Freight Tiger, India’s leading B2B logistics technology startup, announced funding of 8 million USD. The funding round is led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Alsthom Industries [one of the Dalmia Group Companies] and Pawan Munjal Family Trust.

Mumbai-based Freight Tiger with offices in Bangalore and Delhi is a company building a real time logistics visibility and collaboration platform for the freight industry.

In order to ensure a strong ecosystem, Freight Tiger adopts a collaborative approach in the rapidly emerging space. It works closely with 3PLs, logistics service companies/transporters and consignors. Close collaborations with leading brands and manufacturers allow Freight Tiger to focus on end to end supply chain and not be limited to only one part of it. Their goal is to empower key stakeholders to make better and faster decisions.

Swapnil Shah, CEO and Founder, Freight Tiger said

We are keen on building an internationally transformative company. We have built a world-class multidisciplinary team with technology, operations and product backgrounds to make a significant impact. The current fundraising round and investors’ confidence strengthens our vision to build an operating system that powers the entire logistics and freight ecosystem.

Ashok Goyal, Managing Director, BLR Logistiks said

We have been working with the Freight Tiger team for the past several years and impressed by their customer centricity. They have been a great technology partner and a neutral platform in our goal to digitize our operations and drive transformative customer service to our customers.

Bejul Somaia, Managing Director, Lightspeed India said

The past couple of years has seen rapid technology adoption by Indian Enterprises and Freight Tiger has been at the forefront of powering supply chains for some of India’s largest companies through its depth and breadth of software products. We look forward to partnering with the Freight Tiger team as they unlock new possibilities in one of the world’s largest logistics markets.

Shekhar Kulkarni, Head of Supply Chain Management at Saint Gobain – Gyproc Business said

We at Saint Gobain India Pvt Ltd., have been using the Freight Tiger platform for a while now and have realized the advantages of working with a dynamic startup that is trying to build an operating system for the logistics space. It has helped us focus on our core business processes and we have gained great insights on our business’ freight movement using their offerings. We look forward to deepen our cooperation with Swapnil and team Freight Tiger.

Freight Tiger is the largest logistics technology platform and network in the country today with 170+ customers including some of the largest consignors/manufacturers such as Saint Gobain, JSW Steel, Apollo Tyres and leading logistics companies such as BLR Logistiks and several 3PLs.

Freight Commerce Solutions Pvt Ltd, the parent company of FT had earlier received seed investment from Shriram Transport Finance Corporation and Mathew Cyriac – former Co-CEO of Blackstone’s India Office. Following this funding round, Freight Tiger plans to connect with more customers, expand its product and technology through Artificial Intelligence as well as Machine Learning and build industry specific AI extensions on the platform.

About Freight Tiger

Freight Tiger is a real time logistics visibility and collaboration technology platform. We bring 100% visibility into every freight transaction including shipments on market trucks and build a single version of truth for all the stakeholders involved. We help companies reduce their total logistics cost, provide visibility to their customers/trade partners for better customer service and improve safety.  For premium customers, we provide comprehensive data analytics dashboard, control tower software and managed services where we provide skilled control tower manpower resources for exception and escalation handling. For more information, please visit Freight Tiger.

The Chennai Angels [TCA] announced Rs. 1 crore investment in The Indus Valley, engaged in running an online healthy cookware products store. The Indus Valley, was founded in 2016 by the husband and wife duo Jagadeesh Kumar and Madhumitha Udaykumar. Their idea is to transform Indian kitchens with healthier cookware options. The funds will be used to expand their presence in India’s growing home and cookware products space.

Chandu Nair who lead the investment from The Chennai Angels said

Indus Valley is a natural cookware brand designing and selling healthy cookware options that are made using natural materials like iron, clay and wood, working with artisans to produce the products. Their core customers are women in major cities between 25-40 years of age, who are health conscious.

The cookware industry is poised to grow at 21% p.a. and customers are getting increasingly health conscious and the organic food, wellness market, fitness market is growing are all growing at 20-25%. We look forward to working with the Indus Valley team and help them scale up their operations.

Jagadeesh Kumar, Co-Founder of The Indus Valley said

We are extremely excited to partner with The Chennai Angels. Our investors come with varied skill set and would be a great value addition to our company through their constant mentoring and support. More people in India are moving towards healthier lifestyle choices. Our solution to transform Indian Kitchens with healthier cookware products is a constant hit among our target group. 

The Chennai Angels is one of India’s most active angel investing groups. Founded in the year 2007, it is comprised of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders with a track record of starting and scaling large enterprises. Additionally, several seed and venture capital firms hold institutional membership in the group.

