Bengaluru-based Web3 startup DAOLens on Wednesday said it has secured pre-seed funding of $5 million (around Rs 38.5 crore) co-led by Nexus Venture Partners, Better Ventures and iSeed II.
The round also saw participation from investors including Gokul Rajaram (Board Member of Coinbase); Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder of Polygon); Raj Gokal (co-founder of Solana); Simon Doherty (vice president of Animoca Brands), Arjun Sethi (co-founder of Tribe Capital) and Softbank’s Vishal Gupta and Narendra Rathi, among others.
The firm plans to use the fresh proceeds to develop product, onboard more talent and to facilitate its stack of tools roll out.
DAOLens was established by Vikram Aditya and Apoorv Nandan in January this year to help DAOs effectively onboard and manage contributors.
The B2B Web3 company claims to have three live product offerings, which comprises a discovery portal, a contributor onboarding solution and community management tools. All these are being used to scale being used by various DAOs.
Web3, or Web 3.0, is billed as the next iteration of the internet - after Web 2.0. While the latter signifies a centralised internet model where most of the data, content and services are controlled by a handful of major internet companies commonly referred to as ‘Big Tech’, Web3 is a model that emphasises on ‘decentralisation’ of the internet.
"This pre-seed funding round is a testimony to the strength of our project and the belief in the roadmap. Simplifying the way DAOs connect with their community addresses a serious challenge that the Web3 world faces. No one can predict the future with certainty but given how DAOs are maturing, it is a challenge that is in desperate need of a head-on tackle, and we are here to do that,” said Vikram Aditya, chief executive officer and co-founder of DAOLens.
“As DAOs transform the future of work, DAO management tools will have a very large part to play. DAOLens is helping remove the ambiguity around DAOs by implementing a mature approach to managing DAOs,” said Pratik Poddar, a partner at Nexus Venture Partners.
Nexus Venture Partners, set up in 2006, has over $1.5 billion under management. The firm makes investments in India and the US. Its portfolio includes companies such as Delhivery, Druva, Observe.ai, PubMatic, Unacademy, Postman and Snapdeal.
Web3-focused startups have been garnering a lot of investors’ attention for quite some time. As per Bain & Co’s report, investments in emerging technologies such as Web3 and cryptocurrency increased to over $500 million in 2021 from $20 million in the previous year.
In March, VCCircle reported that Lightspeed Venture Partners is betting big on Web3 startups.
Having invested in over seven crypto-related investments in India and Southeast Asia in the last five months, it is exploring more such investments, according to a Partner at the fund.
