Salon-focused software as a service (SaaS) platform Glamplus has raised Rs 2 crore in a pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures.
Others in the round include Anil G (co-founder and operations chief of Bounce), Sachin Khandelwal (managing director and chief executive of Sadhan Enterprise), Sravan Kumar (chief executive of Transin), Abhishek Daiya (assistant vice president at Byju's) and Anudeep Nagalia (vice president at Shadowfax).
Through the SaaS platform, salons (and other partners like gyms and spas) can manage their customers’ appointments, staff and suppliers. The platform also helps them with analytical reports to understand the needs of customers and their visit patterns among others.
“Salons run in a highly informal manner which gives them little insights about their customers, their spending patterns and visit frequency. Glamplus has identified this opportunity and can help salons and gyms to move from informal to formal economy and grow their business in the process,” said Mitesh Shah, co-founder of Inflection Point Ventures.
“In the last three months, we have seen more than 500 partners join the Glamplus platform,” said Divyanshu Singh, co-founder of Glamplus.
Tech-based litigation financier LegalPay has secured an undisclosed sum in a seed funding round led by 9Unicorns, the venture fund set up by incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts.
Early-stage investment platform LetsVenture also participated in the round along with angel investors Ambarish Gupta (founder of New York-based private equity fund Basis Vectors and founder of Knowlarity).
Founded in 2020 by Kundan Shahi, LegalPay is a third-party litigation finance platform that helps entities/businesses ease the financial burden of litigation cases.
The platform focuses mostly on late-stage cases or those that are nearing closure with a financial requirement of anything ranging from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 3.5 crore.
The cases are financed through funds raised from large family offices and high net worth individuals and ultra-HNIs in the country.
The investors can expect a minimum 30% internal rate of return (IRR) across stages and types of cases, which also means that the cases undergo a risk and underwriting process.
While the platform enables investments by family offices and HNIs, it aims to allow access to individual investors by the end of 2021.
“This fundraise is a validation of growing interest in this asset class. We believe that with the constant support of our investors, we will be able to change the role of third-party legal financing in India in the years to come,” said Kundan Shahi, chief executive officer of LegalPay.
He also said that with the second wave of the pandemic adversely impacting businesses, litigation cases are on the rise.
“While litigation finance has been in practice since 1870, LegalPay is trying to organise this sector by giving access to curated deals to existing litigation financiers. It has been structured in such a fashion that even at 17% success rate, investors can secure their invested amount,” said Anuj Golecha, co-founder of 9Unicorns.
“LegalPay represents a unique business model that will definitely help consumers to overcome the initial challenges to pay legal fees which could otherwise be a very cumbersome process. The flexibility to provide a feasible solution for consumers who face the issue of lack of funds while dealing with a legal matter is definitely the need of the hour which is being addressed by LegalPay,” said Sunitha Ramaswamy, president of LetsVenture.
Edtech startup Tekie has raised $1.5 million (about Rs 11 crore) in seed funding co-led by Silicon Valley-based GSV Ventures and Multiply Ventures.
Better Capital also participated in the round.
The development marks the first seed investment in India by GSV Ventures.
Founded in 2017 by IIT Delhi graduate Naman Mukund and SRCC alumnus Anand Verma, Tekie is positioned as a live coding platform that brings the art of storytelling to make learning a movie-like experience. It claims that it has over 12,000 students on its platform.
“Our animated series, live projects and gamified learning journey makes the course an immersive experience and the students look forward to their sessions,” said Verma.
“Having grown up in a digital-first world, the learning habits of students have evolved and the education system needs to keep up with the changing trends. Coding is not only an essential skill for the future but an effective way to build problem-solving and logical thinking among kids. Coding education is still at a nascent stage in our country, primarily restricted to block-based coding. We want students to go beyond just getting introduced to concepts and learn to write real code. Keeping this in mind, we designed our course to teach text-based coding,” said Mukund.
Tekie is planning to expand the offerings in other markets like the US, Canada and the UK.