Tag: startup funding india

  • BlissClub Funding: Singularity Backs Store Push

    BlissClub Funding: Singularity Backs Store Push

    BlissClub is a Bengaluru-based women’s activewear brand that sells functional apparel designed for Indian bodies and all-day movement. The latest BlissClub funding talks have reached advanced stages, with Singularity’s private equity arm expected to back a ₹200-250 crore round that could value the company at about ₹750 crore. Existing investors such as Elevation Capital and Eight Roads Ventures are also set to participate. The timing is hard to ignore: BlissClub has crossed roughly ₹250 crore in annualised revenue run rate after closing FY25 at ₹135 crore in revenue with a ₹20 crore loss. That’s a clear improvement from ₹92 crore revenue and ₹44 crore in losses in FY24. Founded in 2020 by Minu Margeret, the company is chasing a real consumer problem—women often still have to choose between fit, comfort, and performance when buying activewear in India.

    What is BlissClub and how does it work?

    At the product level, BlissClub is pretty straightforward. It sells activewear and adjacent everyday apparel through its own digital storefront and physical stores. Shoppers can browse by occasion, category, or fabric. On the site, that means activewear and citywear. It also includes travel wear, swimwear, sports bras, jackets, innerwear, bottoms, and tops—basically a wider wardrobe than the “leggings brand” label suggests.

    Its best-known products still do a lot of the brand storytelling. The Ultimate Leggings, for example, are built with BlissClub’s CloudSoft fabric and come with 4 pockets—2 side pockets and 2 invisible pockets—plus flatlock seams. That sounds like a small design choice. It isn’t. For a lot of shoppers, that’s the difference between workout clothing and something you’ll actually wear through the day.

    BlissClub has also spent real effort on fabric-led product development. Its assortment now includes proprietary fabric families such as CloudSoft, AirMelt, BareButter, RibSupreme, and AeroCool. The company frames BlissLabs as the R&D engine behind those materials. In plain English: it’s trying to own feel and stretch. Breathability and comfort are part of that too, instead of just owning an Instagram aesthetic.

    The customer experience changes in a simple way. Instead of buying generic gymwear and then living with bad fits, shallow pockets, or weather-unfriendly fabric, shoppers are pushed toward use-case-specific options. That includes training tops, flare pants, travel layers, humid-weather apparel, and size-inclusive fits from XS to 4XL. BlissClub’s products were priced between ₹799 and ₹2,999 in July 2025. That puts the brand in the “premium but still reachable” bucket rather than luxury.

    Who founded BlissClub and how has it grown?

    The founding story

    Minu Margeret started BlissClub in 2020 after a long stretch of personal frustration with women’s activewear. She was a regular gym-goer and a club-level Ultimate Frisbee player, and she’s spoken about how hard it was to find apparel in India that was technical enough for movement without feeling restrictive or badly fitted. She quit her role at PhonePe in December 2019, spent about 10 months in R&D talking to women and factories, and launched online during the Covid period with one hero product: black leggings.

    That first bet worked fast. Mint reported that the early leggings launch sold out in 3 weeks, which matters because it showed product pull before BlissClub had the scale or store network it has now. The company was bootstrapped initially with ₹15 lakh and started with a team of around 4-5 people.

    Why Minu had founder-market fit

    Margeret didn’t come from fashion school. That may have helped. She studied B.Com at Christ College, became a management accountant, worked at Goldman Sachs and Wipro, then did her MBA at the Indian School of Business in 2016 before spending time at Unilever, AB InBev, and PhonePe. That mix gave her finance discipline and consumer-brand exposure. It also gave her operator instincts before she ever learned apparel jargon.

    So her edge wasn’t “I’ve been in apparel forever.” It was closer to: I know the consumer pain, I understand brands, and I can build process around product. That’s a credible setup for a D2C activewear company, especially one trying to build its own fabric identity instead of reselling commodity basics.

    Traction, fundraising, and competition

    The company is no longer tiny. By July 2025, BlissClub had more than 80 employees and 15 brick-and-mortar stores after starting as an internet-first brand. It has reached roughly ₹250 crore in annualised revenue run rate, with FY25 revenue at ₹135 crore and losses down to ₹20 crore. That’s still loss-making, yes. But the direction is much better than FY24.

    Funding history tells the same story. BlissClub raised $15 million in Series A in May 2022 from Eight Roads Ventures and Elevation Capital, after an earlier seed round. Then it raised ₹33 crore in May 2025 with Elevation and Eight Roads again. The current round with Singularity would be its biggest since 2022 and would deepen support from investors that have already backed the company through multiple stages.

    Competition is real here. The source report names Cult.fit, Boldfit, and Cava, and BlissClub also runs into pressure from broader sportswear and fast-fashion buying habits. Its clearest point of difference is focus: women-first product design and size-inclusive fits. Fabric R&D and details like deep pockets and climate-aware construction add to that. That’s narrower than a mass-market athleisure play, but it’s also what investors seem to be backing.

    One detail from the fundraise chatter says a lot about the moment. Indian Startup News earlier reported that “over the past weeks, founder and CEO Minu has been meeting with potential investors in Bangalore,” which suggests this round wasn’t a passive inbound process. It looks like a deliberate push to raise a much larger cheque once growth and losses started moving in the right direction.

    Why does this BlissClub funding round matter?

    Because this isn’t just growth capital for more inventory. The reported use of funds is offline expansion, and that’s a major next step for any D2C apparel brand that wants to become a habit rather than a one-time online purchase. Stores let customers touch fabric and test fit. They can also buy across categories in one visit, which matters for a brand selling comfort and movement, not just a logo.

    It also matters because the round lands after a cleaner operating year. Plenty of consumer brands can manufacture top-line momentum by spending hard. What gets investor attention now is better revenue with less damage. BlissClub’s move from ₹44 crore in FY24 losses to ₹20 crore in FY25 losses gives the company a much better story to tell than “we’re growing, trust us.”

    There’s a brand ambition hidden inside this. BlissClub started with one hero product. The money appears aimed at turning that into a broader retail engine—more stores and more categories. It also gives the brand more chances to become an everyday wardrobe label instead of a leggings-led niche name. The risk is obvious too: offline retail can scale revenue fast, but it can also bring fixed costs back with a vengeance if store productivity slips.

    Why are investors betting on India’s activewear market now?

    The market tailwind is real. IMARC pegs India’s athleisure market at $13.88 billion in 2025 and expects it to reach $22.37 billion by 2034, with a 5.28% CAGR. Its India activewear estimate is also sizeable—$10.72 billion in 2025, rising to $17.41 billion by 2034. Those are big enough numbers to make room for specialist brands, not just giant multi-category players.

    Consumer behavior is shifting in ways that favor brands like this. Fitness culture is wider now, and casual dressing has become normal outside the gym. Fabric innovation is finally part of the buying conversation instead of a back-end detail. IMARC also notes that offline stores held 59% of India’s activewear distribution in 2025. That helps explain why BlissClub wants more physical retail rather than staying purely online.

    There’s another tailwind. Indian shoppers increasingly want apparel that crosses use cases—workout, travel, errands, maybe even office-adjacent wear. That’s where the line between activewear and everyday clothing starts to blur. It’s also where brands with strong fit and fabric discipline can build loyalty. Not every D2C brand can pull that off. But that’s the bet.

    What to watch after the BlissClub funding round

    The BlissClub funding story is really a test of conversion—from a product-loved internet brand into a scaled retail business that still feels product-obsessed. If the Singularity round closes on the reported terms, the next thing to watch won’t be the headline amount. It’ll be store rollout speed and repeat demand beyond hero items. It’ll also be whether BlissClub can keep tightening losses while it grows.

    Read how Kisah raised ₹35.9 Cr in a Series A led by Fireside Ventures to scale its modern ethnic wear business, expanding from a digital-first brand into an omnichannel retail player targeting Gen Z and millennial shoppers with affordable, occasion-led Indian outfits across men’s and kids’ categories.

    FAQ

    What is the latest BlissClub funding round?  

     BlissClub is in advanced talks to raise ₹200-250 crore from Singularity’s private equity arm at a reported valuation of around ₹750 crore. Existing backers including Elevation Capital and Eight Roads Ventures are also expected to join the round, which would make this the company’s biggest fundraise since 2022.

    How does BlissClub work as a women’s activewear brand?  

     BlissClub sells women’s functional apparel through its own online storefront and physical stores. Shoppers can browse by category, occasion, or fabric. Its range includes leggings, flare pants, sports bras, training tops, travel wear, and other basics, with signature materials such as CloudSoft and AirMelt and sizes going up to 4XL.

    Who founded BlissClub and why did she start it?  

     BlissClub was founded in 2020 by Minu Margeret. She started it after struggling to find performance-focused activewear that actually fit Indian women well, and she brought a mix of finance, consumer-brand, and operating experience from Goldman Sachs, Wipro, Unilever, AB InBev, and PhonePe before building the brand.

    Why is India’s activewear market attracting investors?  

     Because it’s already large and still expanding. IMARC estimates India’s activewear market was worth $10.72 billion in 2025 and could reach $17.41 billion by 2034, while athleisure was valued at $13.88 billion in 2025, driven by fitness adoption, casual dressing, fabric innovation, and a still-important offline retail channel.

  • Kisah funding lands ₹35.9 crore from Fireside

    Kisah funding lands ₹35.9 crore from Fireside

    Kisah is a Kolkata-based men’s and kids’ ethnic wear brand selling occasion-led Indian outfits for Gen Z and millennial shoppers.

    Ethnic wear still has a messy buying experience for younger customers. Design often feels dated. Discovery is fragmented, and prices can jump fast the minute a wedding enters the chat. The latest Kisah funding round brings in ₹35.9 crore in Series A capital. Fireside Ventures led the round as the company tries to turn a fast-growing digital label into a bigger omnichannel fashion business. The brand was founded in 2018 by Yash Sarawagi and Yashwi Ladasaria.

    What is Kisah and how does it sell ethnic wear?

    Kisah sells modern ethnic wear across men’s and kids’ categories, with its assortment centered on kurtas, sherwanis, Indo-Western outfits, and other occasion-focused styles aimed at younger buyers. The brand’s pitch isn’t traditional formalwear for older shoppers. It’s fashion-led Indian wear at more accessible price points, designed for weddings, festivities, and social occasions where customers still want something sharp but not overly ceremonial.

