White Unicorn Ventures Launches First Incubation Co-working Space ‘Unicorn Growth Centre’

Early-stage investment firm White Unicorn Ventures, launched their first incubation co-working space ‘Unigrowth Center’ in Santacruz West, Mumbai today. This co-working office space is an all-private suite offices can accommodate approx. six companies with a workforce of four to 10 people per company.

The Unicorn Growth Centre is just not a Co-Working Space, but also provides services ranging to Online Marketing, OOH Media, PR Agency, Secretarial Services, Chartered Accountancy Services, Legal Services, Treasury Management, Seed Funding and much more. The Centre provides a fully equipped workspace with 24 X 7 access, offers a wide range of facilities such as round the clock security, Wi-Fi experience, UPS backup, open office environment, laser printer, scanner, coffee & tea, recreation area, terrace garden, video conferencing, conference rooms, cafeteria, and lounge facilities to the occupants.

Rohit Chokhani, Principal founder, White Unicorn Ventures, “The idea behind this Growth Centre is to provide an environment for companies that is future proof and empowers their businesses. We are providing all the facilities in our Growth Centre and with the launch of this co-working space, we want start-ups to ideate differently, think out of the box want and flourish in the businesses they have embarked upon. Besides providing the run of the mill facilities, we shall also help these companies by mentoring them at every stage of their business; help them with getting talent on board, structure their organizations and most importantly also provide a platform for growth of their venture. We believe in non-intrusive guidance.”

“We will be starting two more Growth Centers which will be slightly bigger and will be spread across more than 4000 sq ft. One at Powai, accommodating about 10 companies and other at Andheri West in Mumbai, added, Rohit Chokhani. Our aim is to double the capacity in the next two years.”

Currently, the companies who are a part of the first Growth Centre include Unstockify, Blue Box Consultancy, Prime Squares, Aarchon & Nature-Nama

Prerak Mehta, founder of Unstockify said, “The Unicorn Growth Centre is an apt place for start-ups like us to start working as it offers us with all the basic facilities and much more. We are excited to learn and grow from other like-minded entrepreneurs in our journey. The company has made sure that the Centre holds a reputation and will attract more startups in the near future”.

White Unicorn Ventures has planned to invest around $20 million in early-stage start-ups this year. The company also aims to spend up to $5 million by the end of 2016. White Unicorn has invested in 15 companies so far and some of them include Routofy, Shaadisaga, Justride, Unstockify, Hostelhousing, Lerner, Carcrew amongst others.

1mg Attracts Top Global Healthcare Investor HBM Healthcare Investments (HBM) in Additional Funding

1mg Technologies Pvt Ltd, Indian digital health platform which runs mobile app “1mg” on Android/ iOS and the web platform, today announced an additional investment from HBM as a further addition to its recently closed Series B financing. HBM is among the global leaders in healthcare-focused investing with around $1 billion under management. HBM focuses on development stage, growth and buy-out financings of private companies as well as investments in public companies. This is HBM’s first direct investment in a digital health company in this region.

Prashant Tandon, Founder 1mg said, “We are thrilled to have an investor with the domain expertise and quality of HBM to partner with us. At this key stage of our growth, we are in good shape with a high quality team in place and our business backed by the best investors in the business across technology, healthcare and digital health. I believe we have the opportunity to transform healthcare in India and make it better for all consumers. With over 75 Million annual visits on our platform already, we have a very good shot at changing healthcare for consumers at scale in India.”

According to Dr Andreas Wicki, CEO, HBM Healthcare Investments, “As a focused investor in healthcare, we have been monitoring the interesting impact that technology is having in the space of healthcare delivery. We believe 1mg has created a unique platform in one of the fastest growing markets in the world, and this platform can be the foundation of India’s leading healthcare services business in the years ahead. All companies in the healthcare domain are looking for innovative platforms to partner with to connect better with their consumers – very few platforms have managed to achieve the consumer engagement at scale like 1mg has done.”

The company has previously raised funding from Maverick Capital Ventures, Sequoia India, Omidyar Network, Kae Capital and Intel Capital.

Now Pay at Hindustan Petroleum Pumps With Your Paytm Wallet

Paytm, Indian mobile payments and commerce platform, has created further touch points for cashless transactions by associating with Hindustan Petroleum for its strong user base of 120 million. The company has entered into a strategic partnership with Hindustan Petroleum to allow payments through the Paytm wallet at furl stations. The move eliminates the hassles associated with using cash for paying fuel bills and also further cements Paytm’s stronghold in the digital wallets.

On this announcement, Kiran Vasireddy, Sr. Vice President – Paytm said, “We are on a mission to make payments extremely simple and we are adding as many use cases as possible for users to transact using Paytm. Our partnership with Hindustan Petroleum is crucial in making these petrol pumps become cashless in the next few years. Payments through wallet will not only enhance convenience to customers but will also bring in more operational efficiencies thereby reducing queues at these pumps.”

Enthused with the association, HPCL North Zone Head - Shri Subodh Batra commented, “We are excited about this partnership with Paytm which brings in technology to make payments digitally possible in HPCL Petrol Pumps. Through this seamless operation of payment mechanism, we can foresee faster fuelling at our filling stations. By embracing this technology driven partnership we are confident that it will create a great value addition for customers across demographic profiles."

Hindustan Petroleum has presence in cities across India with over 13,250 filling stations. Currently transactions take place majorly through cash followed by Credit and Debit cards. Payments through Paytm mobile app have the potential to completely take over the traditional transaction options in the coming year.

Koovs to Raise $4.4M from HT Media and Infibeam to Invest Upto Rs 45 Cr in CCAvenue

HT Media is planning to acquire 8.31 percent stake in Koovs plc while Infibeam is investing Rs 45 crore in one of India's largest payment gateway CCAvenue.

HT Media To Invest $4.4M in Lifestyle Etailer Koovs

Newspaper publisher HT Media has agreed to acquire 8.31 percent stake in Koovs plc, the UK-based parent of Indian lifestyle e-tailer Koovs.com for about $4.4 million. HT Media is purchasing 12 million shares at 25 pence each, the company said in a stock exchange filing. The deal is subject to approval from Koovs pls, and is expected to close by 30th June 2016.

Koovs recently announced that it had raised $32 million, mainly from existing investors and the rest from institutional investors, including Ruffer LLP. In January this year, Waheed Alli and Nahata family also committed an investment of $5.4 millon in the startup.

The company clocked gross merchandise value of $14.5 million for the year through March 2016, an increase of 189 percent on year. It further said its web traffic more than doubled and its conversion rate rose 55 percent.

Koovs India was founded in May 2010 by Rajesh Kamra, Manish Tewari, Kanishk Shukla and Amit Shukla as a general eCommerce business. Initially it focused on the sale of mobile phones & other electronic goods and later pivoted to become an e-tailer of fashion apparel and accessories. It now offers a mix of private label and branded merchandise.

Infibeam to Invest Upto Rs 45 Cr in Indian Payment Gateway CCAvenue

eCommerce firm Infibeam is investing Rs 45 crore in Indian payment gateway CCAvenue.

Infibeam said it has signed a termsheet to invest up to Rs 45 crore into Avenues India Pvt Ltd and is currently "in further discussion for signing of definitive agreement".

Infibeam is structuring this investment through its subsidiary NSI Infinium Global that operates the eCommerce marketplace Infibeam.com and the do-it-yourself e-commerce platform BuildaBazaar. The percentage of investment will be finalised in the definitive agreement, the company said.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Data Analytics Startup Vahanalytics Raises Seed Funding from Venture Catalysts

Mumbai-based Vahanalytics, run by Urbtranz Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has raised $200,000 in a seed funding round from Venture Catalysts, led by Vikram Lakhotia, partner at Arth India Ventures, and Anirudh Damani, managing director of Standard Transport Corporation.

The startup was founded by BITS Pilani alumni Shivalik Sen, Arun Gandhi, Nikhil Tavora and Someshwar Dash in early 2016. It was started out as an on-demand driver service, but soon founding team realised that there was a distinct lack of a similar scientific metric to quantify and judge driving behaviour as well as to identify and train drivers. The firm's analytical tool could have a number of use-cases across industries such as transportation, logistics and insurance.

The platform captures real-time data using smartphones about driving habits and road conditions, which is then processed and refined by leveraging the power of big data in order to extract useful insights.

