Funding Roundup: Know Which Startups Got Lucky With Funding Your daily funding news update is here
By Ritu Kochar
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Have you missed your daily startup update on who's making it big in the startup industry? Here are some startups that, irrespective of the funding draught, were able to impress investors and get some funding.
PayTunes
In a recent funding round, mobile advertisement platform PayTunes has received funding of $500,000 from Indian Angels Network. The investment round was led by Vishal Khare and Rajeev Arora behalf of IAN who will also be joining the company board for further mentoring the team.
Apart from them, the round also saw participation from PayTunes' existing investor, CIO Angel Network as well as Apurva Parekh from Pidilite and Sanjay Mehta.
PayTunes is a platform that provides advertisers and brands a targeted medium to reach mobile consumers through audio visual ads. With already over 4 lakh download, this fresh funding will help the firm increase the platform's reach by multiple times. They aim to do this by integrating "ads on Caller-tune' feature, expanding its sales team and marketing the product.
Founded in July last year by Divya Pratap Singh, Gaurav Tiwari and Rakesh Sehgal, with Amit Naredi joining the team as co-founder later, Paytunes has a strong foothold in regions like Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Mumbai, Pune, Rajasthan and Bihar. PayTunes app replaces the mobile ringtones of the user with ad jingles from advertisers. At the end of the call, a visual for same ad is also shown.
Cookifi
Chef and cook hiring platform, Cookifi has also raised an undisclosed seed funding through Tracxn's curated funding platform TracxnSyndicate, according to reports.
Though the amount was not revealed, the funding round was raised from angel investors such as Kunal Shah, Chairman of FreeCharge; Aneesh Reddy Co-Founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies; Tracxn Labs; Venkat Tadanki, CEO of Secova; Krishna Mehra, Co-Founder at Capillary Technologies; Amit Rathore, Founder and CEO, Quintype, among others.
Founded by Ajay Modani, Harsh Singla and Prachi Malu, Cookifi is a one of its kind platform for chefs and cooks to get freelancing jobs or get hired and also enables customers to discover chefs and cooks around them. Currently operational in Bangalore, these angel funds will help the firm to expand its operations in other cities and extend its technology solution for a better user experience. The report said that Cookifi aims to leverage technology to provide customization when it comes to house party chefs and menu planning.
According to Ajay Modani, "There is a huge gap between high volume caterers and regular cooks. There was no right platform or source to hire professional chefs or cooks for such occasions. Cookifi is using technology to make chefs and cooks more accessible to book on demand, with the ease of a tap."
Speaking on what made Tracxn invest in Cookifi, Neha Singh of Tracxn said, "We're convinced by Cookifi's mission to organise a large addressable market in the unorganised sector. We see a growing appetite for an on-demand chef service as India's millennial work longer hours than the previous generation, and they don't have the time or inclination to cook an elaborate meal. Building a world class customer experience is at the core of such a service, and we're confident that the Cookifi team will maintain it at scale."
KhanaGadi
Raising an undisclosed amount of funding is railway food delivery aggregator, KhanaGadi that received investment from Hyderabad-based 50K Ventures.
With these funds, the Jaipur based startup plans to expand its network, adopt a more aggressive marketing strategy and build its team further, said the co-founder of KhanaGadi, Amit Deep Kumar.
Planning to diversify offerings, Kumar said, "We will be targeting niche segments such as diabetic or cardiac travellers who do not have many options."
Talking about the investment, 50K Ventures' managing partner Sanjay Enishetty said, "KhanaGadi has hand-picked the particular space where travellers truly undergo a great deal of struggle to find decent food. With KhanaGadi solving such a major issue that most of the Indians face; it will be a major game changer in the railway meal delivery space."
MadRat
Parent company of wearable gaming platform SuperSuit for kids & families, MadRat has raised funds from a consortium of prominent investors of the industry. Raising over $2.5 Million in the funding round, fresh funds were received from Ratan Tata, Ola's founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Flipkart's founder Binny Bansal, and Girish Mathrubootham of Freshdesk, as confirmed by the company.
With these funds, the offline product gaming startup will proceed for product development and pre-order campaign and have also brought two members on board - Alice Brooks, founder & CEO of Roominate and Rajiv Patel, owner of Lift Projects - as the head of design.
Content to receive these funds, Rajat Dhariwal, Co-Founder & CEO of SuperSuit, said, "Outdoor gaming is slowly losing its relevance owing to the shrinking outdoors in urban spaces and safety concerns in suburbs. We are determined to bring back gaming in its true avatar by amalgamating the concept of outdoor gaming with gesture-control technology. We are excited to have toy industry veteran Alice & UX expert Rajiv on board the SuperSuit team with a shared vision of an active and balanced childhood."