Though it is located in Chennai, TCA’s investing members and portfolio investments are not limited by geography. Unusually for an angel investing group, TCA has a diversified portfolio that goes well beyond a restrictive tech focus, reflecting the diversity of its members’ interests. TCA portfolio companies benefit from the collective expertise and rolodex of its members.

KaHa, a Singapore-based end-to-end IoT platform startup for smart wearables, has raised US$6.2 million in Series B funding to accelerate its growth in Asia. The funding round was led by ICT Fund, a specialized deep-tech venture capital fund and an existing strategic investor from Europe.

The funds raised in this round will enable the company to boost its research and development and scale its operations in the Asia Pacific region. APAC is the world’s fastest growing smart wearables market, outperforming Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

KaHa will be expanding its presence in Singapore as well as play a more significant role in the country’s IoT ecosystem. This year, the firm launched the COVE R2C IoT Innovation Lab, a multi-partite IoT innovation and research lab in one-north technology hub. In close collaboration with public and private partners, KaHa is currently developing innovative use cases on smart wearables. Valuable partners across the IoT development value chain include Singapore research institute A*STAR SIMTech, Bridgestone, Curtis Australia, MHA Manufacture de Haute Accessoirie Partners, Tex Line, and Titan.

Pawan Gandhi, Founder & CEO of KaHa, said

As a company with a mission to create a better and safer environment, it is important to us to bring innovative and relevant technologies into a consumer’s everyday life. Apart from helping us expand our product line, this new round of funding will allow KaHa to discover more breakthrough products that can support the health and wellness, sports and fitness, safety and digital payments needs, as well as increase the COVE platform’s availability internationally and improve our accessibility and affordability. With the continued support of our existing strategic investor and new partner ICT Fund, we are strategically positioned to make our mission possible.

Brijesh Pande, Managing Partner of ICT Fund said

We are delighted to partner with KaHa, which is well placed to capitalize on the fast-growing market opportunity in smart wearables. Consumer product brands will increasingly need to offer ‘smart’ products to maintain leadership and KaHa, with its innovative end-to-end platform, is a perfect partner for global brands.

Andy Raswork, Board member of existing strategic investor, said

We are very pleased with KaHa’s progress and track record and it’s been clear that its platform can be scaled across various brands.  We are excited about increasing our investment in KaHa on this next phase as it continues to drive scale and growth in the wearable tech and IoT space.

Incorporated in Singapore in 2015, KaHa is one of the few companies in the world to have an end-to-end IoT platform for smart wearables including electronics design, printed circuit board assembly, application framework for iOS and Android, cloud services, data analytics and smart after-sales service tool. The platform enables partners and customers to incorporate the latest technology without prohibitive financial costs and speed up their go-to-market time for smart products including smart bands, smartwatches, smart accessories and smart apparel.

Venuelook, an Online-to-Offline [O2O] platform and marketplace for venue aggregation, recommendation and booking has raised an undisclosed amount in their pre-series A funding from marquee angel investors and successful entrepreneurs like Srikant Sastri [Co-founder, Crayon Data], Shailesh Rao [Senior Advisor – TPG; McKinsey & Co; Board Member – JLL], VP Rajesh [Managing Partner – Banyan Capital Advisors LLP] and Vishal Sampat [Founder of Convonix].

Venuelook’s proprietary aggregation and AI backed algorithms help identify and match customer requirements with the best venue options available, thus simplifying the venue discovery and booking process for weddings, social and corporate events. Their experienced event managers help ensure the event is smooth and hassle-free.

Founded by a first-generation woman entrepreneur, Ruchi Garg, with over 12+ years of experience in technology and events industry, Venuelook was started with an aim to create an end-to-end solution for every event, from weddings to corporate events, celebratory occasions and get-together parties. Venuelook helps discover and book the right kind of venue using a combination of technology and domain expertise thus offering the Indian consumer a one-stop-shop solution for all their venue booking and event requirements.

Started from Delhi and first covering NCR, Venuelook has helped over 2 lac people discover the right venue for their events. Venuelook’s engine has also resulted in better fill rates. Srikant Sastri, Co-founder, Crayon Data commented

Our investment decision was influenced by the robust tech and execution capabilities built by Ruchi and her team which has resulted in a phenomenal growth rate of over 20% month over month in the last 1 year.

VenueLook’s founder Ruchi said

Venuelook has over 15,000 venues already listed, making us the biggest marketplace of event spaces in India. We plan to use the funds from the current round to replicate our success in Delhi-NCR to other major cities of the country. We have already put in place a team for Mumbai and are in the process of expanding to 16 other cities.