Vahanalytics' founders had earlier founded Driven, a startup that provided on-demand chauffeurs, which was acquired by Chennai-based rival DriversKart earlier this month. The team is now using their learnings from Driven in this new startup.

Venture Catalysts has previously invested in startups like LenDen Club, ConfirmTKT, SIFTR Labs and  vPhrase. The firm recently added 50 new angel investors to its network even as it plans to expand its investor base to 800-1000 members. It is also building a corpus of Rs 100 crore to provide early-stage investment support to promising ventures.

Other players operating in data analytics segment are ActOnMagic, raised seed investment led by NetMagic’s co-founder Jayabalan Subramanian and in 2015 Ratan Tata also invested in two data analytics firms, including Jungle Ventures-backed big data analytics startup Crayon Data and and predictive marketing and analysis company Infinite Analytics.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Sports Tech Startup Play Your Sport Gets Pre Series A Round of Funding

Delhi based sports tech startup, Play Your Sport, has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A round of funding led by Ashish Gupta, ex co-founder of E-valueserve.

Ashish is passionate about two things- angel investing and promoting entrepreneurs with a purpose, particularly with helping entrepreneurs to achieve their vision of ‘making sports and fitness a reailty for everybody’. He is an avid yoga practitioner and passionate about sports and fitness.

With the vision of ‘making sports and fitness a reality for everybody” the company is on a mission to put India on the map in the fast growing global sports and fitness industry.

The company will use the funds to expand its team, strengthen technology and increase its footprint across the nation. The company plans to hire over 50 people across functions in the next 6 months.

Founded by Supriya Mamgain and Varoon Kapoor, Play Your Sport is a sports technology venture that helps coaches, trainers, sports and fitness enthusiasts, from young sports enthusiasts to working professionals who miss playing sports, to rediscover their joy of playing. Currently, Play Your Sport is being used by more than 1000 sports facilities across sports such as cricket, football, swimming, badminton and basketball to run acquistion/ retention campaigns, manage memebership and stream-line opearations.

According to the founders, the sports person in you never dies no matter at which stage of life you are at, but people stop playing because of the lack of convenient options. There is enough good sports infrastructure and talent in the country that goes unused and unrecognized because of the un-organized nature of the business. With the growing sports culture in the country along with the influx of sport leagues the company believes to bring the athlete in you close to your chosen sports.

‘Found this team, Supriya and Varoon very diligent and capable entrepreneurs who are committed to their purpose of redefining the sports culture in India,’ said Ashish Gupta.

IAN & Napino Launches Incubation Program 'CircuitBridge', For Software and Hardware Startups

Indian Angel Network, Indian angel investor network and Napino Auto & Electronics Limited, a leading manufacturer of electrical and electronic components for the automotive industry have collaborated to launch an incubation program to encourage entrepreneurs to create innovative and disruptive solutions in connected transport (two and four wheelers), Internet of Things (IoT), home automation, wearables, auto electronics, virtual reality (hardware).

Program highlights are as follows:

• One-on-one mentoring by investors/industry experts


• Grants for selected incubatees


• Assistance for designing product/service


• Customer validation/industry connects

Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder Indian Angel Network and of the IAN Incubator commented, “The IAN Incubator is a strong support system for aspiring entrepreneurs irrespective of the sector. Strong incubation program as run by the IAN Incubator backed by forward looking corporates like Napino are perfect to nurture dynamic start-ups. I am certain this initiative will fulfil its promise and we will see great products emerge from the program.”

Vipin Raheja, Chairman and Managing Director, Napino Auto & Electronics Limited commented, “Napino has been a proud contributor to the progress of the Indian auto industry. Now, we would like to share our experience and offer support and guidance to the young talent in India to help them build the next level of technologies. This collaboration with the IAN incubator gives us a great platform to mentor entrepreneurs and be part of their success through this incubation program.”

Vaibhav Raheja, Director, Napino Auto & Electronics Limited commented, "We are on a mission to revolutionize the way start-ups design, develop, launch and grow businesses. Start-ups have incredible energy and do things differently which makes interacting with them so rewarding. We believe that the key to their success lies in not just creating disruptive technologies, but also using them strategically to create strong business models. IAN Incubator and Napino have the ability to provide best-in-class support for early-stages innovation start-ups and contribute towards their growth”.

Startups who wish to be part of this program please send in your applications to circuitbridge@indianangelnetwork.com

About IAN Incubator

IAN Incubator believes that early stage businesses require more than just money to succeed. They require close mentoring and inputs on strategy as well as execution. The IAN Incubator provides entrepreneurs with best in class industry leaders/investors/domain experts as mentors to support them in business planning, one to one mentoring, assistance recruiting their top team, commercializing their technologies, getting early engagement and customer validations from the market, transfer of technologies, assistance getting early seed funding, help in forging partnerships at the national and global level, advice on intellectual property, training and development and many other things.

About Napino Auto & Electronics Limited

Napino Auto & Electronics Limited is a leading manufacturer of Electrical and Electronic Products for the Automotive Industry. It has four state-of-the-art Manufacturing Plants spread across Northern India. Napino’s in-house Research and Development facility is approved by Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR), Government of India and is well equipped to promote innovation, design, development and validation of our entire range of products. The company’s marquee list of customers include Hero MotoCorp, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter, Suzuki Motorcycle, India Yamaha and Mahindra Two Wheeler.

Tpot, A Startup Specialized in ‘Chai-Nashta’ Segment, Raises Seed Round of Funding

Tpot, a start-up specialized in ‘chai-nashta’ segment has secured its seed funding from Ashish Gupta, Founder & Trustee of Ashoka University and Co-founder of Evalueserve and the principal investor at Tpot Café. With the infused fund, Tpot plans to expand its presence by taking its outlet count to over 50 by the end of the year. Currently, there are 20 functional Tpot outlets across the Delhi/NCR region. The fund will be used in channelizing the team expansion and on the ideation of introducing innovative products involving tea.

The idea of Tpot was initiated by a team of three young corporate individuals, (CA’s and MBA), who turned into food entrepreneurs for their love of chai-nashta. Going by its current revenue figure of Rs 6 crores, the company has set itself a target of Rs 12 crores by the year end; implying 300 per cent YoY growth. It aims to serve 0.5 million cups of tea per month by December, 2016.

While analysing the recent development of the brand Robin Jha, Co-founder and CEO stated, “Chai-Nashta is an under-served opportunity in India and is primarily unorganised. Our team has built a strong foundation in Delhi/NCR region. Having gained a good traction of consumers here, we are confident to establish our brand presence in the other markets too,”He further added, “Our motto and value proposition will remain the same. Our customers will get the same Tpot essence in each outlet they choose to visit. It is a favourite hangout place, for smart, casual and family visit.”

Prominent outlets of Tpot are located at T3 Airport Delhi, Rajiv Chowk Metro Station, Make my trip, Go ibibo, BPTP Park Centra, World Trade Tower and Malviya Nagar.

“Being an ardent tea lover, I met Robin in an event and the love for the herbal teas brought us together. Over subsequent meetings, I realized the magnitude of the problem that they were solving,” emphasized Ashish on the problem Tpot were solving. “I was quite impressed by the concept of Tpot and the team of Robin, Asad and Atit. The team had spent considerable amount of time in understanding the consumer preferences and are capable to create a niche for themselves in this highly fragmented market. Therefore I decided to be a part of this journey,” he added further.

Tpot plans to realize its target in a phased manner by opening over 50 outlets by Decemebr 2016, and is also planning a muti-city launch by next year. Besides, the company is also expected to go high on packaged tea and delivery of refreshments at home. Through its offerings, Tpot wants to be a part of the growing story of health and wellness market in India.

“With our retail expansion, we are hopeful to expand the team. We are looking to hire a lot of fresher’s and train them to work with us. This will be our contribution to the “Skill India” initiative of the government. We will also look to do our bit for the society by working for the people in tea growing areas of India,” Robin concluded.

Freshdesk Expands Global Presence with New Office in Berlin

Freshdesk, the leading provider of cloud-based customer support software, today announced the opening of a new regional office in Berlin, Germany. Freshdesk has doubled its customer base in just over a year, from 40,000 to 80,000 customers, with nearly a third of the business coming from Europe. Adding to their existing UK office, the new Berlin office will enable the company to better support and grow their mid-market and enterprise business in Continental Europe.

