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|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Chai Kings,founded in 2016 is the largest Chai Retail Chain in Chennai operating with 8 stores. Chai Kings offers a sumptuous range of chai in exotic flavors, in the most hygienic ambience and at perfectly justifiable prices. Chai Kings also delivers Chai at your doorstep through in house delivery personnel as well as through the online food aggregators. Chai Kings deliver upto 4 kms radius from the outlets and uses food grade use-and-throw heat retaining chai flask for safe consumption also ensuring the Chai is piping hot for at least 50 minutes. With the vision to be the favourite chai place, Chai Kings is expanding rapidly in Chennai with the target of 100 stores in 5 years.

Piyush Bhandari who lead the investment from The Chennai Angels said

Sadique and Balaji have built a strong brand with Chai Kings, which has a great potential to scale given the vast consumption base in the country. We look forward to working with the Chai Kings team and helping them scale up their operations. We are excited to partner with Chai Kings and be a part of their growth journey.

Jahabar Sadique, Co-Founder & CEO, Chai Kings, said

We are super happy with our progress so far and to have created a niche and following for the brand. This investment coming at the right time will further propel us. This funding proceeds will be used towards adding retail stores and to strengthen our service operations.

Balaji Sadagopan, Co-Founder & COO, Chai Kings, said

We are excited to have The Chennai Angels part of our journey. We are planning to setup additional stores to cater to folks in IT Parks, Malls and few stores in High Streets, at a faster pace. There is going to be a sea of new product launches as well.

About The Chennai Angels

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.

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Bombay Shaving Company [BSC], the premium online men’s grooming brand and pioneer in the Direct-To-Consumer [D2C] market in India, has raised an undisclosed amount in series A funding. This investment is from a clutch of investors including Colgate-Palmolive Asia Pacific Limited, a subsidiary of the Colgate-Palmolive based in Hong Kong and existing investors Fireside Ventures. As part of the transaction, Colgate-Palmolive has picked up a minority financial stake in the company.

Image Source – Bombay Shaving Company

Founded in 2016, Bombay Shaving Company has expanded quickly to 80,000+ customers and a portfolio of 30+ products across shaving, bath and body, skin and beard care categories.

Shantanu Deshpande, Chief Executive at BSC and former McKinsey consultant said

We are thrilled to have raised this round from stellar investors focused in the CPG space. All our investors to date have a track record of being patient, supportive, financial backers with learning in-tent. Building a consumer brand in India needs time, capital and long-term vision. After having proven product market fit with promising repeat rates and product response, we are now looking to scale the brand.

Men’s grooming is proving to be a fast-growing category in the FMCG space in India with growth rates estimated at 30% annually. Many young companies have come up in the past 3~4 years and even established brands have upped investing in product launches and marketing efforts.

S Ramadorai, former Vice-Chairman at TCS and a long-term backer of BSC, said

We met with the team from Colgate-Palmolive and were very excited by the synergies across technology, direct-to-consumer distribution and supply chain. The young team at BSC stands to leverage decades of experience in Colgate-Palmolive to grow the BSC brand and reach.

Kanwaljit Singh, founder of Fireside Ventures and board member at BSC, said

India is premiumizing rapidly. Young men in India are demanding more thoughtfully made products and better choice. The BSC team has been able to quickly ramp up its product portfolio and expansion of its online platform. We see BSC building a strong brand with emotional appeal and a compelling product narrative.

The funds will be used to invest in brand building, product development & expanding capabilities in technology and sales.

About Bombay Shaving Company

Bombay Shaving Company is a young men’s consumer care product brand. The company was launched in June 2016 after spotting a clear gap in the shaving space in India. Aside from Deshpande, the founding team includes Raunak Munot who was Director for Social Media at GroupM in New York and Rohit Jaiswal, IIMU alumnus and former Crompton Greaves executive. In two years, the company has acquired 80,000+ customers, expanded into 30 SKUs, seen 100% quarterly growth and is now available in 500 offline shelves.

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Enakshi, an online apparel brand for women has closed their first round of seed fund of 80 Lakhs from a private investor. The brand is also in talks with a clutch of other investors to secure a total funding of $1 million over the next two years to build on its distribution network.

Image Source – Funding

Founded in March 2018, by young founders in their early 20s, Maharsh Shah & Namya Patel, launched Enakshi, a virtual boutique for modern women that offers only exclusive pieces of garments with no two pieces alike. The brand plans to utilize the funding amount to increase the brand’s visibility, improve their existing logistics & technology and to empanel more designers from across the nation. Enakshi also plans to expand their business into brick and mortar stores as a next step to giving its customers a first-hand experience of their favorite Enakshi garments.

