Axio Biosolutions, Zingbus, others raise fresh funding; Mumbai Angels exits DoSelect

Boston and Bengaluru-based medtech company Axio Biosolutions has raised $6 million (Rs 44.6 crore) in a fresh round dubbed as Series B2.

The investment was led by TrueScale Capital, with participation from returning investors Omidyar Network India, University of California–Ratan Tata Fund, and Accel, a statement said. 

Founded in 2008 by Leo Mavely, Axio has developed hemostatic and advanced wound care products using a novel biomaterial-based technology platform that delivers improved patient outcomes and cost efficiency, when compared to other products in the market. 

The company has built a strong R&D portfolio, with multiple global patents to its credit, and has plans to use the fresh funding to build out its commercial presence in the US and EU, as well as strengthen its India operations.  

“Axio’s vision is to deliver disruptive products in the surgical and wound care space globally through our patented biomaterial technology,” Mavely said.  

“As the first global wound care brand from India, we have plans to explore new markets and introduce additional products. This Series B2 raise advances these plans, helping us to grow in developed markets and expand our roster of regulatorily approved products.” 

Currently, Axio operates an FDA, EU and GMP-certified manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad and sells products in 40+ other countries. 

Mobility startup Zingbus gets $6 mn from Infoedge, others 

Gurugram-based intercity bus booking startup Zingbus Technology has raised $6 million (Rs 44.6 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding. 

The investment was led by Infoedge Ventures, with participation from FundersClub, Pioneer fund, Anim fund, Locus ventures, Liquid 2 ventures, and returning investors Advantedge technology fund, 9Unicorns, and Venture Catalysts. Angels such as Joe Montana, Alan Rutledge, John Jersin, Ankur Nagpal, Vinod Gupta, Ben McCan, and Harry Robertson also participated in the round. 

Zingbus said it will use the fresh capital to develop technology for the next leap of improvement in traveler experience and to expand its service to new geographies.  

It also plans to hire across engineering, product, business and operations functions. 

Founded in 2019 by Prashant Kumar, Mratunjay, and Ravi Kumar Verma, the startup aggregates fleets of buses to deliver an end-to-end standardized intercity travel experience.  

"We are committed to build technology promoting safety and affordability of services and create sustainable mobility infrastructure. We are running projects which would make bus travel much more attractive for customers like door-to-door connections, value-added services, and much more,” Kumar said in a statement. 

The platform currently connects more than 100 cities and towns across the country and plans to run more than 250 buses by the end of this year. 

Freightify raises $2.5 mn pre-Series A funding

Chennai-based FreightBro Logistics, the startup behind ocean rate management platform Freightify, has raised $2.5 million (Rs 18.61 crore) pre-Series A funding, led by Nordic Eye Venture Capital. 

The round also saw participation from Tradeworks VC, Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns, Blume Founders fund, and returning investor Vinod Kumar Talreja, a statement said. 

Freightify offers e-booking functionality for small and mid-sized freight forwarders with a suite of pricing, rate automation and sales tools.  

The startup said it will use the fresh capital to expand into the US and Europe markets.  

It also plans to invest in its product ecosystem covering other stakeholders of the container supply chain. 

Founded in 2016 by Raghavendran Viswanathan, Mohammed Zakkiria. A, and V Anand Babu, Freightify serves customers in over 10 countries, handling more than $400mn in freight revenue and a corresponding GMV of $2 billion.  

“We founded Freightify with the belief that the future of technology in freight forwarding should be democratized and made available for everyone.” Viswanathan said.  

“The current capital expansion from the right partners cements this belief and helps us add value to the maritime industry across the world.” 

Social gaming platform Eloelo gets $2.1 mn 

Creator-led social gaming and livestreaming platform Eloelo has raised $2.1 million in pre-Series A funding from Lumikai Fund and Waterbridge Ventures. 

The round, a statement said, also saw participation from Better Capital, Exceed Entertainment, and select other strategic angels.  

It will be utilised by the Bengaluru-based company to introduce new interactive features for creators, deepen its community hooks and liquidity, and scale operations, Lumikai said in a blog post. 

Founded in 2020 by former Flipkart colleagues Saurabh Pandey and Akshay Dubey, Eloelo allows creators to build a community and engage with their followers through live games and events such as like Tambola, antakshari, quizzes and musical chairs. 