The Berlin office will be led by Arun Mani, Managing Director in Continental Europe. Mani joined Freshdesk in early 2016 with the goal of supporting the European market and growing the company’s presence in the region. Mani’s initial focus is on hiring exceptional talent in Berlin, to service customers in Europe and scale the business in the regions.

Prior to joining Freshdesk, Mani built and scaled a global sales team for AppNexus, growing revenue of their core network business by five times in just three years. Mani previously worked at McKinsey & Company and Accenture, managing client relationships and advising C-level executives on growth strategies and sales enablement. He also holds an MBA from INSEAD.

“We understand that customer needs differ from region to region and we’re looking forward to expanding our presence in Europe. Our Berlin location presents an opportunity to provide a higher level of service, increase local awareness and be active members of the local business community,” said Mani. “Our team is already growing quickly and we are looking to make key hires in sales, marketing and project management before the year is over.”

"Berlin is a great choice for a European hub for Freshdesk with the availability of a multi-lingual talent pool and booming startup scene", says Dr. Stefan Franzke, Management Spokesperson of Berlin Partner for Business and Technology. "We are very pleased to welcome a leading global customer support software company to Berlin."

This announcement comes on the heels of several major company milestones. Freshdesk was the only company added to Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center1 this year. The company also surpassed the 80,000 customer mark, made five key acquisitions to expand product capabilities, and launched the in-app messaging solution, Hotline.io.

Snapdeal Establishes Its US Based Data Sciences Center in California

Snapdeal, Indian online marketplace, announced the establishment of its Data Sciences Center in San Carlos, California. The center is home to veteran data scientists from leading global brands like Groupon, Google, Yahoo and Amazon and is headed by Nitin Sharma, Senior Vice President, Data Sciences.This is in line with the company’s vision to onboard top global talent to help build high-value solutions and develop a high impact growth strategy.

The center will focus on big-data and advanced analytics to add granular clarity to Snapdeal’s consumer-centric initiatives. It will help shape the business strategy of the company and optimize the operational efficiencies using data driven algorithms, data analytics and predictive modeling.

Rohit Bansal, Co-Founder, said, “We have set up a Data Science engine in California, which is home to domain talent, to further augment our efforts in creating a superior customer experience and strengthen our supply chain. Snapdeal is extensively working on data mining through an existing analytics team. Under Nitin’s leadership the data science team will focus on elevating Snapdeal’s growth-focused strategy and to provide insightful guidance. The richer understanding of the customers by capturing and integrating the information on their buying behavior will drive habit commerce and is in sync with our vision of 20 million daily transacting users by the year 2020.”

“We have a highly accomplished team which can distil key patterns, consumer preferences and hidden correlations by quickly analyzing huge quantities of data. We will bring fresh insights to the existing work and will enhance customer experience through better planning and forecasting,” added Nitin Sharma, Senior Vice President, Data Sciences at Snapdeal.

Snapdeal’s vision is to create India’s most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem that creates life-changing experiences for buyers and sellers. With millions of users and more than 300,000 sellers, the company is the shopping destination for Internet users across the country, delivering to 6000+ cities and towns in India. In its journey till now, the firm has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, Foxconn, Alibaba, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mr. Ratan Tata, among others.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Lifestyle Etailer Fashionara and Food Delivery Startup ZuperMeal Shut Down Their Operations

Bangalore based fashion etailer, Fashionara has shut down its operations while home food delivery startup ZuperMeal has apparently closed down its operations eight months after it raised seed funding

Online Fashion and Lifestyle Store Fashionara.com Shuts Shop

Bangalore based online fashion and lifestyle store Fashionara.com, which is operated by Fashionara Enterprises Pvt Ltd, has shut down its operations as its website and app are no longer accessible. Founded in 2012 by former Reliance Trends CEO Arun Sirdeshmukh along with Darpan Munjal, former chief technology officer at Times Internet Ltd, the company had raised over $4 million series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners.

Co-founder Darpan Munjal had left the company in January this year and he is currently operating Squadhelp.com, a Crowdsourcing platform helping startups and businesses across the globe building memorable brands.

Fashionara’s net sales jumped five-fold to Rs 32.86 crore in the financial year 2014-15. But its net loss widened to Rs 32.13 crore from Rs 21.11 crore in 2013-14. It was competing with portals such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong and Koovs among others.

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor-backed Home Food Delivery Startup ZuperMeal Shuts Shop

Home food delivery startup ZuperMeal which was founded by three co-founders - Balasubramanian Anantha Narayanan, Pallavi Saxena and Prabhakar Banerjee, has apparently closed down its operations eight months after it raised seed funding.

The ZuperMeal app, when downloaded, is showing an error message. The website of the firm is also not working. The startup had raised $2 million in seed funding from celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, Ravi Saxena and two unnamed foreign investors in October 2015.

Its co-founder Balasubramanian Anantha Narayanan, has also joined logistics startup LogiNext as vice president – business development, as per his LinkedIn profile.

A couple of days back, TinyOwl, a food ordering app, after struggling to restructure its business for several months shut down its operations in 17 cities except some areas of Mumbai. Mobile app Zeppery which allowed users to pre-order food at restaurants and other food outlets also closed down operations in May.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Two-wheeler Servicing Platform LetsService Gets Angel Funding

Bangalore-based LetsService Automotive Technologies Pvt. Ltd. backed LetsService, an on-demand marketplace and booking platform for two-wheeler servicing, has raised angel funding from QuEST Global chief operating officer Ajay Prabhu and Julia Computing Inc. co-founder Deepak Vinchhi.

The startup said, "The funding was raised earlier this year, will be used to build technology, streamline operations and upgrade its app." The funding amount is still undisclosed by the company.

It is also in an advanced stage of talks with investors for its pre-Series A round of funding and expect to raise it by the end of next month. The startup, which offers its services in Bangalore currently, has also set up its services in Mumbai and Pune recently.

Founded in October 2015 by Sachin Shenoy, Girish Gangadhar and Sachin Radder, LetsService helps motorcyclists get their 2 wheelers serviced at authorized service centers sitting at home or office.

The customer can track his bike through the day with intuitive alerts and notifications. Recently, the startup partnered with Quikr to provide convenience to two-wheeler owners on QuikrServices in Bangalore. The firm charges a convenience fee of Rs 300-400 from customers based on location. It also gets a referral fee of Rs 100-150 per service from the authorised service centres.

LetsService, which has tied up with around 100 service centres of different two-wheeler brands in Bangalore, claims to have served 10,000 customers so far.

“We are growing at 70% month-on-month and have a run rate of 3500 transactions per month currently,” the startup added.

Other players operating in this space are DrivoJoy, MotorExpert, Bumper and Cartisan. In March 2016, Bangalore-based on-demand two-wheeler servicing startup DrivoJoy raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Indian Angel Network (IAN) and a clutch of others. In December 2015, Bangalore-based Bumper, a mobile marketplace and booking platform for car servicing, secured $500,000 in seed funding from venture capital firm SAIF Partners. And in July 2015, Bangalore-based automotive services marketplace Cartisan raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Global Founders Capital, Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan Ventures, TaxiForSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna and others.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Pianta Raises Seed Round from Freecharge Founders - Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon

Bangalore based technology startup, Pianta has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round from Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, who are the co-founders of Freecharge.

Run by SLX Logistics Pvt. Ltd, Pianta is a marketplace for Home healthcare that allows users to discover and book appointments with healthcare providers for a range of at-home services like Physiotherapy, Nursing and Lab sample collection. Currently the startup has coverage for home services across the length and breadth of Bangalore and is looking to expand to major metros in the coming year.

Pianta's USP is a sophisticated geo-spatial allocation and routing platform which will eliminate manual efforts in allocation/scheduling and minimize travel time and maximize the utilization of the field force. The firm also sells it's proprietary practice management software Pianta+ to enable efficiency and streamline operations. Pianta+ enables home service providers to effectively manage their field force, track them realtime and digitise customer artifacts.

With a vision is to build the world's best geo-spatial allocation and routing platform, Pianta aims to enable utmost efficiency in utilization of field force through cutting edge technology and machine learning. With this, the company aims to serve businesses across diverse segments including home services, logistics and sales force management in the time to come.

