Sep 13, 2023 | Startup, Tech
Grabyo, the cloud-native live production and distribution platform and Magnifi, the AI-powered highlight generation platform have announced a partnership aimed at delivering a powerful, human-centred video automation workflow, reshaping how sports content creators and broadcasters engage with audiences worldwide. The partnership combines Grabyo’s live clipping, editing and publishing platform with Magnifi’s automated highlights production solution, which uses cutting-edge machine learning and computer vision technologies, to give sports organisations the ability to capture, edit and publish highlight clips from live sports broadcasts at speed, and at scale.
This partnership aims to maximise the efficiency and speed of both platforms while keeping humans at the centre of storytelling, allowing for enhanced creativity to make the automated content more engaging and relevant to audiences. “While clipping automation has been a key development in sports coverage, we have always felt that a human-centred approach made the content more personalised and enhanced the content quality” said Gareth Capon, Grabyo CEO. “Automated workflows bring efficiency and scale to video workflows, but when it comes to the nuances of storytelling within sport, editors are currently needed to create content that resonates with audiences. We are excited to bring this solution to market with the best of both worlds, to empower sports broadcasters, federations and teams to offer an unparalleled level of audience engagement with more quality content than ever before.”
“One of the most valuable benefits of AI for sports right holders is its ability to deliver high-impact content at scale. We are excited about this partnership as it empowers sports rights holders to create viewer centric content which has a direct impact on their ROI”, said Vinayak Srivastava, CEO, Magnifi, “AI-powered solutions empower broadcasters to create new monetisation opportunities in real-time, and we believe this partnership will be the key to achieving higher fan engagement across all channels.”
This collaboration of Magnifi’s AI-generated markers and automated highlight detection with Grabyo’s live clipping platform will empower digital and social teams to identify and create key moments and highlights in multiple formats for rapid publishing on every social and digital platform. It will also support near-live workflows, for those unable to publish VOD content in real-time due to media rights restrictions.
Jun 1, 2023 | Startup, Tech
KarmaLife, an earnings-linked financial solutions provider for the gig and blue-collared workforce and already the largest Early Wage Access (EWA) platform in India, has raised ₹44 crores in an extension to its Pre-Series funding round led by Krishna Bhupal’s family office and existing investor, Artha Venture Fund, amongst others.
The financing round saw participation from other existing investors, including Net Graph Investments, Singularity Ventures, LogX Venture Partners, Balesh Sharma, Amit Jain, Vikram Kailas, and Shaji Kumar Devakar.
Founded by Rohit Rathi, Naveen Budda, and Badal Malick in March 2020 with a combined 25+ years of business experience, KarmaLife operates in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model and has partnered with 50+ organizations, which includes Flipkart, Elastic run, Uber, Porter, Delhivery, and others, to give their employees an option to access their pay-out before payday.
Rohit Rathi, Co-Founder & CEO – KarmaLife, says, “The Company plans to use the fresh capital for scaling, expanding into different geographies, launching more products, and spreading awareness about the product. We welcome this funding round, which reaffirms our investors’ alignment with KarmaLife’s mission. Together, we aim to drive financial inclusion and offer alternatives to predatory lending. Our unwavering goal is to transform the financial lives of millions of blue-collar workers.”
The Company has impacted the lives of 2.70 lakh workers to date. It offers personalized, subscription-based credit products, such as Earned Wage Access and dynamic Line-of-Credit, based on a proprietary real-time credit scoring system called ‘KarmaScore.’ KarmaLife currently serves over 1,00,000+ blue-collar workers through its platform, continually striving to expand its reach and impact.
“We invest in people and entrepreneurs who have the vision, purpose, and team, who have the ability to create great teams and execute. This is the secret sauce to creating any great company. Our portfolio spans geographies (Silicon Valley, Singapore, India, etc.) and mission-critical businesses such as fintech, quant investing, wealth management, and healthcare. KarmaLife is creating a long-term business that is underserved not only in India but in markets globally. We share the business’ growth plans as a portfolio investment, and more importantly, the impact of the business connects a few hundred million Blue collar and gig entrepreneurs into a network-based approach to transparently access credit which is sustainable and affordable,” says Krishna Bhupal, Chairman of his family office.
Earned Wage Access (‘EWA’) gives individuals access to a portion of their earned but unpaid salary any time before their payday. Freeing up employees and employers from the traditional pay cycle, EWA helps disrupt predatory lending models and incentivizes employees to stay longer with an organization. Within six months of partnering with KarmaLife, companies are seeing a 37% increase in retention, enabling them to drive more productivity.
Jun 1, 2023 | Startup, Tech
BharatNXT, a B2B Fintech platform in the financial technology sector, has raised USD 1.2 million in a Seed Round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from Japanese VC – Spiral Ventures, Keiretsu Forums, and Panthera Peak Capital. The funds will be utilized to invest in product development and expanding the team size by 4x and enhancing the scalability of the core technology to accommodate ten times the current growth.