    The company began with a marketplace-first model, which gave it broad digital reach early on. That approach helped it learn what customers were buying across regions, price bands, and styles before pushing harder into direct-to-consumer channels and offline retail. Today, Kisah is moving toward an omnichannel setup instead of relying only on third-party marketplaces.

    That shift shows how the brand works. Online distribution helps Kisah test demand and move faster on design and merchandising. Offline presence matters because ethnic wear is still a touch-and-feel category for a lot of buyers, especially around fit, fabric, and occasion styling. Digital discovery pairs with physical confidence.

    Kisah isn’t trying to out-Amazon the big marketplaces on endless choice. It’s trying to win on curation and style relevance. The younger fashion point of view is central to that.

    Who founded Kisah and how has it scaled?

    The founding story

    Kisah was co-founded in 2018 by Yash Sarawagi and Yashwi Ladasaria in Kolkata. From day 1, the brand focused on high-fashion ethnic wear for Gen Z and millennial consumers rather than the older, more conventional menswear buyer that dominates a lot of the legacy market.

    That sounds simple. It isn’t.

    Because “young ethnic wear” in India can easily become either too costume-like or too plain. Kisah’s bet was that there was room in the middle—stylish enough to feel current, but still occasion-worthy.

    Why the founders fit this category

    Sarawagi is the company’s co-founder and CEO, and he has publicly framed the brand’s early growth as being powered by e-commerce reach and customer insight. Kisah’s transition from marketplace distribution into D2C and offline retail was shaped by what it learned online first.

    Ladasaria brings a background that maps more directly to the category. She has more than 9 years of experience across fashion and finance, and she studied at Sivnath Shastri College in Kolkata. It’s not a flashy founder résumé story. It is practical market fit for a fashion business that needs merchandising discipline as much as branding.

    Traction and early proof points

    Kisah has already put up numbers that make this round easier to understand. Revenue grew 65% year on year to ₹41.8 crore in FY25, up from ₹25.3 crore in FY24. Profit more than doubled to ₹2 crore in FY25.

    That changes the tone.

    Lots of consumer startups can show growth. Fewer can show growth with profits at this stage. Kisah is still small in absolute terms, but it’s no longer just a brand deck with wedding-season buzz.

    The fundraising details

    Kisah has kicked off its Series A round by raising ₹35.9 crore, or about $3.8 million. Its board approved the issue of 38,220 Series A preference shares at ₹9,393 apiece to complete the raise.

    Fireside Ventures is leading the round with ₹34 crore, and that money has already been infused. The remaining amount is set to come from individual investors. MoneyControl first reported the development.

    Entrackr estimates Kisah’s post-money valuation at about ₹211 crore. That marks a 70% jump from its pre-Series A round, when it raised ₹13 crore from Wow! Momo co-founder Sagar Daryani, along with Apoorv Salarpuria, Rahul Todi, Vinod Dugar, and Inflection Point Ventures.

    Where Kisah sits against rivals

    Kisah isn’t entering a quiet category. On one end, there are scaled ethnic-wear chains and large formal-occasion brands that already own mindshare. On the other, there are premium labels such as Tasva—the men’s Indian wear brand built by Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail with Tarun Tahiliani—which sits higher up the price and positioning ladder.

    Then there’s the real incumbent in India: local retail. Multi-brand stores and neighborhood boutiques still shape a huge chunk of ethnic wear buying. So do tailors.

    So where does Kisah fit? Right between aspiration and accessibility. It’s younger in design than traditional chains, less premium than designer-led labels, and more brand-driven than unorganized local alternatives. The kids’ ethnic wear angle helps too. It nudges the brand closer to family occasion spending rather than one-off menswear purchases.

    Why does Kisah funding matter now?

    This round matters because Kisah is making the most expensive jump in consumer retail—going from a digital-first label to a real omnichannel brand.

    That jump usually eats cash. Inventory gets broader. Offline expansion adds fixed costs. Brand building gets pricier. Returns, assortment planning, and seasonal merchandising get harder. A marketplace seller can stay relatively lean. A retail brand can’t.

    Kisah is attempting that transition after showing profitable growth, not while still searching for product-market fit. That gives Fireside a cleaner bet. This isn’t just a category punt on ethnic wear. It’s a bet that a younger fashion brand can turn online demand into a repeatable retail engine.

    Timing matters too. Series A money in fashion isn’t flowing to every D2C label anymore. Investors have become a lot less patient with vanity metrics. Kisah raising now suggests its numbers were strong enough to cut through that noise.

    Is India’s ethnic wear market big enough for Kisah?

    The short answer is yes.

    India’s ethnic wear market generated about $19.1 billion in revenue in 2023 and is projected to reach roughly $30.4 billion by 2030, with a 6.9% CAGR from 2024 to 2030. Offline remains the biggest channel, while online is the fastest-growing one. That split fits Kisah’s strategy almost perfectly.

    The broader apparel backdrop is also supportive. Redseer expects India’s apparel market to reach $130 billion to $150 billion by 2030, growing at 10% to 12% annually. Branded apparel is taking the majority of spend and expanding more than twice as fast as unbranded fashion. Ethnic wear is one of the categories that still benefits from assisted selling and physical trial. That’s another reason omnichannel brands keep getting built instead of pure-play online labels staying online forever.

    That doesn’t mean the category is easy. It means the market is large enough for new winners if they can handle design freshness and inventory discipline. Store economics matter too.

    Kisah funding now faces the real test

    The Kisah funding round is a strong signal, but it’s not the finish line.

    Now the brand has to prove that marketplace traction can turn into durable brand recall and that offline expansion won’t crush margins. It also has to show that occasion-led fashion can produce repeat demand outside peak wedding cycles.

    Read how CHOSEN raised $5M in a Series A led by Fireside Ventures to expand its dermatologist-led skincare line, focusing on clinically validated products for melanin-rich Indian skin while building R&D capabilities and personalized routines through guided discovery tools like its Routine Builder and Concern Analyser.

    FAQ

    What is Kisah funding round about?

     Kisah has started its Series A round with ₹35.9 crore in fresh capital. Fireside Ventures is leading the round, and the company’s post-money valuation is estimated at about ₹211 crore.

    How does Kisah sell its products? 

     Kisah sells fashion-led ethnic wear for men and kids through a mix of digital and physical channels. It started with a marketplace-first approach and is now building an omnichannel business around categories like kurtas, sherwanis, and Indo-Western occasion wear.

    Who founded Kisah? 

     Kisah was founded in 2018 by Yash Sarawagi and Yashwi Ladasaria in Kolkata. Sarawagi is the co-founder and CEO, while Ladasaria brings experience across fashion and finance.

    Is Kisah in a fast-growing market category? 

     Yes. India’s ethnic wear market is projected to grow to about $30.4 billion by 2030, while the larger apparel market is also expanding as branded fashion gains share from unorganized retail.

  • CHOSEN Skincare Raises $5M for India R&D Push

    CHOSEN Skincare Raises $5M for India R&D Push

    CHOSEN is a dermatologist-led skincare brand building topical products and nutraceuticals for melanin-rich Indian skin, and it has raised $5 million in a Series A round led by Fireside Ventures. The problem it’s chasing is simple but stubborn: a lot of Indian skincare buyers still end up with routines shaped by trend cycles or borrowed global formulas instead of products designed for local climate, pigmentation patterns, and skin-of-colour needs. Founded in 2020 by cosmetic dermatologist Dr Renita Rajan, CHOSEN will use the new capital for research and development, clinically validated product launches, its dermatologist-led Centre of Excellence, and hiring across teams.

    What is CHOSEN skincare and how does it work?

    CHOSEN skincare starts with guided discovery, not a giant catalog dump. A new customer can enter through a “Routine Builder” or a “Concern Analyser,” answer questions on skin, climate, and daily exposure, and get a suggested regimen in roughly 2 minutes. There’s also a product-and-concern matching flow for shoppers who already know what category they want.

    That matters because CHOSEN isn’t selling one hero cream and hoping the branding does the rest. The brand organizes its range around 4 ageing and skin-health domains that are especially relevant for Indian skin: pigmentation, texture, contour, and hair ageing. Its portfolio spans both topicals and ingestibles. That’s unusual for a young premium skincare brand, but it fits Dr Rajan’s broader skin-health framing.

    The product details are pretty specific. SAFESCREEN NEXGEN is positioned as an “exposome defence” sunscreen with SPF 80+ PA++++, using bemotrizinol, plant melanin, and ashwagandha. It’s marketed as protecting against UV, infrared, and blue light without a white cast. Sculpt Serum takes a different lane — CHOSEN calls it India’s first topical contouring serum with a published clinical study on submental fullness in Indian women. It’s built with DMAE, retinol, and OptiMSM for nightly use.

    So the before-and-after customer experience is less about “buy 10 actives and experiment” and more about a short guided intake and a narrower routine. The products are framed around clinically defined use cases. That’s a smart way to sell premium skincare in India right now. Consumers are more ingredient-aware, but also more confused than they were 5 years ago.

    Who founded CHOSEN skincare and why was it started?

    A clinic-built origin story

    CHOSEN was founded in 2020 by Dr Renita Rajan, and the company timeline ties the launch to a Chennai flagship plus the debut of its online store and 5 founding products. The brand didn’t begin as a generic D2C beauty play. In a 2026 profile, Rajan described building it after repeatedly seeing topical steroid damage, barrier dysfunction, and long-term pigmentation issues in practice — basically, too many patients arriving after using the wrong products for too long.

    Why Dr Renita Rajan had founder-market fit

    Rajan’s credibility here is real. She holds an MBBS, an MD in Dermatology, Venereology and Leprosy, and a DNB in Dermatology and Venereology. She trained at Christian Medical College, Vellore, worked as a postgraduate registrar and research associate there, and later served as an assistant professor at Sri Ramachandra University. Rajan also runs Render Skin & Hair in Chennai. She has published research, contributed to textbooks, and worked deeply in cosmetic dermatology and dermatosurgery.

    That background changes how you read CHOSEN. This isn’t a marketer reverse-engineering a category from Instagram demand. It’s a specialist trying to commercialize what she has seen in clinic for more than 20 years. That usually produces better product judgment. It doesn’t automatically guarantee mass-brand scale.

