Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. Then, I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise.
I am back with the weekly picks!
This post I shall over the last two weeks worth of funding.
Last two weeks 68 startups raised $2.3 billion; our ecosystem is on a sustained bull run now. Just when it seems like there could be a dip, a slew of startups raise mega rounds and showcase the strong undercurrent that is powering the market.
After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked 4 as my favorite funding news from the last two weeks.
Name: Phool.co
Amount Raised: Undisclosed amount from Alia Bhatt
What does Phool.co do?
Edited from Yourstory: Phool.co is a sustainable solution to the monumental temple-waste problem in India. They aim to build natural alternatives to synthetic chemical-based products by using deep-tech and research. They are perhaps India’s first natural incense brand taking a digital-first approach and have a first-mover advantage as bio-leathers are barely available in India.
Why do I like Phool.co?
This concept is a personal favorite. Waste recycling is a mission close to the heart. Therefore, the idea of recycling the billions of flowers offered to deities (of all religions) to create incense sticks and bio-leathers is brilliant. I am super excited about this play, and I would love to learn about the genesis of this idea with one of the founders on a future episode of DamaniTalks.
Name: PredictiVu
Amount Raised: $1.5 million from Market Xcel Data Matrix, backed by Nomura Research Institute (Japan) and Infobridge Asia (Japan).
What does PredictiVu do?
Edited from Tracxn: AI-based platform offering software to get consumer insights. The platform leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning models to correlate marketing campaign performance with market share data, along with macro inputs such as digital trends, customer preferences, and targeted consumer insights. It allows members to correlate marketing activities to sales results, map competitor performance, identify granular customer preferences and competitor performance, predict success using historical data, maximize the RoI of marketing campaigns by sentiment analysis, etc.
Why do I like PredictiVu?
PredictViu thrives on the famous Sun Tzu premise that “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Therefore if a founder knew how their sales & marketing results would perform against their peers or within their industry – they could identify & avoid their blind spots.
The premise has promise, and if the data is even 75% as accurate they the PredictiViu founders claim it is – there is a winner here!
Name: Astrome
Amount Raised: $3.4 million from IAN Fund; Urania Ventures, Lakshmi Narayanan, Impact Collective, ArtPark, and angels
What does Astrome do?
Edited from Traxcn: Provider of satellite-based communication services. It develops products and technology to beam internet access from space using its constellation of high throughput satellites in the low earth orbit. It uses millimeter-wave wireless technology for mesh architecture to develop multiple point-to-point links of multi-Gbps capacity.
Why do I like Astrome?
Despite a 60.06 Mbps download speed, India held 68th rank in the global rankings for the fastest fixed-line internet speed in the world. With 5G around the corner but with the average internet consumer demanding better speeds, a solution from above made a lot of sense, didn’t it?
Astrome wants to fill in the gaps that could cost a princely sum for the incumbent, internet connectivity provided (mobile or fixed line) through the direct beaming of the internet from high throughput satellites.
At what price will these gaps get fulfilled? Now that is the billion-dollar question!
Name: Manch Technologies
Amount Raised: $ 1.1 million from Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund and Pentathlon Ventures.
What does Manch Technologies do?
Edited from Website: MANCH is a paper-less, presence-less, collaborative and secure platform conceptualized to help digitize business processes across various industries. The SaaS-based ZERO coding digital transformation platform enables capture and authentication of third-party information and verification of transaction workflows - with agility and accuracy.
Why do I like Manch Technologies?
The biggest boon of the pandemic has been the quick adoption and acceptance of technological solutions to sign legal documents and for KYC. Manch brings all these worlds into one platform and becomes part of legal & compliance workflows for organizations.
Their offerings are a need of the hour (and for the future), but it is a space that is getting increasingly crowded!
