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PlanetSpark, a Gurugram-based EdTech startup on a mission to make traditional tuitions obsolete through powerful and gamified learn-tech products and certified teachers in K8 segment, has been infused with funds worth Rs. 1.6 crore by FIITJEE, India’s leading education company. PlanetSpark will use the funds to rapidly grow its existing 200+ home based tuition centers by close to 350% to 750+ home-based tuition centers across Delhi NCR and beyond. The funds will also be used to develop powerful, heuristic, gamified learn-tech products for an integrated instructional learning experience.

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Kunal Malik, Co-founder, PlanetSpark, said

At its core, PlanetSpark is a tech company aiming to organize the unorganized market of tuitions in India through scalable tech solutions. We firmly believe that the era of boring tuitions is over and the vast and unorganized tuition’s market is ripe for getting organized through full stack tutoring model, following the trend in other markets like transportation, logistics, food delivery or e-commerce.

Parents don’t want to send their children to unverified and un-certified tuition teachers any more and they are ready to prefer a professional brand which brings game-based learning models, instructional content, and technological backing and mobile apps.

With a ‘Blended Learning’ approach to teaching school subjects to preteens, the startup combines Face to face Classroom learning and tech-based learning. The company develops gamified learning content such as mobile based learning games, educational cartoons, learning activity boxes, workbooks and board games and partners with qualified homemakers and helps them start their home based tech enabled tuition centers using PlanetSpark’s gamified teaching content, technology and training.

Maneesh Dhooper, Co-founder, PlanetSpark, said

We are clear that the future of early and primary education lies in a Blended Approach to learning where one combines face-to-face teaching with technology. It is a known fact that purely online ‘learning apps’ don’t work as one cannot eliminate the human element of a teacher, especially for younger kids. At the same time, just face to face learning models are neither scalable nor make the learning process fun and gamified using Tech. Hence the sweet spot lies in Blended Learning.

Kunal Malik [L], Maneesh Dooper [R] of Planet Spark Team with Teachers

In order to create highly engaging games and learning cartoons for children, the company’s game development team has designed two product innovations that can create a learning game or a learning cartoon within a few hours. This would help the company exponentially scale its content offerings to more subjects and classes in the coming months.

Commenting on the development, Mr. D. K. Goel, Chairman Emeritus Fiitjee Group, said

The home based blended learning model of Planet Spark is poised to empower teachers, students and parents in the learning process.

The team is now gearing-up for the release of its learning tablet which has been developed as a series of story-based learning adventures designed by Russian game design experts. The company plans to scale-up to 5 more cities in the next academic year to spread the joy of learning pan-India!

About Planet Spark

PlanetSpark is making traditional tuition’s obsolete through powerful and gamified learn-tech products and certified teachers. It partners with qualified and smart homemakers and opens tech-enabled tuition centres from their homes. It follows a blended learning approach of a combination of classroom teaching with gamified online learning.

It offers a complete spectrum of learning products such as mobile based learning games, educational cartoons, learning activity boxes, workbooks and board games, especially designed for younger children. PlanetSpark was founded by Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, alumni of XLRI Jamshedpur with experience in global organizations such as Unilever, Novartis Switzerland and startups such as UrbanClap. Find out more here.

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CloudSEK, an information security risk management SaaS-based start-up, has raised Rs. 14 Crores in its Pre-Series A investment led by Exfinity Venture Partners and StartupXseed. CloudSEK will leverage the freshly raised funds to evolve its flagship product XVigil, a unified risk management platform. The company will also use the funds to expand its footprints in India and South East Asia. After establishing itself as a preferred cybersecurity solution in the financial, e-commerce and transportation sector, CloudSEK now plans to target the pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals and retail industry.

CloudSEK is the brainchild of Rahul Sasi and was founded in 2015 with its headquarter in Singapore and an operational center in Bengaluru, India. CloudSEK, a cybersecurity platform powered by machine learning, entails Rahul’s journey from being a college dropout to becoming a successful tech entrepreneur. Being criticized for dropping out of engineering college and predicted for a career failure, Rahul continued his journey as an ethical hacker and security expert through his successful career. Before co-founding CloudSEK, he has worked with Citrix Systems, one of the biggest names in the software industry.