    Traction, early signals, and the new round

    CHOSEN has disclosed some useful operating signals. Its brand page lists 70K+ users, 50+ products, and 2,000+ doctors prescribing the range. The same timeline shows a community crossing 30K in 2021 and the SAFESCREEN launch in 2022. It also shows an expansion into dermatologist-focused IZONIS products in 2024 and the 2026 release of Sculpt Serum with a published 12-week study in Indian women.

    The fresh round is a $5 million Series A led by Fireside Ventures, with participation from BOLD — L’Oréal’s venture arm — and Alkemi Growth Capital. Angel investor Avnish Anand joined, along with practicing dermatologists including Chandan Asokan, KC Nischal, Punit Saraogi, Nishita Ranka, and Mikki Singh. Rajan called the round a validation of CHOSEN’s science-led, dermatologist-developed model and said it gives the company room to deepen R&D and bring more dermatologists into product development. It will also expand the evidence base around anti-ageing for Indian skin.

    Where CHOSEN sits against competitors

    The obvious competitive pressure comes from India’s newer science-backed skincare brands. The Derma Co, founded in 2020 under Honasa Consumer, is a much larger active-ingredient player with dermatologist-recommended positioning and broad category coverage. Fixderma comes from a more traditional dermaceutical lineage and emphasizes clinically proven improvement plus its own GMP-certified manufacturing base.

    CHOSEN is taking a tighter lane than either of those. Its differentiation is built around premium dermatologist leadership and products designed specifically for melanin-rich Indian skin. It also leans on exposome-based formulation thinking and clinical validation as a brand asset rather than a side note. The older alternative, frankly, is still a messy mix of imported formulas, over-the-counter problem solvers, and social-media-led routines that weren’t built for Indian conditions in the first place.

    Why are investors backing CHOSEN skincare now?

    This round isn’t just about adding more SKUs. It’s about funding a harder kind of consumer brand — one that spends on research, published evidence, dermatologist relationships, and specialist hiring instead of leaning only on influencer velocity. CHOSEN will use the money to strengthen R&D and expand its clinically validated pipeline. It will also scale its Centre of Excellence and add talent across functions. That’s expensive work. It also takes time.

    Fireside’s logic looks pretty clear. Varun Varma said the firm was drawn to CHOSEN’s mix of deep clinical rigor and a trust-led go-to-market. BOLD’s Samantha Etienne described the company as a science-led model anchored in a dermatologist network. Alkemi’s Alka Goel pointed to the doctor-led distribution flywheel and the unmet needs of skin of colour. Read together, it sounds like a bet that trust can become the moat — not just branding and not just formulation. Both have to work together.

    How big is India’s dermocosmetics market?

    The backdrop is large enough to matter. KPMG pegs India’s dermatology market at more than ₹16,000 crore in 2025, up from around ₹12,000 crore in 2021, with preventive skincare expected to be a major next leg of growth. A separate India skincare dermocosmetics forecast sees the market growing from $188.2 million in 2021 to $449.6 million by 2030. That implies a 10.2% CAGR.

    The demand mix is also shifting in CHOSEN’s favor. IMARC says facial care held a 42.5% revenue share in India’s skincare market in 2025, helped by stronger demand for targeted serums and sunscreens. Treatment products are part of that shift too. Put that next to rising consumer interest in preventive skincare and you get the basic answer to “why now?” People aren’t buying skincare only for cosmetics anymore. A lot more of them are buying it like a health category.

    What should you watch next for CHOSEN skincare?

    CHOSEN skincare now has enough capital to prove whether clinic credibility can scale into a durable premium consumer brand. The next thing to watch isn’t just product count. It’s whether the company can turn R&D and dermatologist prescribing into repeat purchase. Long-term brand trust is the other test, especially if it wants to avoid slipping into generic beauty marketing.

    Read how HealthFab raised ₹20 Cr in a Series A led by Atomic Capital to scale its reusable period underwear and expand into a broader menstrual wellness portfolio, aiming to move beyond disposable pads with sustainable, high-absorbency products like GoPadFree designed for comfort, reusability, and everyday convenience.

    FAQ

    What funding did CHOSEN raise?  

     CHOSEN raised $5 million in a Series A round announced on May 4, 2026. Fireside Ventures led the round, with participation from BOLD, Alkemi Growth Capital, angel investor Avnish Anand, and a group of practicing dermatologists.

    How does CHOSEN skincare work for customers?  

     CHOSEN uses a guided shopping flow that starts with a Routine Builder or a Concern Analyser, both designed to take under 2 minutes. Customers answer questions about skin, climate, and exposure, then get product suggestions tied to concerns like pigmentation, texture, contour, and hair ageing.

    Who is Dr Renita Rajan?  

     Dr Renita Rajan is a cosmetic dermatologist and the founder of CHOSEN, which she launched in 2020. She trained at Christian Medical College, Vellore, holds MD and DNB dermatology qualifications, taught at Sri Ramachandra University, and built her practice at Render Skin & Hair in Chennai before turning clinical insight into a consumer brand.

    Is CHOSEN a dermocosmetics brand or a regular beauty brand?  

     It sits much closer to dermocosmetics than to a standard beauty label. CHOSEN combines dermatologist-led product development and evidence-backed positioning. It also focuses on treatment-oriented categories, which places it alongside science-based Indian players such as The Derma Co and Fixderma in a market projected to reach $449.6 million in India by 2030.

  • HealthFab Funding: ₹20 Cr to Build Beyond Period Panties

    HealthFab Funding: ₹20 Cr to Build Beyond Period Panties

    HealthFab is a Bengaluru startup that sells reusable period underwear and other menstrual wellness products. The latest HealthFab funding round brings in ₹20 crore in Series A capital led by Atomic Capital, as Indian consumers slowly look beyond disposable pads for more comfortable, lower-waste options. Founded in 2019 by Kiriti Acharjee, Sourav Chakrabarty, and Satyajit Chakraborty, the company now wants to turn a single breakout product into a much broader period-care business.

    What does HealthFab actually sell?

    HealthFab’s core product is GoPadFree, a reusable period panty built like regular underwear. It uses a moisture-wicking top layer, a super-absorbent microfiber core, a breathable leak-barrier layer, and a soft cotton body fabric. Customers pick between Heavy and Ultra flow variants, wear it without an extra pad, then rinse, wash, and reuse it for up to 2 years. The product is BIS-certified, PFAS-free, and protected by an Indian patent.

    The customer journey is simple. You buy based on flow level, wear it through the day or overnight, rinse it after use, hand-wash or machine-wash it with mild detergent, and hang it dry. Heavy is positioned for medium-to-heavy days. Ultra is meant for super-heavy flow and offers up to 6-pad-equivalent absorbency.

    The product line doesn’t stop there. HealthFab also sells disposable period panties and GoPainFree period pain relief cream. That gives it a way to serve customers who aren’t ready to switch fully to reusable period care on day 1. It already distributes through its own site and large marketplaces. Quick-commerce channels include Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Meesho, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto.

    This isn’t just a “green” product story. It’s a direct-to-consumer period-care brand trying to turn one functional item into a habit-driven monthly purchase cycle — and eventually a wider women’s wellness basket.

    Who founded HealthFab and why did they start it?

    The founding story

    HealthFab started after the three founders saw women in their own families struggling with periods, especially when restrooms were limited and safe disposal wasn’t easy. That pushed them toward a reusable, leak-proof underwear format after months of product research and user testing. It’s a practical origin story. Less “category vision,” more “this problem is right in front of us.”

    Do the founders have market fit?

    Kiriti Acharjee is now the company’s CEO, and Crunchbase identifies him as an Annamalai University alumnus. Sourav Chakrabarty studied electrical and electronics engineering at Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology. Satyajit Chakraborty came from a very different track. He founded the gaming studio Flying Robot Studios in 2012 and later co-founded SYV Games in 2023.

    That’s not the usual femtech-founder resume. But it helps explain why HealthFab has leaned into product design and consumer education. D2C execution matters here. One founder brings operating leadership, another has an engineering background, and Chakraborty has prior company-building experience in product-led businesses. The mix is unconventional. It’s also probably useful.

    Traction, fundraising, and the shape of the business

    HealthFab serves more than 5 lakh users today and wants to scale that base to 5 million over the next 3 years. It has also said revenue has grown 3x year on year, while earlier reporting around its 2025 pre-Series A round said it had crossed 3 lakh customers and was growing revenue at roughly 2.5x to 3x annually. ET reported that revenue rose from ₹70 lakh in FY21 to ₹10.6 crore in FY25, though losses widened to about ₹3.3 crore as the company kept spending on expansion.

    Atomic Capital led this Series A, with participation from existing investor Mistry Ventures, and the round takes total funding to nearly $3.7 million. Before this, HealthFab raised $1 million in a pre-Series A round in February 2025 led by Mistry Ventures. BeyondSeed, Thrive Ventures, and angel investors Anupam Mittal, Aman Gupta, Vineeta Singh, and Peyush Bansal joined in. That followed a $336K seed round in 2022 led by BeyondSeed. The startup also got a visibility boost from appearing on *Shark Tank India*.

    How HealthFab stacks up against Nua, Sirona, Sanfe, and others

    HealthFab isn’t selling into an empty category. The source set of rivals includes Soothe, PeeSafe, Sanfe, Nua, Sirona, and Plush. The real incumbent alternative is still the same old one: mass-market disposable pads from brands like Whisper and Stayfree. That’s the harder fight, honestly. Startups aren’t just competing with each other here. They’re competing with habit.

    HealthFab differentiates through format and channel strategy. Its reusable period underwear sits between sanitary pads and higher-learning-curve alternatives like menstrual cups. The company is now pushing beyond pure D2C into quick commerce, general trade, and offline distribution. That broadens the pitch from eco-conscious users to convenience-led users. It’s a much bigger market. Investors are backing that shift, not just the underwear SKU.

    How does HealthFab funding change the company?

    This round matters because it gives HealthFab permission to stop behaving like a one-product brand. Management has said the money will be used to expand across pain, energy, fatigue, and sleep-related period wellness. It also plans to push harder on quick commerce, general trade, manufacturing capacity, and offline presence. That’s a big move. It turns the company from “period panty startup” into “monthly cycle-care brand” — at least on paper.

