Pune-based food ingredient startup Proeon has raised $2.4 million in a seed financing round led by Shaival Desai with participation from Flowstate Ventures, Peak Sustainability Venture Fund I, Waoo Partners and existing investor Sanjaya Mariwala, MD of OmniActive Health Technologies.
The company said that the funds will be used to drive growth and set up a research lab in the Netherlands, Europe, filing IP, scaling up production as well as expanding the team.
Founded in 2018 by Ashish Korde and Kevin Parekh, Proeon currently offers mung bean protein, chickpea protein, amaranth protein, among others, to food companies for making plant-based meat, dairy and egg replacement products.
"Our immediate focus would be expanding presence in the markets of North America and Europe, where the shift to plant proteins is accelerating at an unprecedented pace,” Kevin Parekh and Ashish Korde, said in a joint statement.
Currently, the company said it is working with brands from Europe, North America and Southeast Asia to build more sustainable and healthier plant-based alternatives such as highly functional plant-based egg-replacement products, clean-label burgers, patties and alternative dairy products.
Agritech startup InfyU Labs said it has raised Rs 1.8 crore in a seed financing round from IAN.
The round saw participation from K.R.S. Jamwal, Sanjay Bansal and Vishnuraj Kunjur.
The company said it will use the fresh capital to deploy more devices to bring quality effectiveness and boost its R&D.
A part of the funding will be used to expand its domain to pre-harvest fruits quality testing and increase its offering by including other perishable commodities.
“We are extensively working towards improving the prediction model's accuracy by testing the effectiveness of the device under various breeds of fruits, regions of procurement, time of harvest and many more,” Amit Srivastava, co-founder, InfyU Labs, said.
He added, “In fact, we are also planning to increase our technological domain to multispectral imaging and ultrasonic sensing which will further help in catering to the larger needs of the segment.
This fundraise will enable us to achieve our future targets.”
Gigforce, a staffing platform providing gig workers, said it has raised $3 million (Rs 22 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Endiya Partners, existing investor Unitus Ventures and other angels.
“With this fundraise, we plan to strengthen our team as well as technology and rapidly scale pan-India in the next few quarters,” Chirag Mittal, co-founder and CEO, Gigforce, said
The company said it has achieved annual run-rate (ARR) of Rs 25 crore (approximately $3.4 million) in span of twelve months, while it is growing 2x on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis.
“While there are players focusing on recruitment (discovery), fulfilment or adjacent services, there’s no market leader for on-demand, B2B, platform-driven staffing.
With a potential to service up to 90 million jobs in India and contribute to an incremental 1.25% to India's GDP over 8 to 10 years, there exists a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped,” Abhishek Srivastava, director, Endiya Partners, said.