Commenting on the post-funding plan Sourabh Issar, the CEO, CloudSEK, said

Being a product-only organization, our revenues are primarily generated through license sales. This investment for us is a vote of confidence from some of the eminent architects of the Indian IT Industry. We plan to utilize the funds to develop the existing products and expand our presence in India as well as South East Asia.

CloudSEK offers cybersecurity platform powered by machine learning and promises to build a risk-free digital security ecosystem. X-Vigil, CloudSEK’s SaaS-based flagship product is an outcome of the company’s four years of diligent research and development efforts. Cloudmon, another product by CloudSEK, tracks network and application related security issues associated with the client. The start-up was seed funded in 2015 by M.E. Meeran Foundation, the investment arm of Kochi-based Eastern Group.

Chinnu Senthilkumar, General Partner & CTO, Exfinity Venture Partners, said

The dark web is moving faster than Law Enforcement agencies. The losses due to cyber-related crime, worldwide, is estimated to be upwards of USD 600 Billion. Globally, Cyber Attacks are on the rise and about 500,000+ Cyber Attacks have already been reported in India in 2018.

Many of these attacks are targeted towards BFSI networks, Government Departments and may potentially end up targeting power grids, oil and gas pipelines which have the potential to cripple any economy. With companies increasingly adopting cloud solutions, CloudSEK’s unique non-intrusive solution can detect digital footprint leakages of any enterprise in real-time helping the CSOs to strengthen the Cyber-Defence.

Speaking of its investment, Ravi Thakur, Partner, StartupXseed Ventures said

Technology is redefining the way Risk Management is being practiced and CloudSEK has forayed into that space with applications in Cyber Security. Looking at their product, clientele and growth rate, they have struck the right chord to crack the business. Moreover, what fascinated us is their way of solving the problem which is very effective and scalable at large along with strong team background and execution capabilities.

CloudSEK already includes leading banks, e-commerce and technology organizations in its clientele. Federal Bank, Go-Jek, Bank Bazaar, HDFC Bank and Grab Taxi are in CloudSEK’s client list, five of which are unicorns.

[L-R] Rahul Sasi & Sourabh Issar, Founders of CloudSEK

Talking about the association with CloudSEK, Shalini Warrier, CFO, Federal Bank, said

Federal Bank and CloudSEK have had a relationship since July 2017 and it is a relationship that has grown over the last few months. Cybersecurity is a key risk for the financial services industry and CloudSEK has played an important role in mitigating some of the risks we experience in the fast-changing digital world.

Through this association, we have been successful in unearthing potential points of compromise in our security posture and they have worked with us to address these concerns. Their threat intelligence has been very useful to us. We wish Rahul and CloudSEK the very best in their future endeavors.

Sameer Ratolikar, EVP & CISO of the largest stable Indian Private Sector Bank, while speaking about the relationship with CloudSEK, said

It has been a great experience working with the team at CloudSEK, their focus on building a Machine Learning driven Digital Risk Management platform is commendable.

CloudSEK has been helping organizations by providing them timely, specific and actionable intelligence, thereby preventing digital security infractions. The start-up promises to build a risk-free cyber security ecosystem in Asia. The exclusive gamut of cyber security tools offered by CloudSEK is all set to make India ready for what is being assumed to be the next phase of the digital revolution.

About StartupXseed Ventures

StartupXseed is a Seed-stage VC firm led by bureaucrat-turned-VC investor Mr. B.V. Naidu. It is backed by former Infosys board members Mr. V Balakrishnan and Mr. TV Mohandas Pai, along with Mr. Ramakrishnan [Ex CDO and M&A head – HCL], Mr. Siddhartha Mookerji [Founder – Software Paradigm International] and Mr. Ravi Thakur [Entrepreneur]. It invests from Aaruha Technology Fund, whose focus is Deep Technology Start-ups creating products for B2B Businesses. For more information, visit StartupXseed

About Exfinity Ventures Partners

Exfinity Venture Partners is an early-stage frontier technology fund backing enterprise companies [B2B] in India and across the India-US business corridor. With established connections and ecosystem across India and USA, Exfinity focuses on pioneering startups that are ready to scale across the global stage. Exfinity follows a practitioner-driven Investment approach knowing what it takes to build, scale and list technology companies in India and the USA. For more information, visit Exfinity Venture Partners.

