Tavaga raises seed funding through Tracxn Syndicate

Tavaga, a mobile-based social marketplace for investment managers, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a bunch of angel investors through Tracxn Syndicate, an angel network launched by Tracxn.

The angel investors include Ashish Goenka, chairman and managing director of Suashish Diamonds; Utsav Somani, a Delhi-based investor and a member of Indian Angel Network and five others.

"The other five angels are friends and family and we would like to keep the names private," Ravinath Dasika, co-founder of Tavaga told Techcircle.in.

Tavaga, owned and operated by Zikhin Technologies Pvt Ltd, is an investor marketplace startup which offers personalised, technology interface between investors and investment products. It provides retail investors access to the technology, processes, advice and investment products used by professional investment funds in addition to connecting investors with portfolio managers.

"When I was looking at investing my own savings, I found a complete lack of intelligent options. Mutual funds overcharge for a one-size-fits-all product. Professional portfolio managers were inaccessible for my level of investment. There was a clear gap in the industry, which led to the conception of Tavaga," said Dasika.

The company is currently testing the release of its product and claims to have a strong customer base with an assets commitment of over Rs 5 crore for management.

Founded by Dasika along with Niharika Rao, Arijit Sarkar and Sridhar Eaturu, Tavaga claims its service is an alternative to that provided by mutual funds, mutual fund aggregation startups and traditional savings instruments.

A graduate of IIT Bombay, Dasika also is an MBA from London Business School. Previously, he has worked as an index portfolio manager at Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. Rao is a graduate of National Law School, Bangalore, and has practised corporate and securities law at Trilegal before launching Tavaga.

Sarkar graduated from IIT Bombay and earned a PGDM from IIM Bangalore. He has worked with Lehman Brothers and is also the former CEO of Sugha Vazhvu Healthcare - an ICICI Foundation startup, and a consultant at McKinsey and EA to the CEO of Pantaloons.

A graduate of IIT Bombay, Eaturu has built electronic trading systems for Deutsche Bank and has experience across electronic market making, flow analytics, trading and execution strategies and tools for analysing high frequency data.

"Tavaga is offering a valuable alternative to mutual funds to investors. They have a strong vision and the right team to execute it and are building a product that even I would use," said Goenka.

Launched in July 2015, Tracxn Syndicate claims to have over 500 angel investors in its network and has helped eight startups raise their seed round so far. It recently participated in a $5 million investment in on-demand shipping services startup Parcelled.in and had earlier put money in Bangalore-based marketplace for beauty services StayGlad.

The financial technology space has become a preferred one for venture capital and early stage investments in the country. There is heightened interest in this sector as several startups are using technology to disrupt the current systems of lending, borrowing, personal finance, investments and financial inclusion in the country.

Recently, consumer lending marketplace Loancircle.in raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Toppr.com co-founder Zishaan Hayath, Trifecta Capital MD Rahul Khanna and other investors.