Altor, a startup that builds internet-of-things and artificial intelligence-enabled helmets, has received funding from startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts.
The startup plans to use the capital to optimise its product and establish its market presence in several locations, Muhammad Bilal Shakil, Altor’s co-founder and chief technology officer for hardware, said in a statement.
“We believe our product can be a game-changer for this whole new economy of two-wheeler-driven services,” Shakil said. He didn’t disclose the amount Altor raised.
Kolkata-based Altor was founded by Shakil, Shamik Guha, Sayan Tapadar and Anirban Datta Gupta in 2018. It caters mainly to the business-to-business segment. It says its solution allows fleet management companies and other clients to track whether their riders are wearing helmets, thus improving safety and efficiency.
Venture Catalysts co-founder Apoorv Ranjan Sharma said the incubator was confident in its investment in Altor because of its hardware and software-as-a-service-based solution’s focus on cost-effective fleet efficiency.
“The connected mobility solutions market is one of the fastest-growing ones in India and presents huge potential to investors,” Sharma said.
The transaction marks the fifth reported investment by Venture Catalysts this year. These investments are in enterprise-focussed neo-banking platform Nupay, financial-technology startup GetVantage, corporate venturing platform IncubateHub and solar panel cleaner startup Skilancer.
In 2019, the incubator’s network of high-net-worth individual investors struck 60 investment deals and 27 exit transactions.
The investment platform was set up in December 2015 by Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain. It usually invests between $250,000 and $1 million in early-stage startups.
In August last year, it floated a fund, the 9Unicorns Fund, with a corpus of Rs 300 crore ($43.44 million), to help early-stage Indian startups expand their business.
The fund will typically invest Rs 60 lakh for a 5% stake in a startup and may put in additional Rs 3-5 crore in subsequent funding rounds depending on a company’s ability to meet its growth objectives.