Enakshi was launched to address two primary concerns of modern women

  • Their everyday worry of ‘what to wear tomorrow’
  • Their need for exclusivity and novelty in their wardrobe

The virtual boutique helps women explore and discover fashion that is as unique as their individuality. With efficient logistics in place, the brand promises a quick turnaround time by ensuring dispatch on the very same day so that the customers get the garment of their choice sooner than anticipated.

Enakshi ensures novelty by launching a new collection every 21 days, where each collection is designed by a different pool of designers, empaneled by the brand from across the nation. Through this unique approach, the brand also aims at disrupting the fashion industry by providing a platform to many talented yet underappreciated designers from across the nation, to collaboratively showcase their creativity befitting the theme of the collection.

Enakshi Founders – Maharsh Shah [R], Namya Patel [L]

Maharsh Shah, Co-founder Enakshi, said

With the largest social media savvy youth population in the world, India as a market is becoming increasingly fashion conscious. With decades of experience in the women apparel industry through our parent brand Deepkala in Ahmedabad, we noticed that increasing number of women have now started seeking novelty in their every buy and aspire to create a wardrobe that showcases their own individuality. This catapulted the launch of brand Enakshi.

Namya Patel, Co-founder, Enakshi further added

At Enakshi, we brief our empaneled designers to create designs to suit the modern women’s preferences. Our primary target audience is women in the age group of 18-48 yr, that don many hats in their daily lives and pride over their individuality. Our designs, therefore, are fluid, to adorn the multiple roles of these women and our philosophy of ‘One Woman, One Design, One Garment’ ensures that there is only one distinctive piece per design. Our tech ensure that every design ordered is altered in the requested size and dispatched for delivery the same day to keep up with the paced life of a modern woman.

About Enakshi

Enakshi is an apparel brand catering to the modern women. The brand offers a virtual boutique for women to explore and discover fashion that is as unique as them.The designs on order have been created by a hand-picked pool of designers shortlisted by Enakshi and then further curated to suit the brand’s style and vision. Enakshi offers only fresh designs and no two designs are alike, which means only one distinctive piece per design. The company was launched in March, 2018 and is headquartered in Ahmedabad. Enakshi was conceptualized and created by Nilay Shah, Maharsh Shah, and Namya Patel. The early twenties Founders chose to launch from Ahmedabad since it is the hub for fashion designing and also their hometown.

|In: EduTech|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Lingokids, an English language-learning platform has reached over 5 million downloads worldwide with the most number of downloads from India with over 4,00,000 users followed by Brazil and Mexico since its launch in 2016.  The percentage downloads from Maharashtra are at 22.9% being highest in India, 16.4% in Delhi followed by 10.5% in Karnataka.

The online Education market In India is expected to touch $1.96 billion by 2021 and witness a 8x growth in the next 5 years according to a recent report by Google, KPMG. The reason for demand of online education has been the growth in Internet penetration and easy accessibility to affordable and quality education online. Lingokids offers complete English courses with lots of activities for every learning style for kids from 2 to 8 years and offers well-researched, superior educational content through ELT, a division of the esteemed Oxford University Press and a global leader in multimedia English language teaching.

50% of the ability to learn is developed in the first years of life and Lingokids immersive program encourages early learning and development for children by constantly exposing children to various grammatical structures and more than 3,000 vocabulary words, the apps hits-and-errors algorithm adapts each lesson to the child’s learning speed and the curriculum follows a methodology guided by a prestigious Board of Educators from diverse backgrounds in the field of education with expertise in literacy instruction, vocabulary development, child psychology, ESL instruction, and educational technology.

Cristobal Viedma, CEO and Founder, Lingokids said

The response from India for has been very positive and Lingokids has reached a milestone of over 400000 users.  The English language opens doors to the world and prepares children to become global citizens and our mission is to take down language barriers and provide equal opportunities for children across cultures. Lingokids is a perfect platform to give children a headstart at learning in a 100% ad-free and safe environment.

About Lingokids

Lingokids is the best way to teach kids languages in a fun and natural way. Lingokids offers an adaptive language-learning platform to teach English to children from 2~8 years of age, designed with Oxford University Press content.

