Exclusive: Personality development app Leadburg raises angel funding

Personality development app Leadburg has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding led by former SAP veteran Harsh V. Pant and OpsVeda Asia president and COO Ratheesh Raveendran, a top company executive told Techcircle.

Leadburg, run by LeadCap Knowledge Solutions Pvt Ltd, was founded last year by Harvard alumnus Sangeeth Varghese, UN fellow and Ford Foundation fellow Vidyadhar Prabhudesai and multiple patents holder in cloud computing Akshay Chandrasekhar.

"The value-add they bring to the table, beyond just finances, is their strategic thought process, which we believe would take us to the next level much faster," said Varghese.

The games on Leadburg employ analytics to enable those planning their careers to understand their strengths and validate their skills.

Leadburg currently has over 300 colleges on its platform, and it claims that daily usage per individual on the app is more than 15 minutes. The app has 1,000-5,000 downloads on Google Play.

"Human engineering as an organisational management concept has been around for ages. Only now, we have the technology to do it right, without huge investment of time by the corporate HR to map each person," says Pant, on the investment.

The fundraise was facilitated by IvyCamp, an innovation and entrepreneurship platform by IvyCap Ventures, which connects entrepreneurs with mentors, investors and incubation centres through the global alumni networks of institutes such as IITs, IIMs, ISB and BITS Pilani. IvyCamp has also helped startups such as food delivery startup Mr Hot Foods, payments firm FTCash and furniture rental startup Grabonrent raise funds in the past.

IvyCap Ventures, which is currently raising its second fund of Rs 600 crore, raised and deployed Rs 250 crore in its maiden fund last year. Its other investments are in Aujas Networks, FieldEZ Solutions, Vinculum, E-Shakti, Leixir Labs, Purplle.com, Sokrati, Bluestone, Clovia and Taskbob.

Deals in the sector

In the same space, HR analytics platform inFeedo raised $200,000 (around Rs 1.34 crore) last month in funding, led by existing investor Dheeraj Jain, managing partner at UK-based hedge fund Redcliffe Capital, and Anupam Mittal, founder and chief executive of People Group.

In April 2016, Knolskape Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a gamification and simulation software firm operating in the talent transformation space, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A funding round from venture capital firm Inventus Capital Partners and HR-focussed private investment company, The HR Fund.