The startup was started by Swaminathan Seetharaman, who earlier worked as the Vice-President for Engineering at Ola along with with his former colleagues Ganesh Subramanian and Nitin Agarwal who held various leadership positions at Ola and Flipkart.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Little Black Book Raises $1.2M From IDG Ventures India and Indian Angel Network

Little Black Book, a media-tech enterprise based out of New Delhi, has raised $1.2 million from IDG Ventures India and Indian Angel Network. Reaching out to over 1 million users every month, Little Black Book is currently available in Delhi and Bangalore as a website and app, and gives a local audience the best things to do in their city across interests and locations.

Little Black Book (LBB) curates recommendations across categories, providing unique local discoveries in innovative formats. An evolution from existing listingbased models, LBB uses content as a medium to drive an engaged audience to local enterprises, places and experiences. They partner with local small to medium scale brands as well as large global brands looking to engage with a local audience including Coca Cola, Airbnb, HTC, Samsung, Nestle.

Founded by Suchita Salwan, an Economics graduate from Hindu College who has worked with Wizcraft and the BBC, and co-founded by Dhruv Mathur, a Carnegie Mellon graduate who has worked with Deloitte and on his own startup GetFBPay.in, Little Black Book has seen tremendous organic growth stemming from a strong product market fit. “We have proven that urban consumers want to move beyond traditional Yelp-esque listing and aggregator platforms; they seek more than just food and event discoveries. As a media-tech business, our north star has been driving not just monthly active users, but delivering a product that draws a highly engaged and sticky audience” says Suchita.

Karan Mohla, Executive Director and Head of Consumer Tech & Media at IDG Ventures says “LBB represents the type of new-age disruptive digital media company that we as venture investors are excited to partner with. LBB has created an immersive and engaged platform for consumers and brands across Delhi and Bangalore today and expanding that to five more cities in the near future. Suchita and Dhruv are the foundational cornerstones of this exciting company and have demonstrated great focus and passion to build out a strong technology platform.”

Little Black Book raised a seed round in May 2015, with prolific angels including Rajan Anandan (MD Google Asia), Sachin Bhatia (co-founder MakeMyTrip, TrulyMadly) and Niraj Singh (co-founder Outbox Ventures, Spinny) participating. In just about 8 months since, LBB has seen over 800% growth in monthly active users and over 600% growth in revenue.

The company’s vision is to connect urban consumers to the best things to do, for them, in their city. “We’re excited to build out a platform that intelligently recommends experiences that are suited to a unique users tastes and preferences. Personalization and user retention is our key focus with respect to product” adds Dhruv.

Rishabh Mehta, one of the lead investor in this round and IAN nominated Board Director has this to say- “What is interesting about LBB is that their unit economics is just brilliant. With a small team and minimal burn they have been able to build a pretty impressive brand image for themselves. Considering the fact that they have over 1 million users engaged across just 2 cities, now the potential is huge for scaling up not only in India but globally.”

Mobile Based Skills Training Platform SkillTrain Gets Funding From Mphasis Through CSR Money

Mobile based skills training platform SkillTrain, Incubated by social enterprise platform Villgro, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the corporate social responsibility programme of IT services company Mphasis.

The startup will use the money to set up a skill training centre in Indore. "We currently have five blended learning centres including three centres with NGO partners. We are planning to scale in additional five cities over the next quarter before we look for equity investment," said B Ganesh, founder of SkillTrain.

The vocational training platform provides two-month long video-based and practical training programmes through its blended learning centres and has 21,000 subscribers for its learning channel online across the world.

The company offer training programmes for several vocational skills. All its courses are offered on a blended learning format with an equal amount of audio, video & simulation learning combined with practical training at SkillTrain certified practical training centers. These courses are aimed at training the learner to be at par with the best vocational skill practitioners. The use of audio, video and simulation tools, can help the learner not only understand the content but also help the learner in gaining mastery over the skill.

One of the often lamented issues from an industry perspective is the huge skill gap that exists among fresh talent. Its courses aim to address this gap through an effective and efficient blended learning methodology while also enabling the reach of vocational training to a larger geography.

SkillTrain offer courses in a wide range of trades including Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, Computer Science & IT, Automobile, Fashion Designing, Plumbing& Carpentry. The startup aims to eventually offer training content for all the courses listed in the Government of India’s Modular Employability Skills Scheme.

Travel Startups Incubator Invests in Mobile Travel Chat App GoHero.ai

USA based Travel Startups Incubator has announced its first investment in India with GoHero.ai. GoHero uses a combination of artificial and human intelligence to help travelers easily access a wide range of travel info and manage their bookings via text chat. The app is designed to make planning, booking, and managing travel easier than ever.

GoHero provides a free, fun, user-friendly interface that saves travelers time and money. It also creates a traveler profile that allows it to provide recommendations and even price alerts for future trips.

The GoHero team includes Co-founder and CEO Snehal Dhruve and Co-founder and CFO Bineet Desai in Mumbai. The startup was revamped to focus solely on the travel industry within weeks of its launch.

“After evaluating the business and considering various data points related to data availability, API access, profitability, turnover, and market size,” Desai says, “we came to the conclusion that it was best to focus on a mature segment like travel, given the pain points an ordinary traveler faces.”

According to Dhruve, GoHero can help an Indian traveler “plan a holiday; buy trip essentials; order food; book a flight, cab, rail, or bus ticket…all through chat on an app.”

Through its free, chat-based app, GoHero quickly and easily finds the best deals and books a selected itinerary for the user. In addition to comparing quotes from more than 1,000 travel websites for airfare, accommodations, and activities, the app also provides value-added services while a traveler is on the road that might include anything from booking a cab to providing information on regional cuisine or local restaurants. In short, GoHero.ai is an end-to-end personal travel manager designed to meet all of a traveler’s needs in a manner that is as efficient and personalized as possible.

Mobile Travel Chat providers can provide more personalization and customization to travelers in real-time and can be “always on,” so there is an opportunity if executed properly to sell into the traveler’s entire trip cycle. This opportunity is the holly grail of the travel industry.

About Co-founders:

(i) Snehal Dhruve (Co-founder & CTO) - Snehal has worked on A.I. based technologies for the last 10 years in US with Fortune 500 companies like Credit Suisse, RBS, KPMG, Mercedes Benz, Goldman Sachs & has tech expertise in Big Data, AI, API, iOS and Android.

- MS in Engineering Management from Syracuse University, NY

(ii) Bineet Desai (CFO & Head - Business Development) - Bineet has 15 years of experience in Business Development & Relationship Management in India / Dubai with ICICI, Standard Chartered, ABN Amro, Mashreqbank and other Corporates.

- MBA in finance from NMIMS and ICFAI & AMFI Certified

VISIT Gets Seed Funding from Technology Company MapmyIndia

[caption id="attachment_106292" align="aligncenter" width="701"] VISIT's Team[/caption]

Delhi based VISIT, an on-demand healthcare service provider, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed round funding from MapmyIndia, a marquee Technology Company based out of New Delhi.

VISIT allows users to get their health queries answered in few minutes with their free text-a-doctor service - ‘Q’. This allows the users to ask all health related questions to doctors with just a real time text message. ‘Q’ is designed to be a health-based Q&A platform that works with a personal conversation between you and your physician. It’s an easy way to get a first opinion from a doctor. If the user requires a treatment or counselling, ‘Q’ helps connect the user with a specialist over Video or Phone call within 30 minutes.  

“With the new funding, we plan on investing heavily in improving our technology. We are also aiming at increasing the number of doctors and counsellors on the app to 500 over the next 3 months. The vision is to bring m-Health to a billion Indians over the next 5 years. No matter where you are, you should have access to quality healthcare at just a tap.” said Vaibhav Singh, Co-founder, VISIT.

“We have been in search of supporting a team whose mission was to make quality healthcare easily available to everyone and who had the capability to execute on this mission. In VISIT we found both and are extremely excited to support them achieve their mission. ” said Rohan Verma, Director of MapmyIndia.

VISIT was co-founded by four graduates from BITS Pilani — Anurag Prasad, Vaibhav Singh, Chetan Anand and Shashvat Tripathi to solve the various problems in the delivery of healthcare today – booking an OPD appointment, travel time, in-clinic waiting, inability to get in-house doctor visits and privacy concerns/stigmas associated with visiting particular types of specialists like psychologists and dermatologists etc.

