OM Bhakti Samagri Kreations Pvt. Ltd, which operates prayer materials-focussed startup OM Bhakti, has raised capital as part of its seed funding round from startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts.
The Bengaluru-based company said in a statement it will use the funds to expand into newer geographies and strengthen its marketing efforts. It didn’t disclose the amount it raised.
Sridhar Joshi, co-founder at OM Bhakti, said the firm is part of a high-potential market that remains untapped in major parts.
Separately, Venture Catalysts president and co-founder Apoorv Ranjan Sharma said the accelerator was confident in its investment because of the size of the total addressable market in the prayer materials segment and OM Bhakti’s efforts to streamline the space.
OM Bhakti was founded by Joshi and Prashant Kulkarni in 2012. The firm says it is focussed on assimilating the prayer materials market into the larger, organised fast-moving consumer goods sector.
The company says it has a presence in over 1,000 stores across the country, and that its products are available on online grocery platforms, national supermarket chains, and local kirana stores.
The investment in the firm marks the latest this year for Venture Catalysts, which was set up in 2015 by Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain.
The incubator and accelerator said its network of high net-worth individuals struck 60 investment deals and 27 exit transactions in 2019. Individual investors committed a total of Rs 117 crore (around $16.39 million), with the amount being part of a larger sum of Rs 563 crore that Venture Catalysts facilitated during these deals.
“Venture Catalysts identified the investment potential among HNIs from small towns who, till a few years ago, invested only in stock markets and real estate,” Sharma said at the time.
Venture Catalysts has conducted at least six investments this year, including in OM Bhakti. Other bets it has made include those on artificial intelligence-enabled helmet maker Altor, enterprise-focused neo-banking platform Nupay, financial-technology startup GetVantage, corporate venturing platform IncubateHub and solar panel cleaner startup Skilancer.
In August last year, it floated a fund, the 9Unicorns Fund, with a corpus of Rs 300 crore ($43.44 million), to help early-stage Indian startups expand their business.
