PiggyRide, which provides a transport platform for kids, said on Wednesday it has raised Rs 7.5 crore (a little more than $1 million) in a funding round led by JAFCO Investment Asia Pacific.
A clutch of angel investors including InMobi Group founder and CEO Naveen Tewari also took part in the round, PiggyRide said in a statement.
Other angel investors were Livspace co-founders Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava, Goldman Sachs managing director Niladri Mukhopadhyay, and EzCred cofounders Amiya Pathak and Sachin Maheshwari.
PiggyRide, which is operated by Kidext Technologies Pvt. Ltd, will invest the fresh capital to boost its technology backbone, and expand its team as well as supply system.
The startup, which was started earlier this year by Manish Tewari and Rohan Kaushal, has a presence in Bengaluru and will launch its operations in Delhi-NCR this month. PiggyRide's platform is installed with devices that allow guardians to track their kid’s location on a real-time basis.
“Our mission is to make parents’ life hassle-free with a simple, flexible and safe experience for their kids,” said Tewari, who is also CEO at PiggyRide.
The company is clocking in about 1,000 rides on average a day, he said. PiggyRide aims to touch 5,000 rides a day and have a presence in three cities in the next six months.
The startup is also building a local discovery platform for kids’ activities, said co-founder Kaushal.
Tewari, a graduate of IIT-BHU Varanasi, had previously co-founded Koovs and Pokkt. Kaushal, a graduate of IIT Delhi, has nine years of experience working with startups like Ola and Koovs.
Kids-focussed startups
Startups that are focussed on kids have attracted funding from investors across sectors in the past few months.
In May, Delhi-based Xplorabox, which offers a subscription-based activity box for children, raised an undisclosed amount in angel investment from SucSEED Venture Partners.
In April, KidzByte MediaTech Pvt. Ltd, a Mumbai-based news aggregator for children, said it mobilised Rs 2 crore in seed investment from entrepreneur Pranay Goyal.
In the same month, WhiteHat Jr, which teaches coding to students between the ages of six and 14 via a live online one-to-one platform, raised seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar.
Last year, DSG Consumer Parnters bet on kids’ apparel brand Born and kids’ healthful snack brand The Mumum Co.