Deal Talk: CasaOne, Quilt.AI raise fresh capital; Flipspaces secures debt funding

TechCircle brings you a round-up of technology investment and M&A deals reported from across newsrooms.

CasaOne

San Francisco and Bengaluru-based furniture rental company CasaOne has raised $16 million in a Series B funding round led by Accel, the company said in a statement.

The round also saw participation from Quiet Capital, HNI Corporate and WeWork along with existing investors JLL Spark, Freestyle Capital, NextWorld, and Array Ventures.

According to the reports, the current round takes the company’s total funding to $27.5 million.

With the fresh funds, the company plans to expand to new geographies, further invest in hiring technology and engineering talent and expand into adjacent product categories. It also plans to launch in London in the first quarter of 2020 as its first international market.

The company was founded in 2017 by Shashank PS and Madhusudan Kagwad. It's a B2B platform which aims to eliminate big points of friction that comes with sourcing, designing, setting-up and maintenance of furniture, furnishings and equipment - be it at a residence or an office. 

With increased demand from businesses, the company launched BureauOne in May 2019, to cater to fast-growing companies, mid-market firms, and enterprises to convert their FF&E (Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment) into a utility.

“At CasaOne and BureauOne, we are building technology for real-time inventory, supply chain, and large format logistics for the old school furniture and logistics industries. This helps us deliver best-in-class SLAs to our customer,” Shashank said.

Quilt.AI

Singapore-based artificial intelligence human insights company Quilt.AI has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by the Nadathur Group, multiple media reports said citing company statement.

The company is looking to spend the fresh funds on building capacity in training models on more than 100 billion images and over 200 languages besides improving video recognition, reports said. It is working on bringing together traditional anthropology and different artificial intelligence engines to help firms understand patterns in human behaviour.

Quilt.AI was founded in 2018 by Anurag Banerjee and Angad Singh Chowdhry. The company operates a platform that indexes and clusters millions of human conversations and expressions across public social, news, blog, institutional sources, and search engine trails. The tool reads each data point for its stated and contextual information and draws connections between people, intent, thought and action at scale.

With the latest funding announcement, the startup also announced that Rishad Tobaccowala will join the company’s board. Tobaccowala is a long-time member of the senior management at Publicis Groupe, which is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. 

Flipspaces

Mumbai-based interior design startup Flipspaces has raised $1.15 million in a venture debt funding round from Unitus Capital Inclusive Credit (UCIC) and Alex Group of Companies, it said in a statement.

The company will utilise the funds towards growth of domestic business units, expansion of the foothold globally and enhancement of virtual reality technology for better consumer experience, the statement added.

Founded by Kunal Sharma and Ankur Muchhal in 2015, Flipspaces is an integrated solution provider of discovery, design and delivery for SMEs, startups and co-working spaces that are looking to expand their physical presence. The company provides a tech-enabled approach through its technology suite, powered by VR and a tech-based gaming engine.

“We  plan to expand to three more business units in India and upscaling our business operations to two cities in the US, delivering  a differentiated customer experience through cutting-edge web and VR technology,” said Sharma.