Wearables startup GOQii raises funding from VC arm of Edelweiss

GOQii Inc, a wearable devices startup launched by Indiagames founder and former CEO Vishal Gondal, has raised an undisclosed amount from the venture capital arm of Edelweiss Financial Services Pvt Ltd.

The investment round comes two months after Goqii raised $13.4 million (around Rs 90 crore) in Series A funding led by global venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). China's Cheetah Mobile and Great Wall Club, besides existing early-stage investor DSG Consumer Partners and other angel investors also participated in that round.

As part of the transaction, Edelweiss has also come on board as a "strategic partner", The Economic Times reported.

Queries sent by Techcircle.in to both GOQii and Edelweiss went unanswered at the time of filing this report.

According to Vishal Gondal, the founder CEO of GOQii , the funds raised will be used to scale up the company's operations in new markets such as US and China, expand into different business segments and develop new technologies.

Incorporated in 2013 by Vishal Gondal, California-headquartered GOQii has offices in Mumbai and Shenzhen (China). It offers a combination of wearable technology, expert-led personalised coaching and elements of social philanthropy (karma) to enable its users to make a permanent shift to a healthier lifestyle.

In July last year, the company had raised an undisclosed amount from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of mobile internet firm Paytm.

Last year, it had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Neeraj Arora, business head at WhatsApp Inc and Marco Argenti, vice president of mobile vertical at Amazon Web Services.

GOQii is also backed by many angel investors including Google's Amit Singhal and Rajan Anandan, Microsoft's S Somasegar and Vijay Vashee, actor Madhuri Dixit-Nene and husband Shriram Nene, DSG Consumer's Deepak Shahdadpuri, Seagate's Steve Luczo, Dell's Kanwaljit Bombra and Flextronics' Mike McNamara. Habitera's Anil Godhwani, Simply Hired's Goutam Godhwani, Bharat Vasan of My Basis, and Prashant Gulati of The Indus Entrepreneurs are among the other angel investors.

The company competes with the likes of the New York Stock Exchange-listed Fitbit Inc. Many other tech companies globally, such as Apple Inc, have launched wearable devices.