“We realised that for most of the 30Million+ working Indians visiting a doctor during weekdays was a big pain point. Unsurprisingly, most of us consult a doctor only when the condition is serious which diminishes the whole concept of preventive healthcare and timely follow ups. There is no single fix for Indian healthcare, but its hard to imagine a world where technology that connects patients to high-quality care (anytime, anywhere) isn’t a crucial part of the solution.” said Anurag Prasad, Co-founder, VISIT.

Currently the platform empanels therapists, general physicians, dermatologists and nutritionists for paid specialist consultations over Video/Phone call.

Talking about the specialists associated with VISIT, Chetan Anand, Co-founder, VISIT, said, “We make sure that the empanelment of doctors is carried out through a strict verification process thereby providing a reliable service to our customers. On an average only 1 out of 5 doctors make it through our stringent quality checks.”

Currently VISIT app is available for Android users as “getvisitapp” on Playstore and on Web.

Acquisitions: Online Learning Firm EdCast Buys Sales-University And Jiyo Natural Acquires Sangeetha Aahar

Online learning firm EdCast has acquired Seattle-based sales training app maker Sales-University, while health food firm Jiyo Natural has bought food delivery company Sangeetha Aahar for an undisclosed sum.

Online Learning Firm EdCast Buys Seattle Based Sales Training App Maker Sales-University

Online learning platform EdCast Inc has acquired Seattle-based sales training app maker Sales-University (formerly WAGmob), for an undisclosed amount, to expand its enterprise learning to Sales organisations.

Founded in January 2011 by Microsoft Engineers - Kalpit Jain and Kavita Jain, Sales-University creates apps for learning and training for iOS, Android and Windows mobile. Its clients include Google, Samsung, Snapdeal and a few Fortune 500 companies. Sales University has over 300 mobile apps for learning and training for iOS, Android and Windows and has over 4 million consumers.

Recently EdCast raised $16 million in its second round of funding led by GE Asset Management, with participation from SoftBank Capital, Cervin Ventures, Standford StartX Fund and Peneta Global.

Going forward, Edcast would continue to scout for acquisitions that provide specialised services in specific sectors, and singled out healthcare as a top priority. “Besides healthcare, we will look at the hospitality sector as well as online retail for acquisitions,” said Edcast founder Karl Mehta.

Health Food Company Jiyo Natural Acquires Food Delivery Firm Sangeetha Aahar

Health food company Jiyo Natural has acquired Bangalore-based food delivery company Sangeetha Aahar for an undisclosed amount.

With this acquisition, the four-year-old company, Jiyo Natural now aims at growing its revenue by 30%. Besides the growth in revenue, Jiyo Natural will increase its capacity by 140%.

After the acquisition, Jiyo will be delivering around 2,700 meals a day and aim to reach close to 4000 in three months.

Going forward. Indian Angel Network-backed Jiyo Natural, which competes with Freshmenu and Cookaroo, also have plans to introduce ready-to-cook meals from the next quarter.

Image Source: ShutterStock

mChamp Bags Rs 5 Cr Seed Fund from MoMagic Technologies

Delhi based, mChamp Entertainments, a celebrity and entertainment driven contest app, bags Rs 5 crore seed funding from MoMagic Technologies, a leading Mobile Internet market and App ecosystem player.

mChamp, a fund driven contest app, in the past 9 months of its launch has already conducted 50 “Celebrity Meet and Greets” for mChamp contest(s) players. Gift vouchers, cash prizes, free recharges worth Rs 25 Lakhs, already given, till date. And the App is witnessing a 15% growth month on month, in terms of tie-ups and partnerships with leading FMCG brands, Celebrity shows (TV /Concerts) and Productions houses.

Founder, Paresh Shah, mChamp Entertainments, said, “We are indeed very honored and happy to bag the very first round of seed funding from MoMagic, a Foxconn and MediaTek invested company. Along with being seed funded, we believe our mission of: mChamp being the No 1 Celebrity Contest App, will get the necessary business mentorship by MoMagic in achieving the same.”

Founder & CEO, MoMagic, Arun Gupta, said, “We believe mChamp has all the ingredients to emerge as No 1 App in terms of a connect with the masses wide across. And fits well with MoMagic business plans; hence, the decision to seed fund mChamp.”

“Entertainment and Celebrity are amongst the key sectors, in which MoMagic is looking at innovative ways of organic –inorganic expansion,” further added Arun Gupta.

MoMagic is headquartered in Delhi (NCR) India, and presently operates across 5 major markets in South East Asia.

The company is a leading mobile Internet market and app ecosystem major and holds a significant share of the mobile Internet market. MoMagic believes in business with integrity and passion with emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Image Source: ShutterStock

OnePlus 3 to launch in VR in June this year

In no time OnePlus has been able to charm its ways into the hearts of smartphones users with their unique offerings. It was only last year that the company had come up with the virtual reality offering in its OnePlus 2, which ended up making it the talk of the town.

In order to repeat its last year magic, OnePlus has once again taken to the VR technology. The company is expected to launch virtual reality with its next-generation OnePlus 3, sometime in June this year. This week's starting saw an interesting announcement being made by OnePlus about its Loop VR Headset, which will be a commendable upgrade of its Google Cardboard-inspired VR that it had brought out in the market last year.

Built by AntVR, the visor-style Loop Virtual reality Headset does look like a massive improvement from OnePlus' 2015's Cardboard. Apparently, the company is contemplating extending its usage beyond the launch event.

People wanting to get their hands on the Loop VR Headset will have to register themselves for it on the official Amazon Loop VR page. According to information made available by the company, the Loop VR Headset will be available for sale in India on the e-commerce website, Amazon India on June 3, 2016 and June 7, 2016 from 12 PM onwards. The headset would be available for buying exclusively through the Amazon app, at a mind boggling price of Re 1, including shipping. Yes, you read it right. Divulging further details about the sale, the company revealed that it just had 30,000 units of the headset up for sale.

According to various rumours doing round the tech rumour mill, the OnePlus 3 headset could be considerably similar to the HTC One devices in the looks department and run on OxygenOS, which is apparently based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Having an attractive full-metal unibody, the phone is expected to have an alert slider, USB Type-C port and a fingerprint scanner. In addition to this, the 5.5-inch FullHD display will also reportedly come power packed with a 3,000mAh battery, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and 32GB/64GB memory variants and 4GB/6GB RAM.

Doordarshan Now Offers Free TV Services For Mobile Phones In India

Decades ago the state-owned Doordarshan was a household name in India. But, with the coming of private channels, the ages-old popular channel slowly starting losing its sheen. The coming of Internet and smartphones only made the situation worse for the channel and people slowly phased it out of their life and gave it a honourable place in the history books. Well, now Doordarshan is back with a bang, as they say it.

Seeing the popularity of smartphones among the masses and losing its audience to it, Doordarshan decided to gear up to use this trend to its advantage and offer free TV service for smartphone users in 16 selected cities in the country.

The service which has already begun from February 25, 2016 is available in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Jalandhar, Guwahati, Chennai, Lucknow, Ranchi, Patna, Cuttack, Indore, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Raipur, Bangalore, and Aurangabad.

Doordarshan is making sure that the best of quality is being provided to the viewers without any problems like snowing or ghosting etc. Further, to make the deal all the more attractive to customers, Doordarshan's Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) division is working their best to make the smartphone users receive the free media content without any internet connection. Unfortunately, there's one tiny glitch in the arrangement. In order to directly watch the programs, the viewer requires an integrated Digital Television setup, which only works in a few LG, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung smartphones.

In order to make the free TV service functional in tablets and other OTG-enabled smartphones, DVB-T2 dongles can be used. Further, Wi-Fi enabled dongles come to the rescue when one want to avail the service in moving vehicles.

According to a statement released by DD statement, there will be "no charges for watching the DD channels. Also, no Internet is required after installation of the software." This means, in order to receive the free DD signal, the users are just required to download the software and connect their smartphones to the dongles. Thus, to avail the service, they make only a one-time investment for the purchase of dongle, as after that no money is charged for content streaming. The dongles can be bought from online shopping sites Snapdeal, Flipkart and Ebay.

So, do you think with this move Doordarshan will be able to revive the same place in the hearts of the viewers that it had decades ago? Tell us your views in the comment box below.