    That broader roadmap is what investors are buying into. Atomic Capital didn’t lead a Series A just to help a niche D2C label sell more underwear online. The bet is that once a customer trusts HealthFab for one intimate, recurring-use product, the company can cross-sell adjacent products with better retention and a higher lifetime value. A stronger venture story.

    There’s still risk. Consumer health brands love to say they’re becoming platforms. A lot of them just become cluttered catalogs. HealthFab now has to prove it can widen the basket without losing the clarity that made GoPadFree work in the first place.

    What market is HealthFab funding betting on?

    The backdrop is real. Grand View Research pegs India’s femtech market at $1.23 billion in 2023 and projects it to reach about $3.88 billion by 2030, with growth near 17.8% annually. That’s a fast-growing category by any standard. Consumer products are part of that story too, not just apps and devices.

    HealthFab’s own slice of the market is smaller but still substantial. ET cited the Indian menstrual hygiene market at roughly ₹12,000 crore, still dominated by sanitary pads, with reusable products and wellness-led period care only gradually gaining adoption. That last bit matters. The category is growing, but switching behavior is still early. Which means there’s room for breakout brands — and a lot of education cost.

    Investor interest is building already. Nua raised ₹35 crore in February 2025, and Plush picked up ₹40 crore in June 2025. So HealthFab’s Series A doesn’t look like an outlier. It looks like another signal that women’s wellness in India is finally being treated as a category with room for specialized brands, not just an FMCG afterthought.

    Final take on HealthFab funding

    The clearest read on HealthFab funding is this: investors think reusable period underwear can be the entry point, not the end product. The company has a live product, real user numbers, and stronger distribution than a lot of early D2C brands. It also has a roadmap that reaches into a much broader period-wellness market. The next question is whether HealthFab can turn that trust from 5 lakh users into repeat purchases across new categories without losing focus.

    Read how Tsavorite raised $5M from Pavestone to build a full-stack AI compute platform combining custom silicon and software, designed to reduce data movement, cut costs, and deliver efficient training and inference across edge systems, enterprises, and data centres as demand for AI infrastructure continues to surge.

    FAQ

    What is the latest HealthFab funding round?  

     HealthFab has raised ₹20 crore in a Series A round led by Atomic Capital. The round was announced on May 4, 2026, and included participation from existing investor Mistry Ventures, taking the startup’s total funding to nearly $3.7 million.

    How does HealthFab’s GoPadFree period panty work?  

     GoPadFree works like regular underwear but uses multiple stitched layers to wick moisture and absorb flow. It also blocks leaks. HealthFab sells Heavy and Ultra variants, says the product can replace pads or tampons for many users, and states each pair can be washed and reused for up to 2 years.

    Who are the founders of HealthFab?  

     HealthFab was founded in 2019 by Kiriti Acharjee, Sourav Chakrabarty, and Satyajit Chakraborty. Acharjee is the CEO, Chakrabarty has an engineering background from SMIT, and Chakraborty previously built Flying Robot Studios before joining the period-care business.

    What market does HealthFab operate in?  

     HealthFab sits at the intersection of menstrual hygiene, women’s wellness, and India’s broader femtech market. That market generated about $1.23 billion in revenue in 2023 and is projected to reach roughly $3.88 billion by 2030, while India’s menstrual hygiene segment alone is estimated at around ₹12,000 crore.

  • Tsavorite Raises $5M for AI Compute Platform

    Tsavorite Raises $5M for AI Compute Platform

    Tsavorite builds an AI compute platform that combines custom silicon and software to run training and inference across edge systems and enterprise deployments. It also targets data centres. In May 2026, the California- and Bengaluru-based startup raised $5 million, or about ₹46.6 crore, from Hyderabad VC firm Pavestone as demand for AI infrastructure keeps outrunning available compute. The bottleneck now isn’t just model talent — it’s getting affordable, efficient hardware in the right place. Founded in 2023 by Shalesh Thusoo, Supriya Madan, Guntram Wolski, Sarvagya Kochak, and Shirish Seetharam, Tsavorite is trying to attack that problem with a full-stack architecture instead of another GPU-dependent workaround.

    What is Tsavorite’s AI compute platform and how does it work?

    Tsavorite’s AI compute platform starts with its Omni Processing Unit, or OPU — a chip architecture that pulls together compute, memory, and connectivity in one system so AI workloads don’t keep bouncing data across separate components. The company pairs that with unified memory. It also uses its MultiPlexus fabric, an interconnect that runs from die to rack and keeps data closer to compute. That matters because wasted data movement is where a lot of AI cost and power burn shows up.

    For developers, the more practical piece is TAOS, Tsavorite’s software stack. It’s CUDA-compatible and PyTorch-first. It supports existing tools like vLLM, Triton, Hugging Face, Ray, and Kubernetes, which means customers can move training, inference, and fine-tuning workloads without rewriting code or getting trapped inside a proprietary toolchain. That’s a much stronger pitch than “new chip, new pain.”

    The company is packaging that architecture in different formats. Helix-M is aimed at edge and on-prem use cases like robotics and local agentic AI. Helix-D is a desktop-scale system for developers and enterprise teams that want high throughput without building a server farm. Helix-R is the rack-scale version for larger deployments, linking systems into a single compute domain. Tsavorite says the stack can cut cost and power by up to 90% in datacentre and cloud settings. That number will matter only when production systems are out in the field.

    Who founded Tsavorite and why are they credible builders?

    A company built across Milpitas and Bengaluru

    Tsavorite was founded in 2023 with parallel operations in Milpitas, California, and Bengaluru, India. The setup isn’t cosmetic. Its India design centre is central to the hardware, software, and system-level work behind the platform, which lines up with the startup’s broader bet on locally built AI infrastructure rather than imported compute alone.

    The founding team spans silicon, systems, software, and commercialization. Thusoo is founder and CEO. Madan is co-founder and chief development officer. Wolski is co-founder and COO. Kochak leads business development. Seetharam runs software. That spread makes sense for a company trying to ship chips and an orchestration layer at the same time. It’s hard.

    The founders aren’t new to this problem

    Thusoo previously co-founded Tanzanite Silicon Solutions and earlier worked at Intel as a senior director focused on extreme compute processors. Madan also co-founded Tanzanite and spent 25 years at Intel working on high-speed CPUs and accelerators for HPC and AI workloads. Seetharam brings the software side: before Tsavorite, he held engineering leadership roles at Synopsys, Cisco, and AMD, with deep experience in compilers and developer tools.

    That background matters because Tsavorite isn’t selling a thin software wrapper on top of rented cloud GPUs. It’s trying to build new silicon and a new interconnect. It also needs a developer stack that still feels familiar enough to adopt. You don’t pull that off with a team learning semiconductors on the fly.

    Early traction, product status, and the new capital

    The startup isn’t fully commercial yet, but it isn’t at slide-deck stage either. Prototype systems are already in customer evaluation, and it has multiple design-ins. Production silicon plus Helix enterprise appliances are targeted for 2026. Tsavorite also says it has secured more than $100 million in pre-orders from customers that include Fortune Global 500 companies, sovereign cloud providers, and systems integrators across the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Its LinkedIn headcount sits in the 51-200 range. Big enough to suggest this is a real build program, not a lab project.

    Pavestone’s $5 million will go into product development and expansion. For Tsavorite, that’s less about marketing spend and more about getting from promising architecture to shipped infrastructure. That’s the ugly middle in semiconductor startups — where interest is high, engineering bills are higher, and customers start asking for proof instead of roadmaps.

    How does Tsavorite compare with existing alternatives?

    The default alternative today is still the familiar AI server stack: separate accelerators, memory pools, networking layers, and plenty of expensive integration work. Tsavorite’s pitch is that a more tightly integrated system can deliver better efficiency. It also promises better performance density and a smoother software path for teams already living in CUDA and PyTorch. The company positions the OPU as something that improves as systems get larger, instead of suffering the utilization drop common in large GPU clusters.

    In India, the surrounding field is heating up fast. Morphing Machines, another fabless semiconductor startup, recently closed its ₹80 crore Series A to push its first production chip toward pilot deployments. On the infrastructure side, Tata’s tie-up with OpenAI is building AI-ready capacity starting at 100 MW with plans to scale to 1 GW, while L&T’s Vyoma has launched an AI-first sovereign cloud platform. So Tsavorite is entering a market that suddenly cares a lot about domestic compute. It still has to prove that its full-stack architecture can ship on time and outperform easier-to-buy alternatives.

    Why does this AI compute platform funding round matter?

    This round matters because Tsavorite is at the point where architecture has to become product. The company already has early customer evaluation, pre-orders, and a public roadmap for 2026 silicon. Pavestone’s money gives it more room to tighten that path — especially around productization, software maturity, and customer expansion.

    It also matters for Indian buyers. A lot of enterprise and public-sector AI demand now comes with awkward requirements around latency, sovereignty, and power efficiency. Tsavorite’s cross-border structure — U.S. headquarters with a major Bengaluru design centre — gives it a shot at serving that demand with something more localized than imported black-box infrastructure and more ambitious than a pure datacentre lease story.

    Frankly, investors don’t back chip companies on vibes. They back them when there’s a credible team, a painful technical bottleneck, and some proof that customers are willing to line up early. Tsavorite has all 3. What it doesn’t have yet is mass deployment.

    How big is the market for AI compute infrastructure in India?

    The macro setup is huge. Grand View Research estimates the global AI chipset market was worth $56.82 billion in 2023 and could reach $323.14 billion by 2030. JLL, meanwhile, says global datacentre capacity is expected to almost double from 103 GW to 200 GW by 2030, with AI workloads making up half of all capacity by then. That tells you where the money is going — into compute, power, and the systems that make both usable.

    India’s part of that buildout is getting more serious. JLL has projected the country’s datacentre industry would add 791 MW of capacity by 2026 and attract about $5.7 billion in investment. At the policy layer, the IndiaAI Mission was approved with a ₹10,000 crore outlay, and by February 2026 the government said more than 38,000 GPUs were available on the shared compute portal at prices starting around ₹65 an hour. That doesn’t solve the compute shortage. It does show that AI infrastructure has turned into national industrial policy, not just a tech procurement issue.