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CropIn Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd., an agriculture technology startup, has raised INR 58 crores [$8 million] in Series B financing from Chiratae Ventures [formerly IDG Ventures India] and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund [London and Seattle]. The financing will scale CropIn‘s ‘SmartFarm‘ technology platform in India and globally to expand its reach from 3 million acres across 2 million farmers to more than 10 million actively monitored acres across 7 million farmers.  With this capital infusion and its increasingly rich data-set, the Company will further develop its machine-learning-based SmartRisk platform to achieve unprecedented levels of plot-level crop detection and yield prediction.

Headquartered in Bengaluru with 180+ customers across 29 countries, CropIn enables businesses in the agriculture-ecosystem to adopt a data-driven approach through its ground-to-cloud technology platform. It thus empowers agribusinesses to ‘grow more with less‘, and drive initiatives around Digitization, Traceability, Predictability, Sustainability and Compliance. CropIn’s client portfolio includes many large global agribusinesses, banks, government bodies and development agencies. Through its product platform, CropIn addresses a global market of digital-based agriculture services that is estimated to hit $4.5 billion by 2020.

[L-R] Krishna Kumar, Kunal Prasad, and Chittaranjan Jena of CropIn

The company’s initial product, SmartFarm, is a highly customizable mobile app and web interface for farm management deployed across agribusinesses’ own field agents allowing for business-to-business-to-farmer plot-level farm management.  Because data is collected and curated by agribusiness employees active at the plot-level and scrubbed for any inconsistencies by CropIn, there is high-confidence that the information accurately reflects what is happening on the farm representing ‘ground-truth’ data. CropIn then builds on this data to enhance traceability and monitoring for its agribusiness clients through various Software-As-A-Service [SaaS] offerings.

CropIn Founder & CEO Krishna Kumar, said

To feed the 9.7 billion people in the world in 2050, agriculture efficiency must increase  by 35% – 70% and technology is the key. India’s rich mix of farming practices and small landholdings provide a massive data set to inform our models. Further, as a SaaS company, geography has never been a limiting factor for expanding our customer base. We are currently active in 29 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and in select European markets. As ground-truth information from these geographies continues to fill our data lake, it provides insights that create a paradigm shift in the agriculture ecosystem globally.

At the back end, CropIn’s data lake amplifies this ground-truth data with local weather information and high-resolution satellite imagery, which form the foundation of machine learning. By analyzing and interpreting this data for the 265 crops with nearly 3,500 variants on its platform across billions of data points that grow every day, CropIn is building an agri-information highway that will detect patterns and predict the future of the crop highlighting the risk and opportunity for agri stakeholders. CropIn provides near-real-time actionable insights to agriculture processors, distributors, inputs providers, lenders and insurers through its connector APIs. Additionally, CropIn’s algorithms can establish historical performance of every pixel at farm and regional level.

Karan Mohla, Executive Director, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors, said

We fundamentally believe in the Founders’ vision of creating a global agri-tech leader, while partnering with multiple stakeholders including agri-businesses, farming companies, financial lending & insurance companies. The sheer impact of CropIn for their global customers across 29 countries based on the unique data sets captured by the platform, is staggering. The potential to revolutionize agriculture leveraging technology and machine learning has never been greater, and we believe Krishna and Kunal will continue to pioneer this industry for years ahead.

With this investment, CropIn has raised a total funding of $12 million till date.

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Technology driven Sanitation start-up Fresh Rooms announced a seed funding of INR 30 Million from angel investor. Based on the Internet of Things [IoT] model, Fresh Rooms is world’s first-of-its-kind model of pay-and-use washroom, which promises a luxurious and hygienic space to freshen up with added advantages of Café, Luggage room, rest rooms, etc.