By making the most of technology and analytics, we will provide better value to both, our end customers who want a hassle free experience while organizing their events and venue owners, who can leverage our algorithm to improve their occupancy levels.

About VenueLook

VenueLook is a venue aggregation, recommendation and booking platform for weddings, social and corporate events. Since its launch, the company has served 2 lac+ real events and now has 15,000+ venue spaces showcased on the platform making it the biggest aggregator of venues [event spaces] in India.

Indian Angel Network, Asia’s largest network of Angel investors, has invested Rs. 3.5 crore in Pune-based start-up SparesHub, an automobile parts start-up. SparesHub will utilize the funds for its geographical expansion and to strengthen its technology capabilities. The funding was led by Indian Angel members Neeraj Garg, Harsh Gandhi, and Ankur Agarwal.

Founded by Tapas P. Gupta and Arijit A. Chakraborty, the SparesHub team currently comprises 27 employees. It solves the problem of the unavailability of, and over-expensive, automobile parts which result in a significant loss of time, money, and efforts for car owners in India. Since its inception, SparesHub has been working to dis-intermediate and digitize the automobile parts industry in India.

To this end, it is introducing modern supply chain and logistics methodologies in the industry, and caters to B2B customers. SparesHub works with India’s leading car companies and part manufacturers to make OEM and OES parts available to its customers [multi-brand service centres, service aggregators, fleet owners and insurance companies]. Existing investor Holomua Group Inc, also participated in the investment round.

Padmaja Ruparel, President and Co-founder of Indian Angel Network, added

The decision to invest in SparesHub was taken after a careful assessment of the business, the team’s vision, and its strategy to achieve the same. The company has the makings of a modern tech-based venture, with a unique business model, a strong technological framework, a product that fills a major gap in the market, and of course, a strong team. We are confident that the team will continue to enhance its product and build its USP, and emerge as one of the leading players in its domain.

Tapas Gupta – CEO of SparesHub, commented

Our mission is to create a whole new level of customer delight by leveraging technology. SparesHub is challenging the traditional methodologies and bringing in global best practices in the automobile parts supply chain and logistics domain.

We are truly grateful for the funding from Indian Angel Network and the faith they have shown in our business model, and we hope for a long and fruitful collaboration with the Network.

Indian Angel Network is Asia’s largest network of angel investors that invests in early-stage businesses, which have the potential to create disruption. The members of the network are leaders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem with strong operational experience as CEOs or a background of creating new and successful ventures. IAN goes beyond the normal, informal, local club structure of angel groups to a larger institutionalized model because of its nimble but robust, standardized, and transparent processes that allow it to scale across geographies and a large number of members.

InsurTech startup Kruzr has raised 1.3 Million USD [Rs. 9.5 Cr] for its seed round led by Saama Capital with participation from Better Capital. Kruzr is a preventive motor insurance technology which helps insurance companies personalize policy premiums & improve their risk model by delivering an engaging preventative driving assistant to their customers. Kruzr is founded by Pallav Singh, Ayan, and Jasmeet Singh Sethi.

Kruzr blends the power of voice technology and artificial intelligence in its personal driving assistant that helps drivers minimize mobile distractions, drowsy driving, speeding and external risks like weather and accident-prone zones. In pilots with insurers, Kruzr managed to cut down distracted driving by 80%. Kruzr is working with motor insurance companies in Europe, UK and India to bring its technology to their customers to prevent accidents & improve claims.

Pallav Singh, co-founder and CEO, said

Road accidents cause over 1.3 million deaths globally every year, and motor insurance companies lose billions of dollars due to these. However, more than 75% of accidents are actually preventable with timely driver assistance. We at Kruzr are building technology to minimize these accidents and help make motor insurance truly preventive and customer-centric.

The funds raised will be utilized to grow the technology team, scale the product, and expand the business in Europe and UK.

Suresh Shanmugham, Managing Partner, Saama Capital, said

We were very impressed by the founding team’s vision for Kruzr and their significant customer progress in the European automobile insurance market.  We believe Pallav, Ayan and Jasmeet can build a world-class product company out of India serving this sizeable and growing global market.

Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, said

Kruzr is leveraging the latest advances in mobile, big data, and AI to build a unique preventive driving technology that will save lives and help motor insurance companies design personalized policies. I’ve watched the Kruzr team learn and iterate to build traction with the world top insurers & am excited about the future ahead.

About Kruzr

Kruzr is positioned as the world’s first technology powered smart driving assistant and is designed to automate driver safety. The mobile app automatically detects driving and begins to play the role of your driving assistant. It filters out all important calls and messages, thus reducing distraction while driving, one of the major causes for road traffic incidents across the globe.