    Tsavorite’s timing lines up with that shift. India is seeing local model efforts from players like Sarvam AI and BharatGen, while companies such as Tata and L&T are moving deeper into sovereign cloud and datacentre capacity. As those layers thicken, a startup building the silicon-and-software middle becomes a lot more relevant.

    The takeaway on Tsavorite’s AI compute platform

    Tsavorite has raised a relatively modest round for a very expensive category, but the company isn’t trying to win by spending like a hyperscaler. Its thesis is that smarter architecture can beat brute-force scaling on cost, power, and deployment flexibility. If that holds up in installs, this AI compute platform could become one of the more interesting pieces of India’s homegrown AI stack. The next thing to watch is simple: whether 2026 brings working production systems that turn those pre-orders into shipped revenue.

    Read how Aurm raised ₹42 Cr in a Series A led by Earth Fund and Sattva Ventures to expand its network of automated lockers and app-based vaults, aiming to replace traditional bank lockers with more accessible, 24/7 secure storage across residential and commercial spaces in India.

    FAQ

    What funding did Tsavorite raise in 2026? 

     Tsavorite raised $5 million, or about ₹46.6 crore, from Hyderabad-based VC firm Pavestone in May 2026. The capital is earmarked for faster product development and a broader market footprint as the company pushes toward commercial AI infrastructure deployments.

    How does Tsavorite’s AI compute platform work? 

     It works by pairing the Omni Processing Unit with unified memory, the MultiPlexus interconnect fabric, and TAOS software so AI workloads can run with less data movement and less code migration. The platform is designed to support training, inference, and fine-tuning across edge boxes, workstation-class systems, and rack-scale deployments.

    Who are the founders of Tsavorite? 

     Tsavorite was founded in 2023 by Shalesh Thusoo, Supriya Madan, Guntram Wolski, Sarvagya Kochak, and Shirish Seetharam. The core team brings experience from Intel, Tanzanite Silicon Solutions, Synopsys, Cisco, AMD, and Google-adjacent engineering circles, which is a pretty strong fit for a chip-and-software company.

    Is Tsavorite part of India’s sovereign AI infrastructure push? 

     Yes — that’s basically the market tailwind behind the story. India is expanding shared GPU access under the IndiaAI Mission, while Tata and L&T are building local AI datacentre and sovereign cloud capacity, and Tsavorite sits in the middle of that stack by working on the compute architecture itself.

  • Aurm Raises ₹42 Cr for Automated Lockers Push

    Aurm Raises ₹42 Cr for Automated Lockers Push

    Aurm builds automated lockers and secure vault rooms inside gated communities, corporate campuses, and partner bank locations so customers can store valuables closer to where they live and work. The Bengaluru startup has raised ₹42 Cr ($4.4 Mn) in a Series A round led by Earth Fund and Sattva Ventures, with participation from angel investors. India still has a basic access problem in physical locker infrastructure, and Aurm is betting the answer isn’t another bank branch. It’s a distributed network of secure vaults. Founded in 2023 by Ganesh Balakrishnan and Vijay Arisetty, the company is trying to build an alternative to the old bank-locker model.

    What do Aurm’s automated lockers actually do?

    Here’s the simple version: Aurm lets a customer sign up through its app, complete KYC, choose a plan, set access priority, visit the vault, and retrieve the safe without depending on branch timings or staff intervention. Its app flow, as shown in the iOS listing, includes account creation and society onboarding. It also covers plan purchase, priority access, vault visits, and safe retrieval.

    The physical setup is more than a row of lockers. Aurm builds reinforced steel-and-concrete strong rooms, usually inside residential clubhouses or similar shared spaces, and wraps them with active surveillance. Layered intrusion detection is part of the setup. The system monitors smoke, heat, vibration, and even seismic activity. The network is isolated with outbound-only monitoring and strict device whitelisting.

    That changes the customer experience in an obvious way. Instead of waiting months for a bank locker that may be too far away and available only during banking hours, the user gets 24/7 access closer to home. Aurm’s facilities also come with insurance coverage of up to ₹25 lakh. In this category, safety is the whole product.

    Aurm isn’t just selling security hardware. It’s selling convenience wrapped in compliance. Certain items are barred, and users go through KYC before access. The vaults are designed to run autonomously rather than as staff-heavy branches. It looks less like a premium amenity and more like a new kind of locker infrastructure.

    Who founded Aurm and why are these automated lockers different?

    The founding story

    Aurm was started in 2023. The funding announcement identifies Ganesh Balakrishnan and Vijay Arisetty as the founders, while earlier reporting on the company’s launch also named Suraj HS and Pratap Chandana as part of the founding team. Later interviews identify Arisetty as CEO and Chandana as CTO. That suggests a broader founding bench than the short funding write-up captures.

    The idea didn’t come out of nowhere. Arisetty has described his own frustration with getting a bank locker that was both available and conveniently located, and that experience shaped Aurm’s design choices. Closer access. Round-the-clock availability. No dependence on a branch manager. Balakrishnan framed the company early on as a response to the shortage of secure storage options for affluent Indians buying and holding physical valuables.

    Why the founders have real market fit

    Balakrishnan is best known as the cofounder of Flatheads, the sneaker startup he launched in 2018. Flatheads was later acquired by Styched in July 2023, which doesn’t make him a vault expert. But it does mean he’s already been through the startup build-sell-reset cycle once.

    Arisetty is the more obvious category fit. Before Aurm, he cofounded MyGate in 2016 and helped build it into one of India’s biggest community-management platforms. MyGate now serves 27K+ societies and 5M+ residents, which matters because Aurm’s best distribution channel is exactly that kind of dense urban housing cluster. Arisetty also spent 10 years as an Indian Air Force helicopter pilot. He studied at ISB Hyderabad and worked at Goldman Sachs before becoming an entrepreneur.

    That mix is unusually useful here. One founder has built a consumer brand. Another has deep access to the residential communities where Aurm wants to install vaults. The operating problem sits at the intersection of security, real estate, and urban convenience.

    Early traction, fundraise, and what comes with it

    Aurm had engaged more than 1,000 potential customers and multiple developers during early deployments before this round. The company is already live in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam, which suggests the pilots have moved beyond slideware. The startup’s standard facility footprint is about 300 sq. ft. and can hold up to 300 lockers.

    The company has also cut locker-infrastructure setup costs by about 25% so far. That matters because the model only works if Aurm can make distributed vault buildouts cheaper than the branch-heavy format it’s trying to replace. The new ₹42 Cr Series A is meant to speed up that rollout across residential complexes, corporate campuses, and bank branches.

    Competition and market positioning

    Aurm isn’t alone, but the category is still thin. MySafe India has launched a standalone automated safe-deposit facility in Gurugram with robotic systems and 24/7 biometric access, while banks such as ICICI have experimented with fully automated locker formats under products like Smart Vault. The source article also names Autovault as a rival targeting institutions and banks.

    The difference is where Aurm wants to sit. MySafe looks more like a dedicated vault destination. Bank-run automated lockers still live inside bank infrastructure. Aurm is trying to wedge itself in between — inside the places people already frequent, with banks and developers as distribution partners. It shifts lockers from a branch product to a proximity product.

    Why does Aurm’s ₹42 Cr round matter?

    This round is really about distribution, not brand building.

    Hardware businesses burn capital on deployment, compliance, monitoring, physical security, and site activation long before they look elegant on a spreadsheet. So when Aurm says it wants to expand across residential projects, office campuses, and bank branches, that’s not a vague growth line. It means vault construction and integrations. It also means approvals and a much wider ops footprint.

    The investors also make sense for the shape of the business. In the funding announcement, Arisetty said, “This partnership allows us to leverage the deep domain expertise in the build environment and urban infrastructure of Earth Fund and Sattva Ventures.” That’s the clue here. Aurm doesn’t just need fintech-style adoption. It needs help getting inserted into buildings.

    For customers, the upside is direct. If Aurm can turn pilots into repeatable rollouts, locker access becomes less dependent on legacy bank economics and more tied to where dense, affluent users already are. That’s a better fit for urban India than asking banks to treat lockers like a core profit center.

    Why is India ready for automated lockers?

    The demand side is hard to ignore. India held 34,600 tonnes of gold as of June 2025 and accounted for nearly 26% of global gold demand on a trailing four-quarter basis. This is still a country where families hold real physical value in jewelry and bullion, not just financial products on a screen.

    The infrastructure side is changing too. RBI’s 2023 circular pushed banks to execute revised locker agreements by December 31, 2023, part of a wider tightening around how locker services are run and documented. That doesn’t create supply by itself. But it does show that locker access and liability became important enough to need regulatory attention.

    Then there’s the urban form factor. RedSeer estimates that digitized community-management platform adoption in India could rise from about 25% — roughly 40K communities today — to more than 40%, or 70K+ communities, by FY2031. That’s a big deal for Aurm because its product works best when secure access, resident identity, and dense housing all sit in one place.

    So the timing isn’t random. More wealth is being stored physically. More Indians are living in gated clusters. The places where Aurm wants to install vaults are becoming more software-managed, which makes embedded security infrastructure easier to sell and operate.

    What to watch next for Aurm’s automated lockers

    Aurm’s pitch is strong because it attacks a real inconvenience with a product people instantly understand. But this won’t be won by clever branding or a slick app alone. The real test is whether its automated lockers can keep utilization high enough and incident rates low enough. Partnerships also need to stay sticky enough to justify rolling this model city by city.

    Better density matters.

    Read how GobbleCube raised a $15M Series A led by Susquehanna Venture Capital to help consumer brands detect revenue leaks and unify sales, pricing, inventory, and media decisions with an AI-powered operating layer across ecommerce and quick-commerce channels.

    FAQ

    What funding did Aurm raise?

     Aurm raised ₹42 Cr, or about $4.4 Mn, in a Series A round. Earth Fund and Sattva Ventures led the round, and angel investors also participated. The money is meant to expand Aurm’s vault network across housing societies, office campuses, and bank-linked locations.

    How do Aurm’s automated lockers work? 

     Aurm’s customer flow starts in the app, where users can create an account, onboard their society, buy a plan, and schedule or prioritize access before visiting the vault. On the infrastructure side, the company combines a strong-room setup with sensors and surveillance. It also uses KYC checks and insurance-backed access rather than the old bank-counter model.

    Who founded Aurm? 

