ePlane Company, HappyLocate, Artivatic.ai raise early stage funding

Chennai-based electric aircraft manufacturer The ePlane Company has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by deep-tech venture capital firm Speciale Invest.

IIM Ahmedabad’s startup incubator CIIE.CO, micro venture capital firm FirstCheque, early-stage investment syndicate Java Capital and Sharechat co-founder Farid Ahsan also participated in the round, a statement said.

The investment will allow the company to augment building critical infrastructure and expand its engineering team, the statement said.

Founded in 2017 and fully launched in 2019 by Satya Chakravarthy and Pranjal Mehta, the IIT Madras-incubated startup aims to address inefficiencies in both cargo and passenger transportation.

The ePlane Company builds electric planes for door-to-door commuting in cities. It is developing an IP and aims to show early product demonstrations by 2021.

The startup is building electric planes that can be used for faster commute within cities at a similar price to road taxi and can also be used to move cargo in remote and rural areas. ePlane has built a small scale prototype by bootstrapping it with a team of 10 and is currently expanding its team to 25.

“Electric planes can really disrupt aviation over short distances characterising urban aerial mobility. The configuration we are building would enable cost-effective air taxi operations in the future.  Progressively, the outlook for this technology to make further forays into the general aviation space looks very promising,” Chakravarthy said.

Corporate relocation services provider HappyLocate raises $0.6 mn

HappyLocate Relocation Services, which operates a relocation platform under the brand name HappyLocate, has raised Rs 4.4 crore ($0.6 million as per current exchange rates) in a fresh funding round, dubbed as pre-Series A round.

The funding was led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV), with participation from VM Ventures, a statement said.

The fresh funds, it said, will be used to scale up operations, upgrade technology, and for market penetration as well as service expansion.

With a focus on corporates, HappyLocate’s AI-based relocation management platform enables large organizations to automate and manage their employee relocations end-to-end. It offers both personal and commercial shifting services across 15,000 pin codes in India.

Its clientele include Coca Cola, United Breweries, Britannia, Titan, Quess Corp, ITC Infotech, Spar and Western Union.

“Their customer focus makes them the only player with a full-stack solution available in a large market, covering not only packing and moving but also housing assistance and travel assistance,” Vinay Bansal, founder and CEO of IPV, said. 

Founded by Ajay Tiwari and Sainadh Duvvuru, Happylocate claims to have served over 10,000 relocation requests till date via its network of over 100 verified movers and 16,000 hotels across the country.

Scale Ventures, IAN back insurtech startup Artivatic.ai 

Artivatic Data Labs, which runs asset-light insurtech and healthtech platform Artivatic.ai, has raised an undisclosed amount in a bridge funding round led by Scale Ventures and returning investor IAN.

The startup will use the fresh funds to build technology solutions that will enable it to scale sales and delivery, according to a statement.

Founded by Puneet Tandon and Layak Singh in 2017, the Bengaluru-based startup provides end-to-end lifecycle-focused products, solutions and APIs using AI, machine learning (ML) and data analytics capabilities. The products cater to healthcare, insurance, broking and re-insurance businesses.

It offers a suite of solutions via its 200 APIs and six core products to manage functions such as customer acquisition, training, agent management, sales and marketing, and distribution. It also helps clients perform risk assessment, fraud intelligence, smart underwriting, decision making, and claims and branch servicing.

“We have launched multiple business- and consumer-centric products over the years. Our prime focus is on building an end-to-end insurtech and healthcare system for patients, service providers, and insurance payers,” co-founder Singh said.

Artivatic.ai has expanded operations to the APAC region and has plans to enter the US and European markets.