu Gandhi, Tamanjit Bindra & Gaurav Shrishrimal. The company has been backed by Pravega Ventures, Axilor Ventures, Better Capital & First Cheque, along with a few notable angels like Farid Ahsan of Sharechat, Farooq Adam of Fynd, Phanindra Sama of RedBus, amongst others.

Website – https://kaagaz.app

Delhi-based AppX Raises $1.3 Mn in Funding Round Led by YCombinator

The company aims to support creators in making a regular source of income every month by selling products to their fan base

To help enable creators to run their online businesses from their own storefront, Delhi-based startup AppX has announced that it raised USD$1.3 million in a recent funding round led by Ycombinator, Global Founders Capital, Rocket Internet, Soma Capital, Shrug VC, Lenny Rachitsky, James Beshara and TDV Partners. The company plans to utilize the fresh funds to increase its product offerings to help more creators monetize, roll out their token as well as expand internationally.

Founded in January 2020 by Sameer Sadana and Anuj Gupta, AppX helps its creators monetize via their own personal mobile applications and websites, wherein creators can run their own online businesses such as ebooks, courses, NFTs and e-commerce businesses. The company is currently targeting creators with over 10,000 followers on platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, and more such social media outlets.

Sameer Sadana, Founder and CEO, AppX;Anuj Gupta Co-Founder,AppX

 

Commenting on the funding, Sameer Sadana, Founder and CEO, AppX, said, “The creator economy space is a booming sector with market opportunity worth $100B. Creators and influencers regularly interact with their fans on social media, and thus requiring a mobile-first storefront that could help provide premium offerings to their followers. To cater to this demand, we have built a SaaS platform that empowers these creators to see revenue streams beyond digital ads. We are delighted with the trust instilled in us and AppX’s vision by our investors.”

AppX enables and provides its creators to pursue their passion and generate revenue. Working with creators in domains such as edtech, fitness, gaming, and skill development, currently the company has a network of 3000+ creators, that are using the AppX products to monetize their social media following. Creators and influencers have already earned over USD$10M till now using products created by AppX.

“The creator economy has been rapidly growing with increasing digital penetration. We are delighted to partner with Appx and truly believe in their vision of creating products that helps empower creators and influencers across the globe,” said Don Stalter, Partner at Global Founders Capital.

AppX is also planning to launch a platform where creators can launch their online businesses in less than 10 minutes.

Y-Combinator Backed Exly that Allows Businesses To Grow Aims to Acquire 1 Mn Creators

Exly founding team

Exly is a monetization platform that empowers creators & knowledge professionals to become entrepreneurs

Exly is an all-in-one business platform built for creators & knowledge professionals to launch, manage and grow their business online in today’s digital revolution. Knowledge professionals are the most valuable assets of a 21st-century organization because of their high level of productivity and creativity. They include professionals in fields such as Fitness Instructors & Wellness Coaches, Stock Trading & Finance Experts, Digital Marketers, Tarot Card Readers & Astrologers, Fashion & Lifestyle Experts, Artists, etc.

Exly has grown ~20X in the last 9 months, since it’s MVP launch in Dec 2020, with creators & professionals earning more than $700K USD from the platform. There are about 100 million people who became creators and knowledge professionals in the last decade and in the next 3 to 5 years they will transition into becoming businesses. Exly is a platform that aims to build and own the right infrastructure for this shift and acquire 1 million creators in the coming years.

The platform is a business-in-a-box solution optimized for capturing, converting, and managing leads professionally. It provides comprehensive Scheduling & Packaging Software for creators to run a complete Digital business. They can easily create, market, and sell their classes, recorded courses, workshops, 1-1 appointments, consultations, etc. all from one place. A growth marketing suite along with analytics provides them with the ability to run automated email campaigns, discounts, offers, 1-click-upsells at a cohort level to smartly grow their business.

Exly (previously Myscoot) is a Y-Combinator start-up (2019 batch) and had raised USD 1.7 Million from India's top VC funds like Mayfield Partners and renowned angel investors like Kunal Shah (Founder Cred, Ex-Founder Freecharge), Maninder Gulati (Global Chief Strategy Officer at OYO), to name some. The company is founded by alumni from top IITs, IIMs, BITS, Yale, including ex-entrepreneurs and from firms such as BCG, Hike, Dunzo, and P&G.

The concept of Exly was brought alive by Suyash Sinha, Sidharth Rawat, Akhil Tripathi, along with the founding team - Swati Singh, Tanveer Chawla & Yash Gupta who have become an integral part since the Myscoot days.

Commenting on various offerings by Exly, Sidharth Rawat, Founder said “We started Exly to empower skilled creators to exploit their unique talents and convert that into a full-time business. The pandemic has hit many jobs and pay cuts have affected millions of people. We had creators from various verticals like tarot card readers, health and wellness coaches, growth experts, etc. from various cities across India approach us and eventually have successfully excelled in monetising their passion. We believe in advocating that no job should be boring and everyone is entitled to explore the opportunity of earning from what they enjoy doing.”

Sharing his views about Exly, Akhil Tripathi, Founder said “EXLY encapsulates all of our learnings from running multiple startups. Like their businesses would need, we enable our creators (Exlypreneurs) to create sales offers, take seamless payments, analyse their traffic sources, product performance, run ads and even run referral programs. Their fully responsive websites can already handle traffic of a million daily visitors. We've just started to scrape off the tip of the iceberg, and the future we bring to you would be even more exciting!".

Expressing his views about the platform, Mr. Sushant, Investment & Stock Trading Trainer at Exly : “So I was in search of a platform to automate my complete process for the classes I take. And finally, I got to know about Exly! The whole team is very cooperative. I no longer have to look after any technical things related to running my business - webinars, classes, payments, communications, etc. Everything is taken care of by Exly."