India Gets Its First Managed Residences Plan

Snapdeal, Indian online marketplace and Puravankara, one of the country’s top 5 listed real estate developers in association with leading international property consultancy JLL India have announced the launch of a Managed Residences Plan for their customers. The Managed Residences Plan functions as a dedicated long term asset management programme for leased Residential Real Estate, supporting customers with different risk capacities to drive better value from their investment.

The three-way partnership between Snapdeal, Puravankara Projects Ltd and JLL India, will enable customers to purchase a ready-to-occupy apartment from Puravankara across Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore & Kochi and lease it back to  Puravankara for a contracted term of 7 years. As a part of the contract, Puravankara will secure pre-agreed monthly rentals to the customer and pay the common area maintenance amount to the Building Association. This ensures that the purchaser enjoys a hassle free, uninterrupted rental returns for 7 years, along with an additional rental appreciation benefit of 8.0% every year. Purchasers however have an exclusive option for premature withdrawal from the lease agreement, in case they choose to occupy the apartment or manage the rental process themselves. Puravankara has appointed JLL as the Lease Manager, to assist it in further sub-leasing the residential apartments to tenants and provide leasing related services.  JLL also offers to provide lease management services to the purchasers beyond the 7 year period, in return for a service fee.

Speaking about the launch, a Snapdeal spokesperson said, “Snapdeal’s Real estate category has received a phenomenal response from customers since its launch witnessing 300% year on year growth. We have forged alliances with some of the most trusted names in the real estate industry to offer a range of housing options for our ever-expanding customer base in a hassle-free and transparent manner. We are confident that the unique Managed Residences Plan will be an exciting proposition for our customers and help them maximise benefits from their home investment.”

Offering 200 ready-to-occupy residential assets in the inaugural phase of its launch across Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore and Kochi with investment sizes ranging from Rs 35 lakhs to Rs 3.5 Crores, the bookings for Managed Residences Plan will be open exclusively on Snapdeal for 10 days, starting May 27^th and allotment of units will be on a first come first serve basis. The exclusive launch of the Managed Residences Plan on Snapdeal allows prospective purchasers to place an Expression of Interest online, along with a nominal reservation amount, post which the developer’s representative shall assist them in choosing a unit. Those who book online during this inaugural period shall also be eligible to receive an INR 25,000 Snapdeal Purchase Voucher.

Mr. Ashish Puravankara, Managing Director, Puravankara Projects Ltd said “At Puravankara, we are always striving to meet the evolving needs of home buyers, and the benefits offered under the Managed Residences Plan are in tandem with our Group’s vision. While developers in the past have offered rent assurances for one or two years, it is for the first time a developer has taken a 7 year long term view on rentals. This indicates our bullish view on the long term real estate story in the country”.

Ashwinder Raj Singh, CEO - Residential Services, JLL India said “We at JLL India believe that the Managed Residences Plan is a convincing answer to the challenges investors face with regards to managing their real estate investments efficiently. Buying ready-to-move-in homes rules out uncertainties around quality and possession timelines, as purchasers buy what they see. Simultaneously under this Plan, rental income is guaranteed. We are excited to associate with Puravankara on this one-of-a-kind initiative, and are sure that this offering will appeal to both local and NRI investors.”

Image Source: ShutterStock

Consure Medical Raises Series B Funding, Also Launches Its Product Platform QORA SMK

Consure Medical, a company aiming to enhance patient care with the development of safer, intuitive, and human-centric medical technologies, launched its product platform - the Qora Stool Management Kit (SMK) on Thursday and also announced an undisclosed amount on series B funding and 510(k) US FDA clearance received for the Qora suite of devices.

Qora, the novel faecal incontinence management technology launched by Consure, was initially developed as part of the Stanford India Biodesign programme and was designed to improve upon outcomes of currently available faecal management products.

The new funding round was led by venture capital firm Accel Partners. Consure had earlier received an undisclosed amount in an initial round of funding from Indian Angel Network, India Innovation Fund as well as India Venture Partners. The company will use the newly raised funds for penetrating new markets, investing in further product development for critical care setting and growing customer reach with robust channel partnership to driving up sales.

This financing announcement comes as Qora SMK is now available in key locations in India and USA. Qora has successfully been piloted at important partner centres in both countries; adoption is driven by the changing hospital reimbursement scenario in the US, as well as increasing awareness about infection control and outcomes in Indian hospitals.

Consure’s flagship product, Consure 120 SMS, had previously received clearance in 2014. Consure adds to this product line by introducing a short-term product, Qora Arida^TM, and two long-term products, Qora Aeon^TMand Qora AIM^TM, which is MRI-compatible. These three line extensions offer an expanded faecal management portfolio for complex critical care patients and long-term acute or nursing care patients. Additionally, the new clearance allows for expanded use period for these devices, for up to 29 days. Moreover, the device is designed for efficacious functioning in more patients than are currently served by other products – with a projected threefold expansion of patient eligibility.

The product launch for ‘Qora' SMK was graced by Hon’ble Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Shri Y. S. Chowdary in New Delhi on Thursday, 19th May, 2016. The minister hailed Consure for being a trailblazing medical device company and a role model for other Indian healthcare entrepreneurs, with its roots in underserved demographics like India, yet with global standards and scope.

Nishith Chasmawala, CEO, Consure Medical, stated at the event, “Consure competes in the $7 Billion faecal incontinence market with a differentiated product. We have the unique distinction of being one of the few emerging market medical device companies to have both US FDA clearance and granted patents in all important markets including USPTO. We will use the investment to commercialize our proprietary technology and grow sales revenue with channel distribution and partnerships to meet the growing demand for our products”. He added, "Consure Medical is a perfect example of an ambitious start-up that's taking a remarkable technology developed by a globally diverse and experienced team of engineers, clinicians, designers into a commercially viable enterprise determined to change the healthcare landscape."

With a growing body of compelling clinical experience through pilot launches, Consure is now looking forward to scaling up commercialization efforts in key geographies like US, India and Japan. Qora paves the way for an entirely new approach in the management of faecal incontinence, representing a 7 billion dollar market opportunity and the chance of improving outcomes in 100 million patients worldwide.

ClearTax Gets $2M in Series A Funding from Sequoia Capital India and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel

ClearTax, India’s leading Income Tax Returns e-filing website, has raised $2 million in a series A round of funding from venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India, and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel, a seed stage venture firm. This is Founders Fund Angel’s first investment in an Indian startup. It’s parent arm, Founders Fund, has invested in firms like data analytics startup Palantir, payments company Stripe and fitness wearable maker Misfit.


Defmacro Software Pvt. Ltd. backed ClearTax has recently raised $1.3 million in angel funding from Silicon Valley-based angel investors, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Whatsapp’s business head Neeraj Arora, and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, among others.

ClearTax helps Individuals file their Tax returns online via their website – all a user has to do is upload their Form-16 PDF and the ClearTax software prepares the tax return instantly and automatically. The startup processed tax return e-filings for 300,000 individuals in assessment year 2014-15. An estimated 1 million users filed their returns using the site for the assessment year 2015-16. The company was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, a Chartered Accountant; Srivatsan Chari; and Ankit Solanki. Archit is an IIT Guwahati alumnus who went on to pursue a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

The firm, which currently employs 95 people, plans to add about 200 more in the next six months. It claims 1 million users for its product for individuals, and about 10,000 chartered accountant firms. “We hope to grow the user base to about 50 lakh people by 2017. We want to fix people’s poor relationship with their money because of the complexity involved in handling in it, by making the whole process simple,” said Archit Gupta, chief executive officer, ClearTax.

Recently, the company has also launched its 2G optimized mobile app to file taxes even in offline mode.

Image Source: ShutterStock

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

Pitney Bowes Accelerator Program in India Seeks Innovative Startups For Its Third Round

After completing two successful rounds, Pitney Bowes Inc. (PBI), a global technology company providing innovative products and solutions to power commerce, is inviting applications for the third round of its startup accelerator program. The program focuses on startups that leverage software for location-based services and global eCommerce.

Manish Choudhary, Pitney Bowes Senior Vice President, Global Innovation and Managing Director, said, “In an increasingly complex world of commerce, Pitney Bowes is focused on developing product solutions in innovative ways and delivering them to the global marketplace. Startups in India are vital to technology innovation and we look forward to teaming with startups that align well with the Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud.”