The funds will be further used to implement top-notch governance systems such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and to introduce effective risk management practices and controls to ensure optimal outcomes.
Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder & COO, Inflection Point Ventures, says, “Over the last decade, India has witnessed a significant rise in digital transactions across sectors. However, credit card usage has been low among Indian SMEs, with credit utilisation typically ranging around 15% to 20% of allocated limits. Entrepreneurs with good CIBIL scores that already have credit cards with pre-approved limits still don’t have easy access to formal credit to manage their working capital. This is where BharatNXT steps in and provides an avenue via their platform for these entrepreneurs to make business payments like GST, Vendor Payments, Utility, Rent and much more. This provides these entrepreneurs real-time and paperless access to precious credit at low costs, if timed well, while unlocking precious additional payment days based on their credit card cycles”
BharatNXT has a highly experienced and competent team that has the ability to attract and retain top talent in the industry. Furthermore, their technology platform is scalable and has already been designed to accommodate ten times the current growth. Given the data-rich nature of their business, the company is well-positioned to explore newer business models focused on inclusion & credit in the future.
Founded in 2022, BharatNXT is a payment platform that allows small and medium-sized businesses to use credit cards for their B2B transactions. This provides a credit extension of 45-50 days. The platform is integrated with various portals, which allow for instant or T+1 settlements for all business payments, including GST, utility, and vendor payments. By doing this, it helps SMEs manage their cash flows better.
At the point that IPV invested in Jan 2023, the founders of BharatNXT, Akshat and Aljo had already facilitated payments close to INR 50 crore for approximately 10,000 SMEs. Since then the company has already grown 30x and has processed approximately 4 lakh transactions, which involve at least 6 million backend computations with 100% accuracy. Moreover, the company has a high on-time settlement ratio of 99.7%, indicating its commitment to timely and efficient payment processing for its customers.
Akshat Birla, Founder & CEO, BharatNXT, says, “We have hit hockey stick growth, crossed Rs. 1500+ Cr in GTV and expect to be doing Rs. 1000+ Cr per month by the end of FY 23”.
Aljo Joseph, Founder & CBO is working towards diversifying revenue streams, building trust and stickiness with transacting customers, and believes “We should be running a profitable company in the next 2 quarters, and closing FY 23 with Rs 100+ Cr in revenue.”
BharatNXT operates in an industry with significant potential for growth. The market for business payments made on credit cards is projected to reach $200-300 billion in the next three to five years. Currently, less than 2% of the $1.4 trillion B2B spends are made using credit cards. Furthermore, there is a significant amount of unused credit limit on credit cards, with approximately $750 billion out of the $900 billion annual allocation remaining unutilized. Bankers estimate that approximately 25-30% of these unutilized credit limits belong to SMEs.
May 31, 2023 | Startup, Tech
TE Connectivity (TE), a world leader in connectivity and sensors, has collaborated with the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) Start-up Hub to launch its first accelerator program in India. The program is designed to promote and accelerate start-ups initially in the energy and electrification, smart cities and IoT domains, by providing them with mentorship support, access to resources and a global network.
The program was launched at a recent event conducted by TE and BCIC with the support of TiE Bangalore (Indus Ventures) on “Future of Mobility and Emerging Opportunities.” Attendees were addressed by Ralf Klädtke, vice president and chief technology officer at TE and Dr. S. Devarajan, senior vice president, BCIC, and senior vice president, TVS Motors Company Limited, and Ravikiran Annaswamy, CEO & co-founder of Numocity, who shared their insights on the future of mobility and best manufacturing practices.
Rahul Mathur, director at TE, said, “We look at India as an opportunity to not just innovate in India for India but also for the globe. We are excited to continue building our capabilities at our innovation hubs in Bangalore and Pune, where we currently have more than 1,200 product engineers, co-located at state-of-the-art labs and working on some of the most exciting technologies. We believe launching an accelerator in Bangalore’s entrepreneurial ecosystem will help develop capabilities and drive innovation. In collaboration with BCIC Start-up Hub, the program includes specific models to provide guidance and mentorship support for the start-ups and will also help them to discover possible support for global exposure through our network. We aim to share our experience and success with the start-ups, helping to fuel the next stage of their entrepreneur journey.”
“The future of mobility will create a completely new ecosystem of electrified mobility with autonomous shuttles/trucks, software-defined vehicles, autonomous safety, seamless vehicle to everything, V2X communication, mobility pods, electrified air taxis, micro-mobility and many others,” Klädtke said. “The speed of technological change is very high and electric vehicles were just the first of many technology disruptions. For one to thrive in this new normal, innovation and speed are essential. As a result, growing our collaboration with start-ups and developing win-win partnerships is a top focus for us at TE.”
“Mobility is life,” Devarajan said. “India is taking a multi-focus approach on net zero through the Panchamrit principle. A combined co-opted approach toward net zero by manufacturers, suppliers and start-ups that involves improving product and process technologies like light weighting will enable our next steps. We must draw out strategies and action plans for the coming years to ensure a better environment for our next generation.”
