Inflection Point (IP) Ventures, which has been one of the most active investment platforms this year, has led a pre-Series A funding in relocation platform HappyLocate.
HappyLocate, a Bengaluru-based startup, has raised Rs 4.4 crore (nearly $600,000) in this round, the company and IP Ventures told VCCircle. Other participants in this round include VM Ventures, an early-stage investor.
“We are the technology solution that enables corporates to manage their employee relocations,” company co-founder Sainadh Duvvuru said in an interaction with VCCircle. “And not just packing and moving. We want to become that missing link that integrates all the broken links involved in the relocation process.”
HappyLocate was set up in 2016 by Duvvuru and Ajay Tiwari. Duvvuru, an alumnus of IIM-Rohtak, has worked with companies including Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd and HDFC Bank. Tiwari is an alumnus of Delhi University and has worked with entities including Nokia and Vodafone India.
HappyLocate caters to corporates, allowing employees to access customised portals, schedule packers and movers, as well as book hotel stays.
It uses multiple streams to generate revenue. These include a subscription service for corporates and a marketplace model for service partners who provide on-ground services offered by the platform, Duvvuru said.
HappyLocate will use the capital it has raised to scale up its operations, as well as enhance its technological infrastructure, increase market penetration, and expand its portfolio of services.
“We realised that this [relocation] is a huge problem that needs to be addressed by experts,” IP Ventures chief executive Vinay Bansal said.
“We did a survey with 40-plus human resources chiefs of large companies to identify if this was a need for them. And we were happily surprised to find most of them saying that they would want such a service and did not know of any such one that exists,” he added.
HappyLocate says its platform has so far serviced over 15,000 pin codes in the country for individual employees and commercial spaces. It also claims a stronger customer satisfaction rate than traditional relocation-focussed companies.
The platform was founded by senior finance professionals from startups such as Myntra and BookMyShow. It has been actively making bets on startups since its launch in 2018, and has so far invested over Rs 100 crore across more than 40 startups.
In a VCCircle podcast last month, Bansal talked about the angel network's appetite for larger deals.
IP Ventures has maintained a sector-agnostic approach. Some of its recent bets include online footwear brand Rapawalk, internet-of-things-based startup Eden Homes, e-sports content platform AFK Gaming, snack-focused cloud kitchen platform Samosa Party Foods and edtech startup Edvizo.
In June, it also led a mid-stage investment round in grocery delivery startup Milkbasket, a rather late-stage bet for IP Ventures.
