Fraud and identity decisioning platform Bureau, footwear brand Solethreads and analytics firm Factors.ai have secured early-stage funding, the companies said on Tuesday.
Bureau
San Francisco-based Bureau has raised $4.5 million (Rs 36.9 crore) in an extended Series A funding round from GMO VenturePartners, GMO Payment Gateway and existing investors.
So far, the company has raised a total of $16.5 million in Series A rounds.
In 2021, the startup raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Quona Capital, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Okta Identity, Mark Britto (ex-Paypal), and Bobby Mehta (ex-Transunion). The startup has cumulatively raised $20.5 million to date.
Additionally, Bureau also completed the acquisition of inVOID, a YC-backed identity verification startup. It intends to leverage this to improve its global coverage, widen its intellectual property (IP) scope and broaden its tech stack.
Founded in 2020 by Ranjan Reddy, Bureau is an identity verification platform for fraud prevention and compliance management. The company claims to serve customers across banking, fintech, insurance, the gig economy, and real money gaming among others. Additionally, it claims its revenues have grown 6x in the last 12 months. The company has not disclosed its exact revenue numbers.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C)-footwear brand Solethreads has raised $3.7 million (Rs 30.3 crore) in a Series A funding round led by Fireside Ventures. Existing investors such as DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital participated in the round along with angel investors Nihir Nalin Parikh and Dhaval Nalin Parikh.
The Gurugram-based startup will utilize the funds to improve its design capabilities, diversify its product offerings in casual footwear and expand its retail footprint.
Founded in 2020 by Gaurav Chopra, Sumant Kakaria, Aprajit Kathuria and Vikram Iyer, Solethreads is a casual footwear maker. The brand sells its products through its site, apart from marketplaces such as Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart and Ajio and has an offline presence in 600 stores across 30 cities in India.
“Our first brand outlet in Mumbai is using technology to make it India’s first phygital casual footwear store. The funding will facilitate our expansion into new categories, improve innovation capabilities and expand our geographical footprint,” said Kakaria, co-founder and chief executive officer, Solethreads.
Factors.ai
Business-to-business (B2B) focused analytics startup Factors.ai has raised $3.6 million (Rs 29.5 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Stellaris Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Elevation Capital and Emergent Ventures.
Angel investors such as Kris Rudeegraap (Sendoso), Deepak Anchala and Sanjay Kini (6Sense), Krish Mantripragada (Seismic), Arjun Pillai (Zoominfo) and Vetri Vellore (Ally.io), also participated in the round.
The company plans to use the fresh capital to strengthen its go-to-market teams, including Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success, as well as utilise it for product development.
Factors.ai helps B2B marketing teams to make sense of their customer data as the platform uses AI to understand and highlight anomalies in data as well as provide actionable insights that will lead to immediate impact.
“With our solutions, we aim to facilitate efficient pipeline growth, bridging the gap between sales and marketing, and delivering value to our customers. Looking ahead, we plan to achieve profitability and expand our customer base," said Srikrishna Swaminathan, co-founder and chief executive officer, Factors.ai