Since the onset of 2016, seed rounds have been grabbing headlines, and with the surge in the number of these early-stage deals, backing for late-stage startups has seen a drop.
According to YourStory data, the number of deals has gone up by 46 percent, to 552 deals in H1 2016 compared to 377 deals in the same period last year, and out of the total 552 deals, 401 were pre-Series A funding rounds.
Here is a list of the startups that recently closed their seed rounds:
Cuberoot Technologies
Gurgaon-based Cuberoot Technologies, which is yet to launch its flagship product, an Audience Management Platform, or rather data management platform, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from undisclosed investors.
Launched in April 2015, Cuberoot is the brainchild of Atul Soni, Sandip Kumar and Nishith Srivastava. Cuberoot’s audience management platform, which is currently in its beta stage, helps advertisers in reaching out to a specific target audience by first segmenting the audience and then understanding user behaviour.
Speaking to YourStory, Atul explained that through content consumption and frequent visits, the SaaS-based product will help the advertisers and publishers identify user behaviour and help advertisers in enhancing their reach.
The company has tied up with publishers and advertisers, and will soon be launching the product in the Indian market. With the fresh capital, the company plans to have a presence in Mumbai and Bengaluru so as to cater to the FMCG and e-commerce players respectively.
Additionally, in the next 12-18 months, the company also plans to expand its footprint in the APAC region, including Singapore and Dubai.
With a team of 25 members, the company plans to clock a growth of 300 percent by the end of this financial year.
So far, the company has already acquired Advantedges and PixelRush, and is currently serving over 70 clients through these two platforms. 90 percent of these clients are India-based. With the upcoming flagship product as well, the company will be looking out for global clients.
Pikkol
Bengaluru-based movers and packers startup Pikkol has raised an undisclosed investment from Indian Angel Network. Angel Investor, CEO and Managing Trustee B.PAC, Revathy Ashok and Raj Rathi led the round of investment on behalf of IAN.
Raj Rathi will also be joining the company board to further guide the team.
Launched in April 2015 by Deepu Chandran, Suraj Valimbe, Siby Mathew and Jayaram Kasivisweswaran, Pikkol is a technology-centric relocation service provider where customers can generate tailor-made solutions for their relocation needs. They make use of a strong analytics-based technological backend and logistics network for servicing the orders, adding reliability and accountability through operational interventions.
“Currently, this unorganised industry is a constant source of dissatisfaction for customers. We felt that many of those problems related to accountability, reliability and transparency could be solved with technology and operational excellence. Customer experience is the key area that we majorly concentrate on,” says Deepu Chandran, CEO at Pikkol.
The company plans to utilise the raised funds in product development and expansion. The company also plans to enhance the capabilities of moving teams and have continual behavioural and transactional training as part of their product enhancement.
Zapmart
Mumbai-based online grocery startup Zapmart has raised seed funding of Rs 3 crore in a round led by two businessmen from the real estate sector.
Founded by Parvez Siddiqui, the platform was launched at the end of 2015. From a real estate background, Parvez Siddiqui was a loyal LocalBanya customer who did not know how to play the inventory game but thought it would be far better to aggregate kirana stores across Mumbai to make a viable business.
Zapmart is also planning to raise $10 million from its Series A round of funding and they are already in talks with angel investors.
“The Series A funds will be utilised for geographic expansion in Maharashtra, especially in Pune, within this year. Another main use of the funds will be for turning kitchens into smart kitchens,” said Siddiqui.
He further added that the company plans to expand in cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Jaipur, and capture the tier II cities as well, in a span of four years.
Currently, Zapmart is set to launch its two new sub-stations, known as Zap-Stations, within the city, which will help the logistics team lower deliver times. It claims that at present, with an array of 5,000 daily usage products, it serves a customer base of around 6,000 to 7,000 in Mumbai.
Digio
Launched in July this year by the duo Abhinav Parashar and Sanket Nayak, Digio has raised seed funding of $400,000 from Nithin Kamath’s venture firm Rainmatter. He will also be joining the board as an advisor.
Abhinav was a technology leader at Flipkart for over 4 years while Sanket managed Twitter’s product portfolio for emerging markets, prior to which he worked with Zipdial.
The Bengaluru-based company aims to digitalise the entire identification process with the help of Aadhar cards, and has currently rolled out its first product ‘Digio’, which is an e-sign platform. While speaking to Yourstory, the co-founders explained that they aim to make the entire identification process paperless and make it easier for end users and organisations with their vision of an identity management platform.
The platform is currently available as a standalone website and an Android app, which can also be used without the process of identification. In a span of one month, the company has on boarded 18 customers from across the BFSI, telecom, real-estate and fintech sectors.
The co-founders also added that along with the process of onboarding the existing customers, the platform also helps its clients in digitalising their intra-business. Elaborating on the market scenario, they say that growth of the technology will take place only through organisational bodies and no specific timeframe can be given for this.
However, the founders aim to on-board more than 100 customers and with the infusion of fresh capital, they also plan to have a presence in cities like Delhi, Gurgaon and Mumbai by end of this financial year.