Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. From that list, I pick out three companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things. Click here to know about my rationale behind this weekly exercise.

Last week, 16 startups raised $32 million. Another week that saw the deal value oscillate below $100 million, but there is still strong traction in the number of deals. It’s reticent of what is happening globally where the number of deals in Asia is higher than the number of deals in North America (although the amount of funding is much lower) - it all bodes towards a strong end to the year!

This week, 13 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 12 last week), which made the cut for my weekly analysis. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked one as my favorite funding news from last week!

Name: Leena AI

Amount Raised: $8 million in Series A from Greycroft

What does Leena AI do?

Edited from Tracxn: Leena AI is an AI & NLP based HR chatbot for employees with self- learning cognitive capabilities. It analyzes employee queries to extract relevant answers. It applies to various HR functions like employee onboarding, HR helpdesk, employee satisfaction surveys and post-hire orientation, skill upgrade, and more.

Why do I like Leena AI?

In a world where we don’t see each other every day, measuring and tracking how employees are doing will be an essential tool to retain employees. A service like Leena AI will do well in the current state of the market. However, they must position themselves as a ‘need-to-have’ rather than a ‘good-to-have’ for corporates.

I’ll be keeping an eye on them to see how they fare!