CureJoy, an online community that connects users with alternative medication experts, has secured $1.15 million in pre-Series A funding from Accel Partners India and others.
Accel’s Subrata Mitra, Larry Braitman (founder of Flycast and Adify) and Venk Krishnan (founder of Nuware Technologies) have also put money in this round, as per a statement.
Curejoy Inc, the company behind CureJoy, will use the funds to expand services in India and other countries. The startup will also strengthen its employee base.
“We have seen tremendous growth over the last six quarters and we consider this to be the right time to scale our operations to cement our position as the fastest growing company in the online health and wellness segment,†said Dikshant Dave, co-founder of CureJoy. The startup claims to have grown by almost 100 per cent (on a quarter-on-quarter basis) over the last six quarters.
Dave and Shrinivasa Sharma founded CureJoy in October 2013. Prior to starting CureJoy, both had founded Funstar, an interactive content and digital media company. They also worked together at Digital Chocolate Inc, a mobile games developer.
The San Francisco and Bangalore-based CureJoy provides curated content on natural health and wellness from experts associated with large universities such as Stanford and UCLA. CureJoy claims to have over eight million site visits per month.
US-based Accel Partners, active in India since 2005, has backed marquee names such as Flipkart, Mu Sigma, PropTiger (part-owned by News Corp) and BookMyShow.
Accel provides seed and early stage capital to companies in sectors such as infrastructure, technology, internet and consumer services, mobile, software and cloud-enabled services, media, life sciences and consumer products. It recently raised $305 million for a new India-focused fund.
Last week, Accel India participated in a Series C round of funding at Silicon Valley-based big data startup Paxata.
In March, News Corp acquired VCCircle Network, which operates this news website.