     Aurm was launched in 2023 by Ganesh Balakrishnan and Vijay Arisetty, according to the funding announcement. Earlier coverage of the startup’s formation also included Suraj HS and Pratap Chandana in the founding team, with Arisetty later identified as CEO and Chandana as CTO.

    Is Aurm a fintech company or a security infrastructure startup? 

     It sits in between, but security infrastructure is probably the cleaner label. Aurm works with banks and real estate developers, yet the core product is a physical network of secure vaults and safe deposit lockers placed inside high-density urban properties.

  • GobbleCube AI Platform Raises $15M for Global Push

    GobbleCube AI Platform Raises $15M for Global Push

    GobbleCube builds software that helps consumer brands find revenue leaks and act faster across ecommerce and quick-commerce channels. The GobbleCube AI platform has raised $15 million in Series A funding, led by Susquehanna Venture Capital, at a moment when brands are drowning in fragmented marketplace data and wasting money because sales, pricing, inventory, and media decisions still sit in separate tools. Founded in 2022 by former Blinkit executives Manas Gupta, Srikumar Nair, and Nitesh Jindal, the startup is trying to turn that mess into an answer-first operating layer for brand teams. The fresh capital will go into stronger AI, international expansion, and hiring as the company pushes deeper into the US, China, and Southeast Asia.

    What is the GobbleCube AI platform and how does it work?

    The GobbleCube AI platform pulls together marketplace sales, stock-on-hand data, purchase orders, invoicing, discounts, visibility spends, search ranking, competitor pricing, and availability data. It maps all of that into one consistent layer across channels and locations. Its attribution and prioritization logic then tries to answer a much harder question than a normal dashboard does: what exactly is hurting sales right now, who needs to act, and which action matters first. That’s the real pitch. Not more charts. Fewer dead ends.

    The product is now split into clear modules. Gobbs Edge tracks what’s driving or dragging sales through pricing, visibility, and availability signals. Gobbs Boost handles goal-based campaign automation. It adapts to stock, competition, and performance in real time. Gobbs Flow follows the availability chain from depot to dark store. Gobbs Discover looks for micro-category trends and competitor moves that can shape launches and assortment bets.

    For customers, a lot of ugly manual work disappears. Brand teams no longer have to reconcile different SKU names from Amazon, Blinkit, Zepto, or Flipkart. They don’t have to patch together email attachments and exports, then spend hours figuring out whether a sales dip came from a stockout, a listing issue, bad discounting, or wasted ad spend. In GobbleCube’s customer stories, teams end up working from one daily view of dark-store penetration, stock levels, days of inventory, share of voice, and hyperlocal demand signals instead of bouncing between spreadsheets and platform dashboards.

    There’s real engineering under the hood. GobbleCube replaced Cube.js with an in-house analytics engine called Antman, built in Go on top of PostgreSQL and ClickHouse. The team says that shift made the system 20x faster, helped it handle production traffic beyond 1,000 requests per minute, and improved the low-latency decision paths needed for AI agents and near-real-time recommendations. It’s not magic. But it makes the “agentic AI” claim sound less like brochure language and more like infrastructure work.

    Who built the GobbleCube AI platform?

    The founding story

    GobbleCube was founded in 2022 in Gurugram by Manas Gupta, Srikumar Nair, and Nitesh Jindal. The founders weren’t coming at the problem from the outside. They’d already spent 7+ years inside Blinkit, where they led category, engineering, and data functions and worked closely with more than 500 brands. That matters because GobbleCube’s product is built around the daily operational pain those brands kept hitting on digital commerce channels.

    Gupta’s own background is a little less standard for a commerce SaaS founder. He has described growing up in a small town, studying at IIT and IIM, then working in investment banking and trading before joining Grofers, which later became Blinkit. Nair brought deep operating exposure from the Grofers-Blinkit years. Jindal handled the technology side that now sits at the center of GobbleCube’s product stack. It fits.

    Why this team fits the problem

    The founders seem to understand better than many broader ecommerce software players how messy quick commerce gets at the hyperlocal level. A product can be winning in one city and invisible in another. A campaign can be live while stock is low. A listing can look fine nationally and still be broken in specific dark stores. GobbleCube’s “answer-first” framing comes straight out of that operating reality. As Gupta put it, “We’ve designed our AI models to identify the most important problems and act on them.”

    Traction, fundraising, and the competition

    Traction arrived fast. GobbleCube came out of beta in September 2024. By July 2025, the company had gone from $0 to more than $2 million in ARR and from 0 to 200+ brands in the 9 months after leaving private beta. With this latest Series A announcement, that customer base has grown to 400+ brands across enterprise and D2C, including 45 large consumer goods companies such as HUL, Nivea, Tata Consumer Products, ITC, Godrej, Beiersdorf, MTR, L’Oréal, and Hershey’s. The startup says revenue grew 10x over the past year.

    The cap table filled out in stages. GobbleCube raised $1.9 million in an early round led by Kae Capital in March 2024. Then it raised a $3.5 million pre-Series A round in 2025 backed by InfoEdge Ventures and Kae Capital. It has now added a $15 million Series A led by Susquehanna Venture Capital with participation from InfoEdge and Kae. That takes total funding to more than $20 million. The company will use the new money for AI product development, hiring, and international expansion, while also deepening its reach across 30+ digital marketplaces in India, MENA, and LATAM.

    Competition is real, and it’s not coming from just one angle. CommerceIQ sells a much broader retail ecommerce management platform. It ties together sales, advertising, and supply chain automation. 42Signals focuses on digital shelf analytics, pricing, competitor monitoring, and voice-of-customer signals. Saras Pulse leans on AI-ready datasets, dashboards, and 200+ connectors for omnichannel brands. Then there are younger players like Dcluttr, plus the old incumbent setup most brands still use: spreadsheets, exports, BI tools, and platform category managers trying to patch everything together by hand. GobbleCube is betting that quick-commerce brands want something narrower, more hyperlocal, and more action-oriented than a generic analytics suite.

    Why GobbleCube’s Series A matters

    This round matters because GobbleCube is trying to graduate from analytics software into operating software. That’s a much bigger ambition. If the product can move from “here’s the problem” to “here’s the action, and we can execute parts of it for you,” it becomes much stickier inside a brand organization. That’s likely what Susquehanna is buying into.

    The geography plan is also telling. India gave GobbleCube the right training ground because quick commerce is brutally data-heavy and highly localized. Expansion into the US, China, and Southeast Asia means the company now has to prove its model can survive different marketplace structures, data-sharing norms, and retail behavior. That won’t be easy. Still, the fact that it already operates across India, MENA, and LATAM suggests this isn’t a pure India-only product story anymore.

    How big is the market GobbleCube is chasing?

    Forecasts vary a lot because some reports talk about narrow e-retail GMV while others use a much broader ecommerce definition. Even with that caveat, the direction is obvious. A Bain-Flipkart estimate published through IBEF says India’s e-retail market could reach $170 billion to $190 billion in GMV by 2030, up from about $60 billion in 2024, with more than 270 million online shoppers already active. The same estimate says quick commerce already accounts for around 10% of total e-retail GMV and 70% to 75% of e-grocery GMV. It’s expected to grow at more than 40% annually.

    The broader digital commerce view is even larger. Some market forecasts put Indian ecommerce near $300 billion by 2030, while the source article for this news pegs the opportunity at $400 billion and sees 10-minute delivery alone becoming a $35 billion to $40 billion market by then. Whatever number you pick, the structural shift is the same: more consumer brands are selling across marketplaces where pricing, assortment, availability, and search visibility can change by city, hour, and platform. That creates demand for software like GobbleCube.

    What does the GobbleCube AI platform need to prove next?

    GobbleCube has money, traction, and a product that sounds more grounded than a lot of AI startup pitches.

    Now it has to prove that the GobbleCube AI platform can become daily decision software for global consumer brands, not just a very smart analytics layer. Watch the execution piece. If the agentic layer starts owning real ad, pricing, and inventory actions, this gets a lot more interesting.

    Read how Pillar raised a $20M seed led by Andreessen Horowitz to replace spreadsheets and broker calls with an AI-powered commodity hedging platform built for businesses that can’t afford a full trading desk.

    FAQ

    What funding did GobbleCube raise?

    GobbleCube raised $15 million in a Series A round announced on April 15, 2026. Susquehanna Venture Capital led the round, and existing backers InfoEdge Ventures and Kae Capital also participated, taking the startup’s total funding to more than $20 million.

    How does the GobbleCube AI platform work?

    The platform combines marketplace sales, inventory, pricing, promotions, search, and competitor data into one operating layer for brand teams. Its AI models then rank the highest-impact problems and recommend actions through products like Gobbs Edge, Gobbs Boost, Gobbs Flow, and Gobbs Discover, rather than leaving users to interpret raw dashboards on their own.

    Who founded GobbleCube?

    GobbleCube was founded in 2022 by Manas Gupta, Srikumar Nair, and Nitesh Jindal. All 3 previously worked at Blinkit, where they spent years across category, engineering, and data roles and worked closely with hundreds of consumer brands before starting the company in Gurugram.

    Is GobbleCube an ecommerce analytics company or a quick-commerce software startup?

    It’s really both, but the cleaner description is B2B revenue management software for brands that sell across ecommerce and quick-commerce marketplaces. What makes it different from a plain analytics tool is its focus on hyperlocal decisions, dark-store visibility, and an action layer that aims to automate what brand teams should do next.

  • A16z Backs Pillar with $20M to Automate Commodity Hedging for Businesses

    A16z Backs Pillar with $20M to Automate Commodity Hedging for Businesses

    Pillar is a commodity hedging platform that helps metals traders, recyclers, food companies, and airlines automate the work of managing exposure to swings in commodities, currencies, and freight. On April 14, 2026, the startup said it raised a $20 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The pitch is pretty simple: lots of physical businesses still handle hedging through spreadsheets, broker calls, and periodic check-ins. Price moves can hit margins fast. Pillar was founded in 2023 by CEO Harsha Ramesh and CTO Chinmay Deshpande, and it’s trying to bring institutional-style risk tools to companies that usually don’t have a full trading desk.

    What is Pillar’s commodity hedging platform and how does it work?