In the last two years, Pitney Bowes has incubated ten startups in India. Participants of last year included Ipsator Analytics (Consumer Perception Management Platform), Fetchon (Audience Profiling Engine), Kayeura (Indoor Analytics to drive Traffic to Web) and Shipdesk technologies (Multicarrier Rate Shopping Platform).

For its third round, Pitney Bowes is looking for dynamic innovative entrepreneurs who are building businesses for India and global markets, primarily in the following areas –

• Global Ecommerce (logistics, shipping management, data analytics)


• Location-based ad-tech


• Location-based platform (services, advertising, analytics, analytics, enterprise apps, GIS enabled systems, Indoor navigation and other spatial analysis use cases)


• Big data, mobile analytics and machine learning


• Data integration, data quality and master data management


• Industry-specific solutions or applications related to all of the above

The program will be accepting applications until 20^th June, 2016. Selected startups will be informed by the first week of July and invited to present before a jury. After the selection process, the startups for the program will be announced in August 2016.

As part of the program, the shortlisted entrepreneurs/startups will have a choice to be located in the PB offices either in Pune or in Noida for incubation and mentorship. Startups in the program will have access to Pitney Bowes’ software, application programming interfaces (APIs) and data for the duration of the program. Training, technical and business guidance and mentoring will be provided to the start-ups from Pitney Bowes engineering and innovation leaders, and from software industry experts.

Pitney Bowes (PBI) is a global technology company offering innovative products and solutions that enable commerce in the areas of customer information management, location intelligence, customer engagement, shipping and mailing, and global eCommerce. More than 1.5 million clients in approximately 100 countries around the world rely on products, solutions and services from Pitney Bowes.

Cloud Telephony Expert Exotel Strengthens Leadership Team

Exotel, Indian cloud telephony company, today announced the appointment of Anandakumar as the Chief Finance & Strategy Officer, and Rashmme Eshwar as Head, People Operation, further strengthening its leadership team.

Commenting on these appointments Shivakumar Ganesan, CEO & Co-founder, Exotel said, “We’re very excited to have Rashmme and Anand on board. They bring together close to 25 years of experience to the company and that would help us in achieving two of our biggest goals for the year - growth and expansion.

Anandakumar is a computer science engineer from (BITS) Pilani and MBA from IIMB with close to 10 years of experience in consulting and technology. He has been associated with Yahoo! and Alvarez & Marsal among others. He is a whiz at performance improvement techniques and restructuring projects. At Exotel, Anand will be the brain behind the expansion and growth strategies. This, of course, is in addition to heading the Finance team of Exotel. He is a finance buff and literally nothing escapes his keen eye.

“I am excited to be part of the team that is building an innovative communications platform. We want to be known as one of the best home-grown engineering startup success stories in India. Businesses are successful only when value is created for all stakeholders.  I hope to contribute to our journey by laying a solid foundation in terms of strategy, planning and execution that will ensure we reach our goals,” said Anandakumar.

Rashmme Eshwar is an HR professional with 14 years of experience across multinational organizations including Citrix, Yahoo!, SAP and Convergys. She has held diverse leadership responsibilities in her long career, notably a six-year long stint as the International HR Manager at CITRIX. She holds an MBA from Birla Institute of Management. At Exotel, she will be looking after talent acquisition and employee management.

"I am lucky to be working with some of the best engineering talent in the industry. We have a very young, energetic and vibrant workforce at Exotel. Building a positive work environment where ideas are freely exchanged is a priority, we value diversity and believe that ability is more important than experience. My goal is to ensure Exotel is an employer of choice," said Rashmme Eshwar.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Soon A New Version of Youtube Just For Virtual Reality

YouTube, the video sharing website that came into our lives in the year 2005, seems to be always on its toes for providing its users with the best of the best experiences possible. This time, the company is working towards taking treating its users to a much better quality of virtual reality experience.

In order to achieve this, Google, the parent company behind YouTube, is in the midst of developing a standalone YouTube mobile application for the company's recently announced Android-based virtual reality platform, Daydream. Clay Bavor, Head of VR, Google was responsible for making this news reach thousands and thousands of virtual reality enthusiasts during Google's recently concluded and much talked about I/O Developer conference.According to Google, the yet-to-be launched application has been developed with the sole aim of providing YouTube users with a much more easier and immersive way of finding and experiencing the virtual reality content on the website.

The much anticipated app is expected to hit the markets only after Google is done with the launch of Daydream, its virtual reality platform. Some experts believe that they both can also be launched together in fall this year. Though the date hasn't been set yet, YouTube did provide its users a first look of the app, which by looks does seems promising and much, much more immersive than the website's currently existing virtual reality features.

Avid YouTube users and virtual reality fans might already be aware about the website's limited virtual reality support videos, but the new YouTube virtual reality app is going to take the limited features factor to unlimited as the app will also offer its users with an immersive browsing and searching interface. Along with this, it will also include the already famous and in use features such as playlists and voice search etc.

The tech giant, Google, has been slowly working on its mission to incorporate virtual reality-focused functionality into the YouTube application for over an year now with support for 3D audio, 360-degree video flats, general Google Cardboard support and stereoscopic video.

In a recently published blogpost, the company has also divulged the fact that it has been working with content partners such as Tastemade, NBA and BuzzFeed etc. in order to explore new and innovative ways of telling a story in virtual environments that will help in providing valuable lessons about the whole way in which viewers and creators interact with a virtual reality video.

In addition to this, the video-sharing website also shared its plans of bringing its Jump Virtual Reality camera program to its YouTube Spaces in Los Angeles and New York City. According to the company, it also working hard towards bringing it soon to all of its functional global locations.

Entertainment App Roast Bags Funding From Indian Angel Network

Delhi-based start-up Roast, first of its kind entertainment mobile app, has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN). The investment has been made under the ‘Small Ticket Funding programme which was announced by IAN last year. Sanjay Mehta has led this round of investment on behalf of IAN and will join the company board for further mentoring the team.

The biggest challenge faced by early-stage startups is to raise seed capital which is instrumental in scaling up their businesses by developing their technology and marketing it. With its primary focus on promoting, mentoring and financially assisting early-stage start-ups, IAN launched the small ticket funding programme last year that offers a fixed investment amount of Rs 25 lakh ($39,888) at a fixed valuation of Rs 2.5 crore ($398,883) post investment. The programme aims to provide funds to the aspiring entrepreneurs and support unique, innovative and scalable ideas which have the potential to become globally relevant and successful businesses.

Roast is an entertainment mobile application that caters to a specific need of people who love to talk, converse and take stand on anything and everything. The application is Internet’s all-in-one grilling depot: ROFL station, comedy corner, lol terminal and one-stop ‘entertainment in short’ destination. In search for interesting stuff online, users have to visit multiple websites, blogs and social networks. The content on these platforms is lengthy. Long form of content is dying in this mobile-phone era, where users have a very short attention span. Every time a user lands on Roast, he/she will be filled with emotions of joy, humor and laughter.

Anchal Singh & Aamer Rushnaiwala started the company in September last year only to offer an entertainment platform to the audience. “We wanted to create an ecosystem where users can fly in, write, coupled with a sheer reading experience. Our aim is to be a premiere micro-sharing entertainment platform on mobile, catering to the ‘entertainment in short’ need of witty Indians. IAN investors have not only mentored us, but have also been a great support in guiding us  and helping us make the right decisions for our business,” said Anchal Singh, Co-Founder, Roast.

The company plans to utilize the investment for acquiring customers and to invest in its technology platform.

Commenting on the investment, Sanjay Mehta, lead IAN investor said, “The concept of Roast is new and one of its kind. We have always believed in supporting unique ideas that have the potential to disrupt. Roast is targeted at users that spend most of their time online for consuming information across subjects. With video-on-demand service providers also exploring India as a mature market clearly defines the market potential for Roast. IAN’s investment in Roast is testimony of the trust we lay in the entrepreneurs and their relevance in the current market scenario.”

Mobile phones are helping internet content to ‘go viral’. The current internet user base in India is traced at over 400 million to reach 500 million by end of 2016. Over 300 million access internet from mobile phones. Indians, on an average, spend 3 hours 18 minutes a day on their smartphones. 1/3rd of this time is on mobile apps. Of various app categories, social and messaging apps have seen a growth of 203% in downloads in the last one year. Roast intends to add to the statistics.

