Social wishlist startup Wishberg raises $150K from India Quotient, others

Tyched Web Services Pvt Ltd, the Mumbai-based startup that owns and operates the social wishlist site Wishberg.com, has raised $150,000 (Rs 92 lakh) in funding from early stage investment firm India Quotient. The round also saw participation from angel investors like Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of One97, and Uday Sodhi, CEO of HeadHonchos, among others.

The funds will be utilised for product development as well as adding engineering and design talent.

The startup was founded by Pravin Jadhav (CEO) and Kulin Shah (COO) in December 2011. Started as a social discovery site called Tyche'd, it was rebranded to Wishberg in July last year. In a previous interaction Jadhav had said, the rebranding was done based on user feedback as the original name Tyched was difficult to pronounce as well as low on recall value, adding that the new version was not a pivot from the older product but just a rebranding. The current team size is 9.

Jadhav had earlier worked at companies like Ohana Media, Foostor, Rediff.com, and Integreon. He holds a PG degree from SIES College of Management Studies, and BE in mechanical engineering from Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai. Prior to Wishberg, Shah had worked at Tessolve Services, Reliance Venture Asset Management, Idea Cellular Ltd, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Ltd, and Traveljini.com. He holds a MBA degree in Marketing from NMIMS and BMS degree in Management from L S Raheja College, Mumbai.

Wishberg enables users to discover and share purchase intents, experiences and reviews within their social circle. The platform focuses on high involvement categories like travel, cars, bikes, gadgets, electronics and real estate. The additions include more social integration among users (moving from friends to a follower model for instance), one click Facebook integration, and real time activity streaming on users' homepage, among other features.

It also recently added a number of features that include The Future Timeline (setting target dates to complete the wishes), Secret Wishes (adding wishes anonymously), Trending wishes (let users discover interesting wishes shared by others).

India Quotient was formed in June last year by Madhukar Sinha (senior investment manager at Aavishkaar) and former Seedfund partner Anand Lunia. The fund invests in startups at an early stage including pre-revenue startups. It looks to put in Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore as initial capital.

In July this year, we had reported that the firm was in the final stages of closing its maiden fund at Rs 30 crore. The fund has been closed now, with capital from investors like Omidyar Network, SIDBI, Times Internet, Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Ventures, among others.

Apart from these, India Quotient has also received funds from individual investors including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, One97; Vishal Mehta, founder Infibeam; Kashyap Dalal, founder, Inkfruit (acquired by Zovi.com); Jaydeep Barman, founder of fast food chain Faasos; Brainvisa Technologies founder Vikas Kumar; Ashok Mittal, Sigma Corporation co-founder; and Mohit Dubey, founder, Carwale.

India Quotient has already completed 12 deals, and around 60 per cent of the funds have been committed in investments. Lunia told StartupCentral that two more deals are at the term sheet stage- both in the consumer Internet space.

Apart from Wishberg, the startups that have raised money from India Quotient so far include IIMJobs, a job portal for business graduates; personalised gifting startup Engrave; shopping network RedQuanta, at-home beauty and personal care services firm Belita; DogSpot.in, an online shop for all dog-related stuff; and Velvette, a subscription-based ecommerce platform.