Edtech startup Questt, games studio All-Star Games, online shopping platform DealShare raise capital

Guguram-based edtech startup Questt has raised $1.35 million (Rs 9.6 crore at current exchange rates) in a seed round of funding, led by venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures, it said in a statement.

AET Fund, First Cheque VC, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, 91Springboard’s Pranay Gupta, LiveSpace’s Ramakant Sharma, and the founders of RazorPay, participated in the round.

The startup, owned by RealLearning Technologies, said it will use the capital to hire more people and upgrade its learning platform with new features aimed at both teachers and students.

Questt’s learning platform automates homework assessment for teachers, claiming to save 90% of their time, and provides a gamified experience to students to complete their homework. 

Founded by Akhil Singh, Mohsin M, and Rohit Pande in December 2020, the startup claims that its platform is used by over 40 schools across India. In just 50 days from launch, students had answered over a million questions on the app, it added.

“The current system asks teachers and students to invest a huge amount of time without yielding significant output and this is what we are trying to solve at Questt. We are building an education data stack to empower teachers with deep insights that allow for a more customized and effective learning experience,” the co-founders said. 

All-Star Games pockets $1.5 million

Bengaluru-based game development studio All-Star Games has raised $1.5 million (Rs 10.90 crore at current exchange rates) in a fresh round of funding, dubbed a pre-Series A round.

Interactive media venture fund Lumikai led the round with participation from Play Ventures, a global gaming content venture capital investor based in Singapore and Helsinki, the company said in a statement.

Deftouch Interactive Arts, the parent company of All-Star Games, will use the capital to grow its team and expand its portfolio of live multiplayer sports titles. 

“Their (Lumikai) deep sector experience and strategic support will position us at the top of the game for the next part of our journey,” All-Star Games co-founder and CEO Ninad Bhagwat said.

Bhagwat founded the startup with Keshav Sunder in 2017 and has built two major titles -- Cricket Star and RCB Cricket. They are currently working on the third title, All-Star Cricket, currently in MVP and is being built as the definitive mobile experience for cricket fans.

DealShare scores Rs 25 crore in debt funding

Online shopping startup DealShare, owned by Jaipur-based Merabo Labs, has raised Rs 25 crore in debt funding from Innoven Capital.

The round follows a Series C investment in December and takes the total capital raised by the company to Rs 267 crore. It will be used to expand DealShare’s geographic footprint and make the platform available in 100 cities by the end of 2021, a statement said.

“DealShare has always been motivated towards bringing the e-commerce experience to the masses, especially the low and mid-income population. Since our inception, our vision has been to address the shopping needs of the 500 million new-to-internet users by providing them with best quality products at affordable prices,” Vineet Rao, the CEO and co-founder of the startup, said in the statement.

“Using technology, we want to provide them with fun-filled and gamified shopping experience and this fund raising will give us the much needed boost to progress in that direction,” he added.

Founded in 2018, DealShare is currently present in 25 cities across five states -- Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and NCR -- and has roped in over 2 million users. It claims a 50% month-on-month growth and serves over 50,000 orders every day. Last month, the startup clocked a GMV run rate of Rs 750 crore.

Retail-tech startup Shoopy secures seed capital

Retail-tech startup Shoopy, which helps small businesses go digital, said it has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding, led by US firm Campanile Investments and Delhi-based investment firm Redcliffe Capital. 

The investment will be used by the Delhi-based startup to accelerate its growth engine by optimising its existing product(s), scaling its platform and business activities to reach out to more customers, and also to come up with new products in the near future.

Founded in January 2020 by IIT-Roorkee alumni Amit Kumar and Indar Kriplani, Shoopy currently provides a comprehensive set of services to help SMBs take their businesses online to grow revenues. This includes an online storefront as well as dedicated solutions for catalogue management, order management, billing and payments.

“The capital raised through this round will be instrumental in helping us optimize and scale our existing products and business. We are also ramping up our team and planning to launch more products and functionalities for our target audience,” Kumar said. “The SMB sector in India has been mostly unorganized and deprived of technology so far, and we at Shoopy are constantly striving to change the scenario.”

In a year, the startup has roped in over 40,000 small retailers on its platform and is seeing business worth Rs 4 crore every month. The platform is witnessing 50% month-on-month growth.

B2B agri-input marketplace Agrim raises fresh funds  

Gurugram-based B2B agri-input marketplace Agrim Wholesale announced on Thursday that it raised a seed round of funding.

The startup said in a statement that it had raised $2 million (Rs 15 crore at current exchange rates) as part of the round in May 2020 and has significantly scaled operations since then. The investment was led by Omnivore, India Quotient, and Accion Venture Lab, with participation from Blackbuck co-founder Rajesh Yabaji and Swiggy co-founder Rahul Jaimini.

Founded in April 2020 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Mukul Garg and Avi Jain, Agrim aims to build a digital marketplace for India’s $50 billion agri-inputs industry by connecting rural retailers directly with manufacturers through a digital interface and providing value-added solutions for distribution, logistics, marketing, and credit.

The solutions tackle the challenges faced by agri-input retailers, such as a limited assortment of goods, poor availability, opaque pricing, and the high cost of working capital. 

“I have seen the agri-inputs supply chain and its challenges firsthand through our family business. We believe AGRIM, a technology and data-driven marketplace, will have a massive impact on the overall agriculture landscape in India in the coming decade,” Garg said in the statement.