Lingokids is a complete language-learning course, with activities that adapt to your child’s learning style. Our curriculum includes exciting educational games and a recommended playlist of activities based on your child’s level in a 100% ad-free and safe environment.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Ralph Pierre, a new fast fashion watch brand by Incosi Fashions is bringing transparency in the Indian fast fashion market to end customers. The brand has launched a premium collection of Men and Women watches that people can easily buy at affordable prices. The watches are inspired from trending European designs and are powered by Japanese CITIZEN Miyota Movement and SONY battery to make them one of the best products in the market segment. Ralph Pierre watches comes with 1 year manufacturing warranty.

Indian youth is demanding quality products at the best prices. With an improved living standard and exposure to worldwide fashion, there is a growing demand for fashion goods that meet international standards both in quality and design.

Ralph Pierre products are available on their website and all the popular market places. One can find the details about the cost of each and every part that goes into the making of the respective watch. By doing this, Ralph Pierre is helping people in understanding that they don’t have to pay through their nose to own a Premium Quality watch. Generally, an end customer pays a hefty amount owing to the several intermediaries and their respective markups. Ralph Pierre is cutting down the middleman and hence bringing a Premium watch to the end customer at an affordable price.

Shubham Khare – Cofounder, Ralph Pierre said

We believe in transparency and that’s why we reveal every small step to our customers. Ralph Pierre bridges the gap between the quality and affordability in the fast fashion segment. It has been launched with watches for now and soon other fashion categories are to be added. With trendy international designs and aggressive pricing, Ralph Pierre provides a viable option to users to own quality trendy fashion goods at reasonable prices.

About Ralph Pierre

Ralph Pierre is a fast fashion brand offering on-trend style watches catering to both young men & women. It is a flagship brand of Incosi Fashions Pvt. Ltd. Ralph Pierre watches offers high-performance features in trendy colors & design. It is designed to bring stylish & premium quality fashion goods at aggressive prices for today’s impulsively fashionable Indian youth.

About Incosi Fashions Pvt. Ltd

Incosi Fashions is an Indian Fast Fashion e-commerce company created by Fashion and Technology enthusiasts. It is a house of brands created with an aim to make innovative fashion and lifestyle technology products to fit all pockets. The current portfolio includes brands like Crossloop and Ralph Pierre that bring the latest technology fashion products at guilt-free prices. These two brands are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of fashion & lifestyle technology in Indian Market.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Compared to different common law jurisdictions, India has comparatively fewer hurdles in its way to Litigation finance. Judicial precedence since 1876 has held that the common law doctrines of champerty and maintenance are not applicable to India in stricto sensu. Therefore, litigation funding has not been held, per se, ineligible and hence, enforceable in most cases. This progressive outlook, therefore, provides fertile ground for the event of third-party funding in India.

Image Source – Advok8

Advok8.in help litigants raise funds for their lawsuit, proving them capital when they need it the most. Advok8.in is single-handedly dominating the litigation funding market in India. The company came into existence in 2016 and offers a host of services from litigation funding, case tracking, and digital appointment. Advok8.in sees a significant number of daily visits from its mobile app with 10000+ lawyers reading legal articles and the latest legal news on its Legisl8 platform. The Advok8.in mobile app also enables lawyers to see the latest developments in their case anywhere they wish to. Apart from it, a bulk of litigation funding requests also comes from the mobile app.

Advok8.in has received more than 350 requests for litigation funding till date. These cases were submitted by lawyers, law firms, individual litigants and business houses. After a careful evaluation,Advok8.in has finalized four cases for funding and two out of four have been successfully funded. The cases that were shortlisted are commercial disputes in nature namely, Breach of Contract, Trademark infringement, Medical Negligence and Patent infringement.

The process includes inviting individual investors to invest in verified legal claim, with moderate investment cycle which typically matures within 2~4 years, shorter than any other asset class. The average funding size of a case is approx. 5 Lakhs. The value of the claims varies from 1 crore to 4 crores. Advok8.in has opened a different asset class for investment in India. The return on this investment is in an average of 150% to 200%. These Legal claims are uncorrelated to broader capital markets and macroeconomic factors.

As in-house counsel people are constantly trying to find ways to turn the cost center into a revenue center. By making use of advok8.in third-party funding, what was once a costly burden, now can transform into a functioning profit center.

Advok8 carefully vets every case listed on its portal through their expert case selection team, thereby mitigating any risk. The success ratio of cases on Advok8.in portal is very high. Thus, an investor just has to invest in a legal claim and track the progress of the case through Proprietary of advok8.in in case tracking system. Once the case is finalized Investors get the return from the recovery amount as decided in their contract. The entire process is very simple and transparent and advok8.in takes all endeavors to ensure the interest of the case investors are protected throughout the process.