Founded by young entrepreneur Ashutosh Giri, Fresh Rooms is the extension to the modern-day Smart Toilet that will ensure you to experience smart washroom, which will automatically clean after every use. It completely works on the eco-friendly model that has the waste management, water-recycling facilities, where most of the operations will be powered by solar energy.

Ashutosh Giri, Founder – Fresh Rooms, said

The perception about public toilets in India is completely gloomy. That’s why we have taken this challenge to change the entire eco-system of public sanitization. Nowhere else in the world such facilities are available. To translate our idea into reality, we needed a fund and today, we have received an angel investment of INR 30 Million from Angel Investor . We are happy to receive this initial support, which will help to change Indians’ experience of public toilets.

Keeping our foot forward with the technological perspective, we have also developed a Fresh Rooms App that will allow the users to acquire detailed information about the surrounding restrooms, such as the location of the nearest public toilet, details of opening hours, accessibility, parking and other services in just 3 clicks or within seconds. We are in conversation with other investors as well. Funding will be used to expand the brand Fresh Rooms to the key cities and busiest destinations of the country.

These Fresh Rooms washrooms will maintain the temperature according to the weather and will automatically clean after every use unlike the other existing pay-and-use public toilets. Washrooms will be maintained based on high hygiene parameters. Users will get points for charges that they pay for washroom usage, which they can redeem for buying a freshly brewed cup of their favourite beverage.

Freshrooms Founder Ashutosh Giri

Fresh Rooms promise to deliver the best and the most efficient operations, management, services and CRM that no other player in the segment could ever offer. Fresh Rooms will open employment opportunities for numerous employees as their team will comprise of young and energetic people who could deliver maximum for the Fresh Rooms’ users.

About Fresh Rooms

Fresh Rooms, is a sanitation start-up which is introduced on the model of pay and use washroom. Addressing to the issue of hygiene in public toilets Fresh Rooms promises to offer a luxury space to freshen up, while also taking care of their user’s luggage and their comfort. Fresh Rooms has been envisaged on a model that will have public restroom, refreshment centre, cloakroom and lounge, side by side at all across the country’s busiest destinations. The company will extensively be operating on Internet of Things [IoT], rather than dependent on humans, to keep restrooms clean, fresh and perfectly hygienic as per the unique selling proposition of this start-up. Whatever customers pay as service charge for use of restrooms, they will get points against that, which they can redeem and buy refreshments like tea or coffee or any eatables from the attached Fresh Rooms cafe. Inclusive to all this, there is an awesome Fresh Rooms App which will help you locate the nearest public toilet, details of opening hours, accessibility, parking and other extra features [parking, baby change, adult change, shower, water, sharps, sanitary] to provide maximum comfort to its users.

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Gurgaon Based Comfort Food Brand Hoi Foods has raised $500K in a Pre-Series A led by 1Crowd and its investor community. The company plans to utilize funds for geographical expansion and building a more integrated food solution in the back-end.

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The recent round of funding also saw the participation of other investors including Gemba Capital and Prime Holdings. Hoi Foods is a Food Brand which solves the in-room dining problem of Budget Hotels and promises convenient, reliable comfort for in-house guests and outside consumers.

The startup was founded in 2017 by Indrajeet Roy, with seed fund of Sanjiv Mediratta, a renowned f&b expert, Sandeep Kohli, Ex MD Yum Foods Asia Pacific and Pawan Raj Kumar, founder Supa Star Foods and active angel investor. Pawan & Sanjiv will join the board.

Indrajeet Roy, CEO, Hoi Foods, said

Hoi Foods can be a food brand which can reach 100 cities in next 4~5 years. The biggest challenge of any food brand is geographical expansion and to be present in every location where there is demand. Hoi’s asset-light model ensures multiple distribution points across the city.

Anil Gudibande, Co-founder of 1Crowd, said

Hoi has a perfect combination of youth energy, strategic advisory, and F&B Subject Matter Expertise. Hoi Foodsis bringing standardization in the comfort food segment on cuisines and promising a brand of taste, quality, consistency, variety, convenience and affordability to the budget hotels sector, which is currently completely unorganized and therefore carries huge potential.

