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

Document Scanning App Kaagaz Scanner Gets $575K in Funding from Pravega Ventures to Accelerate Growth

Kaagaz Scanner, an Indian document scanning and storage app, today announced today that it has raised USD 575,000 in funding led by Pravega Ventures alongside Axilor Ventures, Better Capital & a few prominent Angel Investors including Phanindra Sama (Founder of RedBus), Farooq Adam (Founder of Fynd) and others. 

Since its launch in June 2020, Kaagaz Scanner is today installed on over 1.9 million phones. Over 90k+ users use the app every day and more than 50 million pages have been scanned using Kaagaz so far. The company has earlier been also backed by First Cheque & Axilor Ventures in their pre-seed round of funding.

Kaagaz Scanner has also been acknowledged by the government of India as part of the Atma Nirbhar App Challenge where it was given a special mention in the office apps category. It has also been recognized by the HRD Ministry and & the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Kaagaz Scanner was launched in Jun 2020 by a team of 3 seasoned entrepreneurs pursuing their 2nd startup together - Snehanshu Gandhi (IIT Bombay ’07, ISB Hyderabad ’12), Gaurav Shrishrimal (IIT Kanpur ’14) and Tamanjit Singh Bindra (AIT Pune ’06). 

Users are using Kaagaz Scanner for scanning different kinds of documents such as Notes & Assignments for students, Work or business related documents such as Invoices & Agreements & various personal documents such as id cards, insurance documents etc. The app which is privacy focussed works completely offline, doesn’t require a sign In, has zero ads and has unique features such as custom watermarking. The app is today available in eight Indian languages, differentiating it from all the other apps available on the Play Store.

The lead investor, Pravega Ventures said, “Today a smartphone is at the epicentre of most of our personal and business exchanges and we at Pravega are very excited to partner with the Kaagaz team as they build out powerful AI based utility products for the ‘Bharat’ users. The Kaagaz team aims to leverage their proprietary mobile based document scanner and create a repository of documents in their quest to become a key node in the exchange and storage of information for their users. Their AL and ML based approach is going to change how people have used utility apps till now.”

Kaagaz Scanner is the flagship product of the company and their immediate focus is on building it into a world class product. Commenting on the fund raise, Snehanshu Gandhi, Co Founder of Kagaaz said, “We plan to use this fresh round of funding to accelerate growth for Kaagaz Scanner and to increase our team size to speed up product development. Along with the app, we are also looking to build a suite of AI powered utility tools for our users that will help them manage their day-to-day tasks seamlessly.”

Vertices Partners acted as the legal counsel for Company and the Founders in this transaction.

Document Scanning App 'Kaagaz' Raises Angel Funding; Gets Recognition from Ministry

Kaagaz Founders 

Kaagaz Scanner is an Indian document scanning app, that has come up as a great replacement for Chinese and other non-Indian scanning apps has raised funding of undisclosed amount from few angel investors, said the company /maker of the app.

Available on Android right now, Kaagaz Scanner has gotten a special mention in #AatmaNirbharBharat App Innovation Challenge and have also gotten recognition from Ministry of Education as well.

USPs of Kaagaz Scanner

Currently the app has following unique features and much more are being developed right now –

1. Can work completely offline
2. No Ads & Watermarks
3. Completely Free
4. No Sign In Required

App Link - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kaagaz.scanner.docs.pdf - ONLY ON ANDROID

Kaagaz Scanner is launched by a team of 3 seasoned entrepreneurs, doing their second startup together - Snehanshu Gandhi (IIT Bombay ’07, ISB Hyderabad ’12), Gaurav Shrishrimal (IIT Kanpur ’14) and Tamanjit Singh Bindra (AIT Pune ’06). They have been together working on another product called Sorted AI for over a year now.

The team have been working on another product in productivity space called Sorted AI for last 1 year. When Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi called for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat & Vocal For Local, everyone was talking about building Indian apps and removing foreign apps.

The team further said -

We found out that there is no decent Indian scanning app available in the playstore and that is when we decided to build one ourselves. It also was a natural extension to our other product (Sorted AI) which is an AI powered reminders and tasks app and made sense for us to build it. Since the idea originated from the call for supporting the nation, we felt that an Indian name would be apt for it and hence named it Kaagaz Scanner.

The startup boasts to to see "superb" growth since govt. announcement and adds, "We went from almost zero downloads to 200,000 downloads in 3 days, all organically". As of today the app has over 1 Million downloads on Play Store and 70% of the downloads are from WhatsApp forwards and Social Media outreach. On the 2nd and 3rd day after ban the app was trending at #2 in Productivity and #11 overall ahead of many well known apps.

Further, Kaagaz app has over 60,000 unique users coming to the app everyday and so far more than 10 million pages have been scanned using Kaagaz Scanner in about 1.5 months.

In its future goals, the startup is building a suite of AI powered utility tools that will help users manage their day-to-day tasks seamlessly. Kaagaz Scanner is its primary product right now and it aims to build it into a world class product. The startup is planning to bring more products in coming months.