9Unicorns bets on TrulyMadly, Malaki; Sirona Hygiene, Vitra.ai raise funds

Crescere Technologies, which owns and operates TrulyMadly dating app, has raised $2.1million (Rs 16 crore) in their pre Series A funding round with a jump of 4X in its valuation.  

The round saw participation from Venture Catalysts; 9 Unicorns; early stage investor advisor Jana K Balan; Neil Bahal from Negen Capital; angel investor Ruchi Sihare and existing investors Inflection Point Ventures, The Chennai Angels and AngelList, the company said in a statement. 

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma; InMobi co-founders Abhay Singhal and Piyush Shah; Nodwin Gaming founder Akshat Rathee and Dr. Vaidya’s Founder and CEO Arjun Vaidya also joined the round. 

TrulyMadly will deploy the fresh capital to build new product offerings, expanding to new geographies and boost its technology by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform features and machine learning (ML) algorithms, the company said.  

The company had raised $1.1 million (Rs 8.1 crore) from Inflection Point Ventures, The Chennai Angels and AngelList last year.  

“The 4X growth in revenue over last year is reflective of the value our proprietary technology has brought to young millennials with serious intent towards relationships. Our next stage of growth will be led by further developing our technology platform to enhance experience and increase our reach in Tier 2-3 cities. In the next 6 months we are slated to launch some amazing new product features catered specifically to the Indian way of dating,” Snehil Khanor, CEO and co-founder of TrulyMadly said. 

Established in 2014 by Khanor, Hitesh Dhingra, Sachin Bhatia, and Rahul Kumar, TrulyMadly is a dating app for adults aged 25 years or older. The company claims to offer compatibility and verification based safe matchmaking services, catering to 8.5 million users in India.  

The startup competes with Tinder and Aisle, among others.  

Malaki

Accelerator fund 9Unicorns has also announced an undisclosed amount of seed funding in Malaki, a brand in the beverage space.  

The round witnessed participation from individual investors -- Dharmesh Dalal, partner at Inga Ventures, and Rahul Parekh, Director of Suraksha Realty, 9Unicorns said in a statement.  

Malaki was founded in 2018 by Ashish Bhatia and Mohit Bhatia, both members of a family that has over 60 years of experience in the F&B industry. 

The brand offers a range of beverages including 24 karat gold water, alkaline drinks, zero-calorie tonics, vitamin beverages and water from the Himalayas.   

Sirona Hygiene

Women-focused hygiene product-maker Sirona Hygiene has raised $3 million (about Rs 22.5 crore) for its Series A funding from Dubai-based NB Ventures and Indian Angel Network (IAN).  

The fresh capital will be used to strengthen the company’s position in existing channels and expand to newer markets, it said in a statement. 

Sirona, a startup that sells feminine hygiene products like urination device PeeBuddy, was incorporated in 2015 by Deep Bajaj and Mohit Bajaj. It has produced several hygiene products including period pain relief patches, menstrual cups and natural anti-chafing rash cream. 

The company raised its first investment of $450,000 from IAN Network in 2017, followed by a small bridge round of $250,000 in 2019.  

Vitra.ai 

Vitra.ai, a content translation platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from deep-tech venture capital firm Inflexor Ventures. 

Vitra.ai was part of its venture capital firm 100X.VC’s third cohort batch announced in January 2021.  

Launched in December 2020 by Akash Nidhi PS and Satvik KJ, Vitra.ai is an AI-based video translation platform which helps customers translate videos to more than 50 languages with just 1-click.  

The company claims to translate content 10x faster and 80% cheaper than most existing manual translation solutions.  

“Our investment in Vitra.ai reflects the level of commitment with which both Inflexor Ventures and 100X.VC are driving the deep-tech Fellowship Program. We believe in the ‘Idea of India’ and that indigenous early-stage startups can tap wide-ranging global opportunities if they are given the right platform. Vitra.ai has a unique offering for the global markets and we are optimistic that their pioneering efforts in the AI space will scale rapidly,” Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC said. 

IntrCity-GoldSeat 

IntrCity SmartBus, a fleet of branded buses, on Tuesday announced the acquisition of GoldSeat, a Delhi-based in-bus applications and telematics platform. 

It’s a technology acquisition that will help the IntrCity in strengthening its own mobility platform, which manages the fleet across 14 states in India, the company said in a statement. 

GoldSeat’s capabilities include GPS based location monitoring and tracking, CCTV feed management, multi network Wi-Fi, passenger information and announcement system.   

“IoT is the key technology component for automation & comprehensive monitoring of service levels on SmartBus fleet, as the operations are remote, geographically spread & overnight. With a rapidly expanding fleet size, we needed a standardized IoT platform that can be quickly deployed on any bus, and which can talk seamlessly with our back-end intelligent platform. This technology helps us in achieving that objective,” Kapil Raizada, co-founder of IntrCity said. 

The company’s current technology includes features such as ‘Track My Boarding Points’, wherein, a customer is notified about where to wait, the nearest bus pick-up points, and also to inform the bus on arrival at the boarding location. The 24x7 Command Center generates real-time bus feed, driving speed, and CCTV footage.  

The SmartBus fleet is equipped with onboard washrooms, Wi-Fi connectivity, automatic passenger information and onboard infotainment system.