Jugnoo Partners With Helpchat: Now Book An Auto Via Your Favorite Personal Assistant App

Leading auto-rickshaw aggregator, Jugnoo associates with India’s biggest AI powered personalised transactions platform, Helpchat to further expand its market outreach. It is a twofold partnership that enables users to seamlessly plan journeys using a combination of options such as cab services, bike-taxis, auto-rickshaws, local buses and trains, all from within the app.

Elaborating further on the association, Samar Singla, Founder and CEO, Jugnoo, commented, “We are constantly expanding our customer outreach by not only spreading out geographically, but also through various digital strategies. This association is in absolute alignment to our expansion strategy as it allows us to tap existing users of Helpchat, i.e. readily available in the virtual world. We are certain that this association will enable Helpchat to continue offering all-inclusive services to its users”.

Speaking on the partnership, Ankur Singla, Founder and CEO of Helpchat said, “At Helpchat, our constant endeavour is to widen our bouquet of offerings such that there is something relevant for everyone. Our goal as a personal assistant is to provide users more freedom in deciding how they want to get from point A to point B. There is a large section of our consumer base such as college-goers and young professionals who prefer travelling by autos as this is often a more cost-effective alternative to other modes of transport. To cater to this need, we have partnered with category leaders in the auto-on-demand space and have aimed to further cement our market standing as the only app that users need to fulfil an entire spectrum of daily needs.”

Through this association, the consumers on Helpchat will be able to conveniently book Jugnoo auto-rickshaws from the platform. They can plan their travel choosing from a myriad of options, depending upon their preferences and necessities.

Helpchat is an AI-powered personalised transactions platform based out of Bangalore. It is Indian personal assistant platform (approx 2M+ app installs) and have rapidly scaled transactions in the last 3 months across cabs, food, deals recharge, bill payments etc. The firm has partnered with Ola, Uber, Zomato, Bookmyshow, Billdesk and others to power its platform, while it focus on building the intelligent AI layer on top of it.

Be it anything, from recharging your phone to booking a cab, from booking movie tickets to food ordering, from shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from personalised news, to intelligent reminders - Helpchat can get all of them done for you. It’s like one app for all apps.

Aavishkaar Announces Its First Investment in Bangladesh With CloudWell, a Payment Systems Company

Aavishkaar, one of the world’s leading impact investors, makes its inroads in Bangladesh with an investment in CloudWell Limited. Aavishkaar Frontier Fund, which focuses on South & Southeast Asia is investing $2 million in CloudWell, a payment systems company that provides agent-based last mile payment solutions to a host of service providers such as telecom operators, mobile financial services players and other billers under the brand name ‘PayWell’. This investment will enable acceleration of CloudWell’s growth and scale up of its nationwide network.

Founded in November 2012, PayWell is an organized retail approach by CloudWell, which leverages technology and aims to provide convenient payment solutions to major business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations in the utility, telecom, financial services, transport, retail and e-commerce sectors in Bangladesh. By using point-of-sale (POS) / mobile apps / web apps available in retail outlets of PayWell, customers can avail various payment and transaction services such as airtime top up, utility bill payments, bus/train ticket purchases, transacting using mobile financial services (MFS) accounts etc.

This retail approach acts as a one-stop shop for organizations with a large numbers of customers who want to pay via cash or card in friendly, conveniently located local shops, which are open for long hours. CloudWell already has a network of over 5,000 retailers across 34 out of 64 districts in the country with a majority from districts outside Dhaka. With a growing retailer network, the company intends to catalyse entrepreneurship and increase economic benefit to PayWell retailers in urban and rural Bangladesh.

On Aavishkaar’s entry into Bangladesh with this investment, Sanchayan Chakraborty, Partner at Aavishkaar elaborates, “CloudWell provided a compelling investment case for Aavishkaar, with a skilled entrepreneur team creating a highly scalable business, ramping up on the back of large and growing mobile financial services and digital economy. We are pleased to have made the first investment in Bangladesh and look forward to playing a role in supporting the startup and SME ecosystem in the country.”

This is the third investment from its Aavishkaar Frontier Fund (AFF), a regional fund which invests in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan. Aavishkaar is recognized as a global pioneer in entrepreneurship based approach to development through its early stage venture capital investments in enterprises working with the low income population in rural and underserved markets.

Saama Capital Raises $31M For Its Third Fund

Saama Capital, a venture capital firm, has raised around $31 million for its third venture capital fund. With the new fund. the VC firm will be investing between $2 million to $5 million in each company. It is looking at a company which raises close to $2.5 million in Series A with 100-150% reserved for the follow-on rounds.

The firm expects to make a final close by third quarter of 2016. It expects to raise $60-80 million in the ongoing round. Saama has already invested in six companies as part of its third fund including LendingKart, Eazydiner, Veeba Foods, Jifflenow, Raw Pressery and an undisclosed company.

With this fund, Saama's focus so far has been on software as a service (SaaS) companies and food companies focused on supply chain. It is also watching the financial technology space in the business-to-consumer segment.

Saama has made largest investments in two lending companies - Vistaar Finance and LendingKart, respectively. It had previously raised $54 million for its first fund and then $26 million for the second fund. It exited Snapdeal last year apart from selling stakes in TutorVista, Sula Vineyards, App Labs and Prizm Payment Services.

Apart from Saama, other VC firms are also raising funds to make investments in Indian startups. Sequoia Capital recently closed its $920-million fund and Accel India is also planning to raise a new fund that will be larger than its previous $305-million corpus. IDG Ventures India has received commitments of $150 million from investors for its third fund, and is targeting $200 million.

Just yesterday, Singapore-based PE-style investment firm, Nalanda Capital also announced that it is about to raise $620 million for its new fund. This will take the total corpus raised by the firm to $1.5 billion.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Meet the 8 Startups Graduating from French Accelerator Numa’s First Batch in Bangalore

French accelerator Numa has announced the graduation of its first batch of eight startups from its Bangalore branch. NUMA Bengaluru was launched in November 2015 as a joint venture between NUMA Paris and Metaform Design. It has a 6-month acceleration program for early stage startups. Also, It has partnered with corporates (such as Airbus) to support their innovation programmes.

NUMA Bengaluru provides co-working spaces for entrepreneurs and hosts curated events relevant to the startup community.

NUMA's worldwide network operates out of 6 locations currently (Paris, Moscow, Casablanca, Bengaluru, Barcelona, and Mexico City). Check out the below image to know about the graduated startups:

Aha Taxis Appoints Senior Resources, Reiterates Its Commitment to Being the Front-runner in the Outstation Taxi Industry

AHA Taxis (a division of WAAH Taxis Private Limited) and a leading online aggregator for outstation travel has added two senior professionals, Shailly Tyagi, earlier co-founder at markNmove and Ghanendra Singh, earlier co-founder at LogiXir to its team. Both professionals come from the start-up world, having previously run their own ventures and will be in senior strategic roles at AHA Taxis.

Shailly Tyagi joins AHA Taxis as Head of Customer Experience where she will be overseeing the operations of this function. She was earlier co-founder at markNmove, an inter-city logistics marketplace. Shailly has also worked with InnovationM, a specialised consultancy in the mobility space and at HCL Infosystems Ltd where she started her career. markNmove, the company she co-founded was started with an intent to aggregate the unorganised market of Indian logistics. The company focused on optimising return trips through its proprietary technology platform, thus offering a competitive price point for shipments.

Ghanendra Singh has joined AHA Taxis as Head of Driver-Partner Engagement. Previously he co-founded Bangalore based LogiXir, an intra-city logistics company. Ghanendra has also worked with Force Motors and VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd. LogiXir, the company he co-founded was started with a vision to make intra-city logistics more efficient, more affordable and available on-demand. Ghanendra is an MBA from IIM Indore.

Amit Grover, co-founder and CEO at AHA Taxis, said, “We are delighted to welcome two seasoned start-up professionals to our team. Both Shailly Tyagi and Ghanendra Singh have had an intense first innings with start-ups and I am confident that they will add immense value at AHA Taxis in managing customers and partner relationships respectively and helping AHA Taxis to the next level.”

Noida based AHA Taxis was founded in January 2015 and today has a presence in 300+ cities. AHA Taxis’ model results in a win-win scenario where customers only pay one-way charges, saving up to 40% and taxi drivers get increased business.