Hoi Foods is creating an F&B footprint in multiple locations with standardized service levels and infrastructure. The company has positioned itself as a comfort food brand which promises high-quality meals at budget prices from every pin code possible.

The company relies a lot on R&D on food processing and ensures a dedicated standardized process based food production to ensure the same taste and hygiene every time. Hoi Foods currently has Indian, Chinese and Continental dishes on their menu and covers a range of desserts and drinks as well. Currently, the company is based out of Delhi/NCR and is looking to expand to different cities very soon.

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Smule, the leading social network for music, announced a strategic investment from Times Bridge, the global investments and partnerships arm of The Times Group, India’s oldest and largest media company. This long-term partnership with Times Bridge will give Smule a strategic edge as it scales up operations in India, its second-largest international market.

With 50 million monthly active users, Smule is playing a pivotal role in transforming the music landscape from one of passive listening to collaborative creation and expressive sharing. On Smule, users are able to collaborate with and listen to all types of music, with anyone from anywhere in the world. To support this vision, Times Bridge has entered into a strategic partnership with Smule and concluded an investment worth over $20 million in the company. This is Times Bridge’s third investment this year, after investing in MUBI and Houzz, in their bid to expand their existing investment portfolio of innovative consumer tech companies.

Times Bridge will also guide Smule in engaging India’s multi-lingual music culture. Leveraging its vast network of media assets, Times Bridge will partner on varied aspects such as community building, collaborations with top artists, targeted regional programs and advertising. Smule is the first social music platform to partner with Times Bridge in India. 

India has a long and rich history of music. Its varied culture and shared passion for music makes it a priority market for Smule. With this investment, Smule plans to increase its exposure in the Indian digital music market and grow the market organically. Smule is keen to tap into India’s flourishing diverse music culture and is pioneering a unique way for people to create and engage with music. In May 2017, Smule raised $54 million in a financing round led by Chinese technology giant Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Jeffrey Smith, Smule’s CEO and co-founder, said

Indian audiences are passionate about connecting through music. We want to enhance those connections in an authentic way and we are thrilled to partner with Times Bridge to marshal the best of The Times Group on Smule’s behalf. Smule is about empowering our community to do more of what they love – from singing with their favourite celebrities to collaborating with friends to discovering new music. We’re thrilled to find a partner that both shares our vision and has the cultural insights and market reach to deliver it.

Rishi Jaitly, CEO of Times Bridge, said

Times Bridge’s mission is to bring the world’s best ideas to India and share India’s best insights with the world. Smule is a deeply original, bold idea with a mission of changing the way the world experiences music. Our investment will advance Smule’s music mission across the Indian subcontinent and unlock the creativity of many millions along the way. We are delighted to be working with a partner who approaches India with the empathy, conviction and optimism that the Indian market warrants.

About Smule

Smule is the leading social network for music, connecting the world through a global community of 50 million monthly active users. Smule’s flagship app lets people sing and make music with friends and major artists around the globe—helping to bring music back to its roots of creation and participation. Smule is available on iOS and Android.

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Elbrit Life Sciences has announced that it is expanding its footprint in the domestic pharmaceutical industry. The fast growing domestic pharmaceutical company is presently in advanced talks with its parent investment firm Capital Investments and a Qatar based investment firm to raise 3 million USD. This major investment is aimed at expanding the company’s domestic footprint in branded formulation business. Elbrit Life Sciences started its operations in 2014 and has since witnessed an impressive growth rate of more than 100% per annum.

The official spokesperson of Elbrit Life Sciences, while talking about the expansion plans said

We are planning to use the additional funds to expand geographical footprint and to focus on nephrology, urology, gynecology and oncology therapy segments. The company majorly operates in South India and has sales force strength of 200 front line sales representatives. It has 45 brands and 150 SKUs. The company is currently not looking at any acquisitions and instead prefers to take the organic route to fuel further growth

In addition, Elbrit Life Sciences is aggressively focusing on cardio-vascular, diabetes, neurology and nutraceuticals market in the country. Operating in a country with a population exceeding 1.3 billion, Elbrit Life Sciences has a dedicated WHO-GMP manufacturing facility. Moreover, the pharma company is in the process of upgrading its facilities to foray into export markets.