Since its launch, the platform has racked up more than 1 million downloads, 10,000+ streamers, and 400,000 monthly active users.  

It has recorded more than 100 million gameplays with creators using monetization tools like live-tipping and gifting to earn money. 

Lumikai also said that it will help the platform accelerate by introducing key talent into the company and connecting it to the global market leaders. 

Media processing startup Gumlet secures $1.6 mn 

Singapore and Bengaluru-based media processing startup Gumlet said it has raised $1.6 million (Rs 11.91 crore) in a fresh round led by Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up programme Surge. 

The round also saw participations from Haptik co-founders Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, Cred’s Miten Sampat, and angel investor Yash Kothari, a statement said. 

Founded in 2019 by Aditya Patadia and Divyesh Patel, Gumlet offers a low-or-no code tool that automatically resizes and optimizes images and videos according to the end-user's device and platform. The company is a part of the fifth cohort of Surge. 

Once integrated, Gumlet’s tool processes all previous, new, and upcoming media files by taking over resizing, compression, format conversion, transcoding, streaming, delivery and analytics. 

“This in turn helps online businesses provide better UX, load pages faster, save cloud costs and improve SEO - resulting in tangible business impact. More than just delivering a SaaS tool for online publishers and businesses, our mission is to build a media delivery infrastructure for the internet,” Patadia said. 

The co-founder, however, did not share how exactly they plan to deploy the fresh funds to accelerate Gumlet’s growth. 

Currently, the tool is used by more than 6,000 customers, including online stores, news sites, blogs, EdTech startups, travel sites and crowdfunding portals. 

It has been delivering over four billion media files every week, resulting in 25% month-on month growth for the startup since the start of 2020. 

Unitus Ventures backs construction technology firm Bandhoo  

Gurugram-based construction technology startup Bandhoo Solutions and Services has raised $1.1 million (Rs 8.19 crore) from Unitus Ventures, Bharat Innovation Fund and a few other unnamed angels. 

The startup, founded in 2020 by Prashant Gupta and Sridhar Sundaram, operates a digital portal to connect contractors, builders, and infrastructure companies with construction workers and make the labor market more transparent and efficient.  

It said it will use the funding to expand its engineering team, build new features, and scale up operations across the country.  

Since being founded, Badhoo has onboarded about 6,500 SME construction contractors and more than 35,000 construction workers. The company has serviced more than 10,000 jobs and more than 500 tenders for SME contractors across more than a dozen Indian cities. 

“We aim to onboard several large real estates and infrastructure companies, about 25,000 SME construction contractors and more than 150,000 construction workers by 2022–23,” Gupta said in a statement. 

“With such dramatically increased scale of supply, getting workers and labor contractors to any project site anywhere in India will be far easier and cost and time effective,” he added. 

Immensitas raises $850,000 from Artha Venture Fund 

Delhi-based marketing automation company Immensitas said it has raised $850,000 (about Rs 6.30 crore) in a fresh round dubbed pre-Series A. 

The investment, a statement said, was led by Artha Venture Fund (AVF), with participation from Ramakant Sharma’s LogX Ventures.  

It will be used by Immensitas to drive R&D and sales of its marketing automation platform Lemnisk and expand its presence in the US market. 

Lemnisk has the ability to stitch and activate customer data points from different channels in real-time, enabling marketers to uniquely identify a user and communicate with them effectively. 

Since October 2020, the platform has witnessed 250% growth and continues to process about 475 million customer profiles every month, providing up to a 30% lift in digital revenues.  

It is the only platform that can consolidate and act on customer data signals, especially if these inputs are coming from different channels, and is used by a variety of customers, including AIA Insurance, Emirates NBD Bank, Citibank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Acko Insurance, and Livspace. 

“...the Lemnisk platform could bring together multiple high volumes, high-velocity data sources together, understand individual user interaction patterns and deliver highly scaled and personalized multi-channel experiences in real-time,” Anirudh A Damani, managing partner at Artha Venture Fund, said while commenting on the platform. 

NewsReach raises $300,000 from JITO Angel Network, others 

Ahmedabad-based digital media startup NewsReach has raised $300,000 (Rs 2.23 crore) in seed funding from JITO Angel Network. 

