Excl: Wedding photographer hiring portal Flatpebble.com raises under $150K in angel funding

TechClove Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company that owns and operates Flatpebble.com, a wedding photographer hiring portal has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding. Raghu Bathina led the round, which also saw participation from Ram Jayam and a  group of unnamed investors. While the exact quantum of funding remains is not disclosed, it is below Rs 1 crore, Bathina told Techcircle.in.

The funds will be used to strengthen the company's technology platform, increase the team size and for marketing.

A serial entrepreneur, Bathina had sold his previous two ventures QuickTree, Inc. and Ramp Networks to Citrix and Nokia, respectively. Jayam is the CEO of Apere Inc., and is currently transitioning the company to Citrix as part of its acquisition.

The Hyderabad-based startup was co-founded by Venkatesan Seshadri (CEO) and Pranav Mehta (CTO) in May 2013. Seshadri holds a post-graduate degree in marketing and information systems from SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, and had earlier worked at companies like Microsoft and MindTree Consulting. Mehta holds a master's degree in computer applications and had earlier worked at Microsoft.

Flatpebble.com allows anyone to post a job for free and receive visual portfolios and detailed quotes from interested photographers. You can communicate with photographers via the app, and call or email them to decide the hire. The app also acts as an escrow protecting both parties with advance payments till the start of the event.

According to Seshadri, the site currently offers a portfolios of over 850 photographers and has a reach of more than 185 cities in India. "Going forward, we will aim towards mass scaling of the platform, as well as building concurrent revenue streams," he said. He claimed that the company has already done over Rs 90 lakh worth of business and revenues have been increasing by over 200 per cent month on month since its inception.

The startup is now looking to raise around $1 million in venture capital (VC) funding by the end of 2014.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)