The company is expecting that this deal may close before the second week of October and once the deal is closed, the company expects to pursue growth opportunities.  Furthermore, Elbrit Life Sciences also aims to be amongst the Top 150 pharmaceutical companies by the year 2020. According to the company spokesperson, Elbrit Life Sciences plans to go for an IPO somewhere around the year 2022.

About Elbrit Life Sciences

Elbrit Life Sciences is a pharmaceutical company established with a vision of ‘Making Lives Better’ by providing quality healthcare to patients. Established in 2014, with headquarters in Mumbai, the company aspires to be one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the country and across the globe.

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In a move to strengthen its position as one of India’s largest student co-living companies, Stanza Living has raised a total of Rs 73 crore [USD 10 million] in an investment round led by Sequoia India. This is in addition to Rs 13 crores [USD 2 million] that the company had raised in its first round of institutional funding from Matrix and Accel Partners in November 2017.

With the funding in place, Stanza Living will focus on strengthening its three key business pillars of technology, people and network of operations. Technology is at the centre of Stanza Living’s business and is one of its core differentiators. The fresh funding will be channeled to bolster the company’s tech engine that drives effectiveness in project management, efficiency in business operations and enables personalized service delivery. Stanza Living will further leverage the funding to expand to multiple markets and strengthen its core leadership team while on-boarding specialized talent across functions.

Commenting on the funding, Anindya Dutta, Managing Director & Co-Founder, Stanza Living, said

The student housing segment in India offers immense potential but remains largely unorganized. We are determined to transform this segment by offering a professionally-managed co-living experience that mirror international standards.

We currently operate 15+ residences in Delhi NCR with a total capacity of 2000 beds. The funding will enable us to unlock multiple opportunities that we’ve identified across important educational hubs and exponentially grow the Stanza community across the country.

Sandeep Dalmia, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living, said

Marquee global players investing in Stanza Living underlines the confidence the investor community has in our business model. We understand that a student’s lifestyle is extremely distinct.

Our industry-first, full-stack business model fundamentally enables us to design our co-living spaces and tailor our services to cater to their specific needs and desires. It allows us to set up and manage end-to-end operations which we believe is absolutely critical to ensure an unmatched experience for our residents.

Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said

Stanza’s team and their execution is impressive, and Sequoia India is delighted to partner with them in their vision to provide quality housing to students in India. Student housing is an established asset class in the west and we believe Stanza, with its scalable business model and strong economics, can create the asset class in India. 

Gourav Bhattacharya, Director, Matrix India, commented

We are very excited about the progress the Stanza team has made over the last 12 months, and think they have a unique opportunity to create a large company by organizing the student housing space.

Their approach is a win-win for students and parents through better experience, as well as supply owners through better economics. We are delighted to continue supporting Anindya and Sandeep on their journey.

Abhinav Chaturvedi, Principal at Accel added

We are delighted to continue our partnership with Stanza Living. In a short period of time, Stanza has become the go-to place for student accommodation in Delhi/NCR. The new money will help expand the Stanza brand to other parts of the Indian market.

Stanza Living is challenging the status quo when it comes to student community living through dedicated programmes like ‘Stanza Springboard’, which focuses on providing career enhancement opportunities, and ‘Stanza Social’, centered around year-long community engagement events as well as exclusive discounted access to a curated list of restaurants, brands and experiences.

About Stanza Living

Stanza Living is a tech-enabled co-living concept which is re-imagining student housing in India by transforming it into an experience product, in-line with evolved hospitality sectors like hotels and serviced apartments. From smart-space planning in residences to gamifying delivery of food for operational effectiveness, from exclusive community engagement programmes to delivering reliable and standardized services through technology integration, Stanza Living operates with a full-stack business model that puts students at the heart of its product and service design, development and execution.