    Pillar’s commodity hedging platform starts with the transaction itself. A customer can submit a shipment or trade through the web app or even through WhatsApp, and the system links the hedge to that specific deal instead of treating risk as one giant monthly estimate. From there, Pillar ingests data from contracts, ERP systems, spreadsheets, inventories, cash flows, and messages to map the actual exposure sitting inside the business.

    That matters because Pillar isn’t selling generic dashboards. The product builds hedges in real time and lets users execute trades with one click. It keeps tracking positions as quantities change. Hedges can be sized in 1 metric ton increments, which is a useful detail for smaller operators who don’t want to round exposure into blunt, oversized trades. It also supports paired commodity and FX coverage, so a business importing metal in one currency and selling finished goods in another can manage both sides in one workflow.

    The more technical layer is where Pillar is trying to stand apart. It can calculate hedge ratios, react to forward-curve shapes, and automate strategies that take advantage of cross-exchange pricing differences. On the enterprise side, it also connects trade details to the right contracts. It continuously recommends hedge type, size, and timing based on changing exposure and market conditions.

    Before software like this, a finance or ops team might juggle spreadsheets, broker messages, shipping changes, and approvals by hand. Pillar’s promise is that the operator types “hedge a shipment,” “check my position,” or “get a price,” and the system handles the mechanics in the background. It’s still not fully lights-out in every case. Humans remain involved for approvals, oversight, and especially large or unusual trades, but it’s a lot closer to continuous risk management than the old monthly-review model.

    Who founded Pillar and what gives the team market fit?

    How Pillar started

    Pillar was founded in 2023. Ramesh’s argument is that sophisticated financial institutions have had strong hedging infrastructure for years, while the producers, importers, manufacturers, and recyclers actually moving physical goods often haven’t. He’s described that gap bluntly: risk management was treated as “a luxury” for businesses that still had to live with the volatility.

    The company is based in New York and is live in market, not stuck in pilot mode. Its named customers include Shibuya Sakura Industries, Sigma Recycling, and United Metal Solutions Group. LinkedIn currently lists Pillar in the 11-50 employee range, with 14 employee profiles visible.

    Why the founders look credible here

    Ramesh’s background fits the category almost too neatly. He previously executed corporate FX hedging programs for Fortune 500 companies as an emerging markets trader, and he was an AVP at Barclays before becoming a general manager at Oliver Space. In the source interview, he also said he spent time inside a medium-sized import-export business, which helps explain why Pillar talks so much about operators rather than just treasury teams.

    Deshpande brings the engineering side. He built automated trading products at Coinbase for retail and institutional customers and earlier worked at Amazon Logistics. That mix matters. You’re building software that has to understand messy operational data on one side and market execution on the other.

    Both founders studied at Vanderbilt University Ramesh in economics, Deshpande in computer science. That doesn’t make the company by itself, obviously. But for a startup selling financial automation into commodity-heavy businesses, the combination of trading experience and systems-building experience is the thing investors are really buying.

    Fundraising details and early traction

    Andreessen Horowitz led the $20 million seed round, with Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also participating. Pillar has now raised $23 million in total. For a seed-stage company serving conservative, risk-sensitive customers, that’s a chunky early round. It’s probably necessary, because selling into physical industries usually takes product depth and hands-on support, not just fast SaaS demos.

    How Pillar compares with banks and commodity risk software

    Pillar isn’t walking into an empty market. The obvious incumbents are bank hedging desks, which can structure and execute trades but usually don’t give smaller operators a clean operating layer tied to contracts, shipments, and day-to-day workflows. Then there are commodity risk software providers like RadarRadar. It focuses on integrating ERP and CTRM data into a harmonized view for advanced risk, margin, and reporting analytics.

    Pillar’s angle is narrower and more opinionated. It ties hedges to individual deals and lets users trigger workflows in natural language or WhatsApp. It supports odd-lot hedging in 1 metric ton increments and keeps adjusting positions as the physical book changes. That sounds especially attractive for midsize firms that don’t want a giant enterprise implementation and don’t have the patience for bank-style process overhead.

    Why does Pillar’s $20M seed round matter?

    A round this size gives Pillar room to do the annoying parts right.

    That matters because this isn’t a pure software story. The product touches trade execution, approvals, exposure modeling, and customer workflows that can go sideways if the data is sloppy. Pillar has already said humans stay in the loop for approvals, oversight, strategic decisions, and bigger transactions. So it has to build both product and operating discipline at the same time.

    Andreessen Horowitz leading the round is also a signal about what kind of fintech investors want more of now. Not consumer finance. Not another neobank. More infrastructure for the physical economy the kinds of businesses that still run a lot of critical processes through email threads, spreadsheets, and phone calls. Pillar sits right in that zone.

    The investor list says something else too. Khosrowshahi’s participation doesn’t prove a freight thesis on its own, but it does fit Pillar’s push beyond metal price exposure into FX and shipping risk. If the company can become the operating layer for all 3, it gets much harder to replace.

    Why are commodity hedging platforms gaining traction now?

    The underlying markets are massive. The BIS said OTC foreign exchange turnover reached $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, up 28% from 2022, while outright forwards alone hit $1.8 trillion per day. Those are the instruments businesses use to lock in future exchange rates. That’s exactly the kind of workflow Pillar is building around.

    Commodity and futures activity is still huge too. FIA data showed global futures volume reached 7.15 billion contracts in the first quarter of 2025, up 12% year over year, even as total exchange-traded derivatives volume was distorted by a sharp drop in options activity in India. In plain English: the pipes of the hedging world are busy. Real businesses are dealing with a lot more market movement than they used to ignore.

    There’s also a structural shift in who needs better tools. Tariffs, shipping shocks, fragmented supply chains, and fast moves in industrial metals have turned hedging into an operating issue, not just a treasury issue. The software opportunity isn’t just about replacing spreadsheets. It’s about connecting contracts, inventory, logistics, and execution so exposure gets managed as the business moves.

    What should you watch from Pillar’s commodity hedging platform next?

    The next test isn’t whether Pillar can raise money. It already did that.

    The real question is whether its commodity hedging platform can become boring in the best possible way something recyclers, traders, and importers use every day without needing a specialist desk to babysit it. If Pillar keeps winning customers in metals and adjacent categories, and if it proves the freight-plus-FX layer works as cleanly as the commodity side, this could turn from a neat fintech story into real infrastructure for physical operators.

    Read how TraqCheck raised ₹75 crore to turn background verification — one of HR’s dullest jobs — into an AI-powered hiring workflow that enterprises can run from a single platform.

    FAQ

    What funding did Pillar raise?

    Pillar raised a $20 million seed round announced on April 14, 2026. Andreessen Horowitz led the deal, with Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also participating, bringing total funding to $23 million.

    How does Pillar work for a customer?

    Pillar connects to operational data like contracts, ERP records, inventories, and spreadsheets, then links hedges to specific transactions instead of broad estimates. A user can trigger actions through the web app or WhatsApp, execute a hedge, and keep adjusting it as the underlying shipment or position changes.

    Who are Pillar’s founders?

    Pillar was founded in 2023 by Harsha Ramesh and Chinmay Deshpande. Ramesh came from emerging-markets and corporate hedging roles at Barclays and later worked in operations, while Deshpande previously built automated trading systems at Coinbase and worked at Amazon Logistics.

    Is Pillar a fintech company or commodity risk software?

    It’s really both, but the cleaner label is commodity and FX risk management software with embedded execution. Pillar sits between bank hedging desks and heavier commodity risk platforms by giving physical businesses a more operational, transaction-linked way to hedge prices, currencies, and freight.

  • TraqCheck Funding: IvyCap Backs ₹75 Cr AI Hiring Push

    TraqCheck Funding: IvyCap Backs ₹75 Cr AI Hiring Push

    TraqCheck is an HR tech startup that automates employee background checks and is now pushing deeper into AI-led hiring workflows. It has raised nearly ₹75 crore in a Series A round led by IvyCap Ventures, a deal that matters because too many enterprises still run hiring, screening, and verification across disconnected tools that waste time and invite errors. Founded in 2020 by Jaibir Nihal Singh, Armaan Mehta, and Rishabh Jain, the New Delhi company is using this TraqCheck funding round to expand in Europe and build out its AI capabilities.

    That’s a sharper story than a standard “AI for HR” pitch.

    TraqCheck isn’t chasing the fluffiest part of recruiting. It’s going after one of the least glamorous, most compliance-heavy parts of the stack background verification and then trying to stitch that into the front end of talent acquisition. If it works, buyers get fewer vendors and faster hiring cycles. They also get less manual back-and-forth. If it doesn’t, it risks getting squeezed between specialist verification firms and giant HR suites that are adding AI fast.

    What does TraqCheck actually do for hiring teams?

    TraqCheck’s core product is Trace, an AI-driven background verification tool that handles checks across criminal records, education, identity, and work history. For an employer, the workflow is direct: a company triggers a verification request, the platform collects and validates records, flags inconsistencies, and turns the result into a cleaner decision-ready report instead of a pile of fragmented responses from institutions and prior employers.

    But the company isn’t stopping at screening. It now talks about a broader “Human Operating System” for HR, with a second agent called Nina built for the top of the funnel. Nina sources candidates in real time and understands role requirements beyond blunt keyword matching. It sends personalized outreach, replies to candidates, handles follow-ups automatically, and returns a shortlist to hiring teams through a chat-style interface.

    That changes the customer experience in a simple way. Before, recruiters often had one tool for sourcing, another for applicant tracking, and a separate vendor for checks. TraqCheck wants those steps to sit in one workflow source, engage, screen, verify and move the right people forward without the usual spreadsheet mess.

    There’s a practical reason that pitch lands. Background checks are slow, repetitive, and easy to break when data collection is manual. Automating ID verification, employment checks, and record gathering doesn’t just save recruiter time. It also cuts the kind of process friction that kills offer acceptance or leaves hiring managers waiting on final clearance.

    Who founded TraqCheck and how far has it scaled?

    The founding story

    TraqCheck started in 2020 with Jaibir Nihal Singh, Armaan Mehta, and Rishabh Jain. The founding idea was straightforward: hiring teams were relying on fragmented verification processes that were too slow for modern recruiting and too messy for enterprise compliance. So the company began with background checks, then widened the pitch toward a fuller hiring workflow.