About Advok8

Started in 2016, advok8.in is a legal tech company aiming to simplify a litigants journey in the litigation system of India. It is a one stop solution to a litigants and provide quality lawyer and also help litigants raise funds for their law suit, proving them capital when they need it the most. For more information, please visit advok8.in

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

When Verify.Wiki LLC – a start-up that fights False News through a methodology called reverse virality by combining crowdsourcing with social networking saw the recent lynching incidents in India due to False WhatsApp messages, it immediately sprang into action. The company picked Chennai as a pilot city to test if it could prevent another tragedy.

Image Source – Fake News

On July 13th, 2018, the company noticed two suspected False News stories propagating via WhatsApp, one asking people to punish a school teacher in Perambur, Chennai for hitting and kicking little children, and another circulating a young female doctor’s photo, claiming she was treating patients for free in Chennai. Both these posts went viral on WhatsApp and Facebook in Chennai.

Siva Nadarajah, an adviser and investor at Verify.Wiki who recently requested the company to help with the deadly False News crisis in India, said

The team immediately kicked off the pilot. They first learnt that the video that was circulated was from a school in Egypt, recorded in 2014, not from Perambur, Chennai. They also quickly uncovered the other story about the doctor was also false, propagated by a person who steals profile photos of young women from Facebook.

We were able to stop both the False News stories within a few hours. We also noticed the propagation of those two false stories completely stopping within 24 hours. Imagine if Wikipedia and Facebook had a baby. You combine crowdsourcing with social networking. It’s so powerful when it comes to transparency and credibility in fighting False News. We stopped seven False News stories just within two weeks of our pilot in Chennai. Some are harmless and some are deadly. The nice thing is anyone can anonymously submit a suspected False News and everyone can participate in the verification activities. It’s a democratic process to fight False News

Once the stories were verified to be false through crowdsourced research, Verify.Wiki said its reverse virality approach ensured the propagation of the False News was stopped within hours. With reverse virality, the corrected version of the False News, was propagated back through the same path the story originated, via WhatsApp and Facebook, targeting those who might have consumed the False News.

Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp recently took full page newspaper advertisements to warn people of False News propagating via WhatsApp, after lynching incidents killed dozens of people across India.

About Verify.Wiki LLC

Verify.Wiki uses the power of collaboration and crowd-sourcing to fight unverified content shared across WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and other online sources. Every contribution goes through a crowd-sourced verification process to ensure further accuracy and transparency. Users receive badges and industry certifications for contributing and verifying content. For more information, please visit Verify.Wiki

|In: Funding|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Racetrack.ai – India’s First AI Innovation Hub for Sales & Support, has raised $5 Million funding from a clutch of national & international investors. The investors include Murali Krishnan [Ex-President & Founding Member, Biocon], Dov Kagan [a renowned USA based investor]. The list also has names of investors from Singapore, Mauritius, and most of its existing investors.

Subrat Parida, Founder & CEO Racetrack.ai, said

This is really an overwhelming and positive moment for all of us. We are now looking forward and are excited to announce our next overseas operation base in USA, Mauritius and Singapore.

This move will help us delve into newer business verticals like retail, banking and healthcare. This boost in our physical presence will open new doors for us to partner with intercontinental brands and decision makers while helping us to create global footprint in the AI industry.

Being a pioneer in India’s AI sector, this AI startup offers two flagship products: MARVIN & TURING. While MARVIN is world’s first SmartBot for sales & support, TURING on the other hand is world’s smartest online & offline Business Accelerator that helps in better business planning and execution. With these two products, Racetrack.ai is targeting the fast booming $100 Billion AI market. Investors are positive on their recent moves and have high expectations on Racetrack.ai.

Subrat Parida -Founder & CEO, Racetrack.ai

As the global AI market is rocketing up, Racetrack.ai is focussing on business verticals like BFSI, Education, Health, Hospitality, and Real Estate. With the possibilities, capabilities, and scopes getting wider, Racetrack.ai is all set to expand its operation base to USA, Singapore, and Mauritius.

About Racetrack.ai

Racetrack.ai – India’s First AI Innovation Hub, endeavours to empower businesses by igniting meaningful communication with consumers. It helps businesses to understand consumers:  analyse their requirements & sentiments, suggest them solutions and ensures smooth on-boarding. Racetrack.ai believes Artificial Intelligence as a handshake between humans and modern-day machines to address the vital needs of consumers. For more information, please visit Racetrack.ai