Kalam Labs, a livestreaming platform for educational games, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed financing round from Lightspeed and Y Combinator.
The fresh capital will be used to accelerate product development and gamifying STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) topics for 6-14-year olds.
The startup said it is growing its user base 50% week-over-week, via referrals within the student community.
“The 2020s kids have been born directly in the age of iPhones, Netflix, and Google. It is impractical to make them sit in front of a blackboard or a Zoom class expecting them to remember irrelevant information. Kids today want creative learning experiences and they want it fast. Kalam Labs provides exactly that,” said Ahmad Faraaz, co-founder.
YPay, a fintech startup, has raised $400,000 from early-stage investment platform We Founder Circle.
The bridge round also saw Amit Tyagi, Gaurav Juneja, Safexpay founder Ravi Gupta, and Pragatii Bhargava.
The fresh funds will be used to hire staff to scale and to develop technology.
The startup targets youth and corporates to make online and offline payments with its prepaid cards. YPay also aims to help kids to learn money management.
The fintech industry in India that is growing at a compound annual rate of 20 per cent is already valued at more than $31 billion. YPay founder and CEO Navneet Gupta said, “YPay card has already facilitated over 50,000 transactions in a short time. We are overwhelmed with the response received so far and aim to serve a larger customer base of 600,000 individuals by the end of this fiscal year.”
Health and nutrition company Parafit said it has acquired Keto diet delivery service Bluefit. The firm, however, did not disclose the financial details.
The acquisition is aimed at reducing competition to increase market share, Bluefit will outsource its operations and transfer its clients to ParaFit.
The takeover will help in the injection of resources and assets to ParaFit’s which will help the company to expand in markets such as Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chandigarh and Kolkata this year.
Bluefit will remain as a marketing collaborator, the firm’s sales team will market itself as an operations partner to ParaFit.
"This coming-together of sorts is well-slated to disrupt the health and nutrition vista as we welcome a brand like Blufit, an active industry player for the last six years, within our fold. We are confident that this lucrative acquisition will become a benchmark for the overarching industry and for us who are unwavering in our vision to revolutionize the fitness and nutrition landscape in India and emerge as leaders in the healthy foods space,” said Paraj Primlani, Founder and CEO of ParaFit.
DCode Care, a data-driven medical startup focused on critical illness, has raised an undisclosed amount in a Seed round co-led by Inflection Point Ventures and PointOne Capital.
The funds raised will be used for marketing, business development, product development, and expansion to other cities. Currently, the firm is operational in Bengaluru.
“Diseases like Cancer are scary. Any survivor would tell you that. But not just emotionally and physically, on the treatment side, this can be a huge drain on patient’s financial resources. DCode Care is currently designing a complete eco-system around cancer care, right from diagnosis to finding the right hospital to financing the treatment,” said Ankur Mittal, co-founder of Inflection Point Ventures.
The infusion of capital comes six months after the firm raised Pre-Seed financing from an early-stage venture firm 100X.VC and other angel investors.
The company currently provides solutions for cancer treatments, DCode helps patients with a proprietary hospital rating system that analyses the availability of over 200 clinical resources required to treat cancer as per international guidelines. These ratings help patients identify which hospitals are best.
Edtech startup SuperLearn, has raised $300,000 pre-seed round led by early-stage Japanese VC Incubate Fund with angels like Vishal Bharghav, Padmanabhan Thangarajan, Anuraag Gupta and Karan Talwar.
The fresh funds will be used towards onboarding new users and improving their offering by introducing structured courses, DIY activities, bed-time stories and live games.
The platform offers webinar format classes on a wide range of hobby, extracurricular, co-curricular, and life-skills activities including Art, Craft, Dance, Yoga, Vedic Maths, GK, English, Science, General Awareness, Chess, among others.
“Despite it being obvious that access to affordable quality education is still a challenge for parents and kids in India, there still seems to be no apt solution. We are solving this by building Internet-scale classrooms through which every child can learn in a live class directly from the best educators in their respective fields,” said Kunal Bhatia, co-founder of SuperLearn.
Bhatia also added, “Our freemium offering will enable kids to explore a range of such activities to discover and develop their potential while having fun.”
Wishup, a remote employee platform, has raised $1 million in a recent financing round led by Orios Venture Partners.
“At Wishup, we have recorded exponential growth and this fresh round of funds will help us further strengthen the supply end of our platform in India,” Neelesh Rangwani, co-founder of Wishup.
The company has grown over 10 times over the past two years by providing remote-working employees, the firm said in a statement.
The firm was founded by Neelesh Rangwani and Neelesh Gupta.