TE Connectivity India will offer innovative solutions to help start-ups to optimize designs, reduce costs, improve performance, and enhance the user experience. TE’s technical mentors will provide guidance to design new components to meet customer needs. BCIC Start-up Hub will be fostering collaboration between start-ups, subject-matter experts, technology firms and research institutions to overcome market challenges faced by entrepreneurs. They will be facilitating collaboration with research institutions to leverage innovative research in creating market-ready products.
If you are interested to participate in the accelerator program, connect with Rahul Mathur at rkmathur@te.com or Ravi Challu at ravi@bulletproofyourstartup.com
May 30, 2023 | Business, Startup
FasterCapital is glad to welcome Ilya Govyadko. Ilya has 1.5 years of experience in top-10 global strategic consulting firms developing strategies for global market leaders. Ilya has 4 years of successful CEO&CPO experience in IT startups that covers all product lifecycle phases, including idea, development, launch, scaling, and exit.
FasterCapital is expanding throughout the world. FasterCapital is looking for more mentors who are passionate about what they do and have the ability to motivate start-ups. For the compensation, FasterCapital leaves it to entrepreneurs and mentors to agree on (money and/or equity). FasterCapital only introduces suitable startups to mentors. People who find themselves good candidates as mentors for this position, can apply to FasterCapital’s mentors network online.
Mr. Hesham Zreik, CEO of FasterCapital, commented, “Growing our mentors network is a great advantage for the entrepreneurs and mentors we are working with on a global level.”
Oct 26, 2022 | Finance, Startup, Tech
WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox), a customer and sales engagement tool is today announcing a $23M series B funding, led by Tiger Global with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, as well as new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify. This marks Shopify’s first venture investment in a startup operating in the Southeast Asia region. The series B comes hot on the heels of an $8.3M series A round 10 months ago; in total, WATI has raised over $35M since 2020. WATI plans to use the Series B funds to scale the teams, product enhancement, and expand the customer base in India and key markets.
WATI has helped businesses power millions of conversations with thousands of customers across 78 countries in just 2 years since its launch. India continues to be WATI’s single largest individual market, with a third of its customers based out of the country. WATI has become an indispensable tool for startups to SMBs, and is deployed by businesses across verticals like e-commerce, healthcare, education, fashion, finance, professional service, and public services. Since its last round, WATI has grown its Indian customer base by 60%. Over the next few quarters, India will remain a critical focus for WATI both in terms of deepening market reach and tapa
Over 2 billion people around the world use WhatsApp to communicate everyday things and it is little wonder that businesses are taking to the messaging platform to support their customers where they feel most comfortable. In 2020, founders, Bianca Ho and Ken Yeung, launched WATI to help SMB with a self-service, low-code product on the WhatsApp Business API. WATI enables companies to have scalable, yet personalised conversations with its customer engagement software that is built on WhatsApp’s Business API. WATI’s vision is to help businesses meet their customers where they are – on messaging platforms – so they are always accessible, personalised, and can engage in real-time. Through the WATI platform, SMBs can support their customers through a collaborative team inbox with multiple agents, smart routing, canned responses, data tagging, and analytics. Many of these interactions can be automated through low-code workflow builders and chatbots.
Bianca Ho, Co-Founder, WATI commented: “It’s been an exciting 2022 at WATI culminating with this new funding round. We doubled down on our product with more automations, making it a seamless digital tool and must-have for any business. We went vertical in our approach and created integrations and partnerships with Zoho, Shopify, Google Sheets among others to really help scale growth and sharpen the product. The team has grown, revenue and customer numbers have doubled and now we look to scale the business, operations, teams around the world.”
This year, WATI has grown its remote-first team by 50%, attracting leaders from Twitter and Freshworks. Revenues and customer growth have doubled in the past 12 months as users find ROI in both time saved and increased revenue from automated workflows connected to eCommerce platforms and CRMs. WATI has over 6000 customers across 78 countries including SMBs providing domestic house cleaning services to schools, tutorial centres, medical institutions and ecommerce, Shopify stores and many more.
Currently, India has the highest number of WATI employees in any single market, across departments – Customer Success, Support, Partnerships, Marketing, Engineering, Product, etc. The company plans to increase the India headcount by 30%, in line with the growth of its revenues globally.
Ken Yeung, Co-Founder WATI, said “The business messaging market has grown enormously. Meta estimates that around a billion people per week communicate with a business or service account across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. This insight is critical for what’s happening now and what’s coming ahead. About 40% of Meta’s advertisers globally – over 4 million businesses – use click-to-message ads, which redirect people from Facebook or Instagram into one of Meta’s messaging products to chat with a business. WATI is well placed to service this demand and beyond.”
With additional funding, WATI will continually scale the team and invest in the product stack for low-code automation encouraging wider adoption of digital tools. WATI plans to scale sustainably in India and has aggressive go-to-market plans in emerging markets such as Latin America and Southeast Asia.