The round saw participation from ShuruUp Ventures, FAAD Network, and angels such as Ajeet Singh B Khurana, Siddharth Ladsariya, Gopinath Latpate, Sharan Pawan Aggarwal, and Shankha Bannerjee. 

Founded in 2018 by Darshan Shah and Soniya Kundnani, NewsReach aims to create an ecosystem of original and hyper-local content by empowering the offline local news publishers and reporters to go online.  

It offers a set of solutions to help small and medium sized publishers digitize and monetize effectively. 

The company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate tech innovation, hire new talent, and expand into multiple states. It had previously raised $150,000 in pre-seed funding. 

“NewsReach is innovating the way content is handled in the traditional news ecosystem. With a proprietary developed content marketplace and online publication system for publishers in a DIY SaaS model, we are democratizing the way news media operated for decades,” Kundani said. 

Ecommerce startup Ourbetterplanet to raise $300,000 

Ourbetterplanet, a marketplace for sustainable products and services, will be raising $300,000 from VANS Investments, a family office led by Dr Srinivas Chunduru, and former KK Birla group VP Manoj John as well as other angels. 

The Bengaluru-based company said it will use the funding to expand its team, build brand presence, launch new products and scale distribution in retail and digital segments.  

The investment values the startup at $2-$2.5 million. 

“Dr. Chunduru and Manoj John will play an instrumental role in chartering a robust 5-year strategic plan and also put in place systems and best practices to achieve the growth plan,” Pallavi Srivastav, the founder of the startup, said while noting that they are in talks with a few more investors for this round. 

As part of the fund-raise, Chunduru will also be inducted in the Board of Directors of Ourbetterplanet, the company said. 

Agritech startup Farmers Family raises seed funding 

Noida-based agritech startup Farmers Family said it has raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding from Safex Chemicals’ promoters Neeraj Jindal and Piyush Jindal and a few other angels. 

The company, founded in 2020 by Mayank Kulshrestha and Vikal Kulshrestha, operates an end-to-end fruit and veggies marketplace in Delhi NCR. 

It focuses on building an inclusive community for farmers and consumers, while also creating awareness around healthy lifestyle and food habits.  

They specialize in developing close relationships with the farmers and give them better prices to ensure quality produce. 

“The money raised would be majorly invested in technology and marketing activities and also to scale up operations of the company. With the current set of team and investors, the synergies created are huge and now we are focused on addition of customers, providing more value to farmers and consumers and raising more funds to scale our business in a fast yet sustainable way,” Mayank said while commenting on the fund-raise. 

“We are continuously adding delivery areas and have started delivering in Noida Expressway Area and Raj Nagar Extension, Ghaziabad,” he added.  

The startup has also signed an MoU with IIM Lucknow to seek guidance from IIML-Incubator expert mentors, investors, experienced and successful senior business and corporate sector executives on a broad range of business growth-related topics. 

Mumbai Angels Network makes successful exit from DoSelect 

Mumbai Angels Network’s investors have made a successful exit from DoSelect, a collaborative, data-driven skill assessment platform focusing on skilling and hiring. 

MAN had invested an undisclosed sum in DoSelect’s seed funding round and have made the exit following the Bengaluru-based startup’s acquisition by Naukri parent Info Edge.  

Info Edge had agreed to acquire 100% of DoSelect for a consideration of about Rs 21 crore ($2.8 million). Mumbai Angel’s return in this remains unclear. 

Founded by Sanket Saurav, Rohit Tirkey and Iliyas Shirol in mid-2014, the platform offers technical assessment services to its clients for recruitment and learning purposes.  

With a ready-to-use library of over 50000 questions spread across more than 25 coding languages and technologies, it helps recruiters create assessments within minutes.  

Its evaluation engine performs skill quality analysis to help recruiters refine candidate list.   

“DoSelect has had a remarkable growth trajectory over the past few years and has redefined how companies hire candidates and reskill/upskill their employees, helping them hire top talent every time and upskill existing employees.  

We believe that InfoEdge will provide DoSelect with the required support and resources to grow further with deeper integration with InfoEdge’s services,” Nandini Mansinghka, co-founder and CEO of Mumbai Angels Network, said.