    Why the founders fit the problem

    Singh studied media and communications at Pepperdine University and had early exposure to operating and business-building work. Mehta studied quantitative economics at UCLA and also trained in data science and machine learning. He previously interned with SoftBank Investment Advisers and worked on research projects tied to economic and technology themes. Jain came from a computer science background and had engineering experience in Silicon Valley roles focused on software and machine learning. The mix fits the problem.

    Early execution and traction

    TraqCheck is already live in market, not sitting in demo mode. The company serves about 300 enterprise clients across India and Europe, and it has cited customers such as Randstad Enterprise, Wipro, and The Digital College. Its current push is split between the mature verification business and the newer AI agent layer for talent acquisition. That gives it both a steady enterprise use case and a more ambitious expansion story.

    Fundraising details

    IvyCap Ventures led the fresh Series A round, with participation from IIFL Fintech Fund. Before this, TraqCheck had raised a pre-Series A round backed by Caret Capital and former Goldman Sachs executive Alok Oberoi, with Lenskart cofounder Peyush Bansal also investing as an angel. The new capital is earmarked for European expansion, stronger enterprise sales, and further development of the company’s AI agents.

    How TraqCheck stacks up against rivals

    This is where things get interesting.

    On background screening, TraqCheck runs into specialist verification players such as Checkr, Truework, and Certn. On AI-led recruitment, it’s up against newer hiring startups like TurboHire and HireBound. Above them sit the heavyweights Workday, Greenhouse, and Lever which already own big chunks of recruiter workflow and are steadily layering in AI features.

    TraqCheck’s edge isn’t that it invented background checks. It’s trying to join a boring but sticky enterprise function with higher-frequency recruiting actions in the same product flow. Legacy vendors often handle verification as a separate service line. Big HR suites do a lot, but they can feel bulky and slow to adapt. TraqCheck is betting buyers want speed, a cleaner user experience, and fewer handoffs between sourcing and verification. It’s a smart bet. It’s also a risky one, because the incumbents aren’t asleep.

    Why does TraqCheck funding matter now?

    Because this round lets the company move from being useful to being harder to ignore.

    European expansion matters for a background verification business because compliance-heavy workflows travel well when the product is structured right. If TraqCheck can prove that its automation works across geographies and not just inside Indian hiring flows, it becomes more than a local HR tech story. It becomes a candidate for multinational enterprise budgets.

    The product roadmap matters too. Building around Trace alone would have kept TraqCheck in a narrower category. Putting money behind Nina suggests the company wants a larger share of recruiting spend, not just a slice of verification budgets. That gives investors a bigger upside case but only if customers actually adopt the broader workflow instead of buying the company for checks and ignoring the rest.

    The round also carries a sales signal. TraqCheck plans to grow enterprise sales and expand its UK team to 25 people while converting pilot projects into longer-term contracts. This isn’t just a product build story. It’s a go-to-market test at a more serious scale.

    How big is the market TraqCheck is chasing?

    The homegrown HR tech market TraqCheck sells into is expected to become a $2.3 billion opportunity by 2034. A separate market estimate puts India’s HR technology segment at $1.21 billion in 2025 and projects it to reach $2.33 billion by 2034, growing at a 7.56% CAGR. Recruitment already accounts for 25% of the market, which helps explain why startups and incumbents alike are trying to automate screening, matching, and hiring operations.

    A few shifts are doing the heavy lifting here. Indian enterprises are buying more cloud software. Recruiters are under pressure to cut time-to-hire. AI tools are moving from “nice demo” territory into actual workflow software that promises measurable output. That doesn’t mean every AI recruiting startup wins. It does mean buyers are more open than they were to replacing manual verification and fragmented hiring steps with software.

    Timing helps. Information technology is the largest end-use segment in India’s HR tech market at 32%, and that matters because large tech employers and staffing-heavy businesses feel hiring friction faster than almost anyone else. When those customers start looking for tighter automation and compliance, startups like TraqCheck get a real opening.

    Conclusion

    TraqCheck funding isn’t just another enterprise AI round with a vague automation pitch. It’s a bet that background verification one of the dullest parts of HR can become the anchor for a broader hiring product that companies actually pay to expand. The next thing to watch is whether TraqCheck can turn 300 enterprise relationships and its Europe push into durable, multi-product contracts before bigger HR platforms close the gap.

    Read how Slate Auto raised $650M to build a modular, blank-canvas electric pickup that starts in the mid-$20,000s and lets owners keep customizing it long after they drive it off the lot.

    FAQ

    What is TraqCheck funding and who invested in the round?

    TraqCheck funding refers to the startup’s nearly ₹75 crore Series A raise announced in April 2026. IvyCap Ventures led the round, and IIFL Fintech Fund joined in, giving the company fresh capital to expand in Europe and build out its AI hiring products.

    How does TraqCheck work for background checks and hiring?

    TraqCheck works through two product layers: Trace for background verification and Nina for AI-led recruiting tasks. Trace handles checks like identity, education, criminal records, and employment history. Nina sources candidates, runs outreach, follows up automatically, and returns a shortlist through a conversational interface.

    Who are the founders of TraqCheck?

    TraqCheck was founded in 2020 by Jaibir Nihal Singh, Armaan Mehta, and Rishabh Jain. Singh brings business and operating exposure. Mehta has economics and investment experience plus data science training. Jain comes from a software and machine learning background.

    Is TraqCheck an HR tech startup or a background verification company?

    It’s both, and that’s the point of the business. TraqCheck started from background verification but is now expanding into broader HR tech and talent acquisition software, which puts it somewhere between a screening specialist and a wider recruiting automation platform.

  • Swageazy Raises ₹5.4 Cr from InfoEdge to Scale Corporate Gifting Platform

    Swageazy Raises ₹5.4 Cr from InfoEdge to Scale Corporate Gifting Platform

    Swageazy is a Gurugram-based corporate gifting platform that lets HR and marketing teams run branded merchandise and gifting programs from one dashboard. The corporate gifting platform has raised ₹5.4 crore in a follow-on round from existing backer InfoEdge Ventures, with participation from the founders of HR tech firms OnGrid and HROne. Large companies still handle swag and employee gifting through a jumble of vendors, approvals, inventory headaches, and cross-city shipping chaos. Founded in 2021 by Sameer Wahie and Sneh Setu, Swageazy is trying to turn that messy back-office process into software plus fulfilment infrastructure.

    What does Swageazy’s corporate gifting platform do?

    At the product level, Swageazy is basically a merch operations stack for enterprises. A customer picks packaging and swag items, uploads logos to generate digital mockups, and approves the design inside the dashboard. Then they track production and delivery from the same interface. It also supports custom swag stores and inventory storage. Reordering, shipment tracking, and API integrations keep gifting from getting stuck in email chains.

    That’s the useful part. The platform isn’t just a catalogue with nice photos. It handles design management and order flow. Shipping visibility and on-demand storage are built in. For companies that don’t want office cupboards full of onboarding kits, Swageazy stores inventory and ships when needed. For teams with remote staff or overseas recipients, it pitches global fulfilment as a core capability.

    A more software-like layer makes the business interesting. Swageazy built HRMS and CRM integrations. It also automated address collection and built what it calls custom brand stores. In an earlier profile, the company described a “Gift of Choice” flow where recipients can choose from a budget-bound selection instead of receiving a generic voucher or a one-size-fits-all hamper. That’s a smarter model than dumping gift cards on people and hoping they redeem them.

    For buyers, the before-and-after is pretty clear. Before, a team might coordinate with separate printers, packers, warehouses, and couriers while chasing address sheets on spreadsheets. After, the experience looks more like campaign management: select, approve, trigger, track, repeat. It’s not flashy. But it does solve an annoying, expensive workflow.

    Who founded this corporate gifting platform and how far has it scaled?

    Why Wahie and Setu started it

    Swageazy was founded in March 2021 by Sameer Wahie and Sneh Setu, both former Uber employees who saw how company swag and onboarding merchandise were handled at scale. The origin story is practical: Wahie has said the idea clicked while working at Uber and seeing how branded t-shirts, kits, and internal gifting operated across cities. They didn’t start with a vague “we love experiences” pitch. They started with a workflow they’d already lived inside.

    Why the founders fit this market

    Wahie’s background is unusually relevant for a business that sits between sales discipline and operational execution. In a public post, he mapped his path through sales at Times Group, work in the CEO’s office at Airtel, and then Uber, where he says he helped set up business in multiple Indian cities and saw 3000x growth during that period. That mix matters here. Swageazy needs enterprise selling on one side and execution muscle on the other.

    Setu comes from the systems side. Before Swageazy, he worked at Uber in business systems analysis and product operations, after earlier roles at Cognizant in analysis and process work. The split is clear. One founder brings commercial and scale-up instincts, the other brings workflow and operations depth. For a gifting company trying to behave like infrastructure, that’s a believable combo.

    Traction, funding, and where Swageazy sits against rivals

    Swageazy is live and already has enterprise traction. The startup serves more than 800 enterprises, including Amazon, LinkedIn, Wipro, Coursera, and PhonePe. It also runs 30,000 sq. ft. of warehousing across Delhi and Bengaluru. That tells you this isn’t just a thin software layer pasted on top of third-party logistics.

    This isn’t the company’s first cheque either. In 2022, Swageazy raised ₹7 crore in a seed round led by InfoEdge Ventures, with Anicut Capital and Huddle also participating. The new ₹5.4 crore follow-on keeps InfoEdge on the cap table and adds backing from the founders of OnGrid and HROne. Repeat participation usually signals the investor has seen enough customer retention or repeat demand to keep investing.

    Competition is split in two. In India, Swageazy runs into offline-heavy corporate gifting vendors and organized players such as PrintStop, Loopify, OffiNeeds, and other merchandising firms that already sell festive hampers, employee kits, and branded merchandise. On the software-first end, global names like Snappy, Sendoso, Reachdesk, and &Open show what a more automated gifting stack can look like. Swageazy’s bet is that Indian enterprises want both: local manufacturing and warehousing, plus software controls, integrations, and campaign automation.

    Why does this corporate gifting platform round matter?

    This round matters less for the amount and more for what it funds.

    Swageazy will use the money for product and technology hiring and to expand the sales team. It also plans to deepen reach with enterprise HR and marketing buyers. The company is building in-house printing infrastructure with industrial-grade production equipment to improve quality and cut fulfilment lead times. That’s a very specific use of capital. And frankly, it’s the right one for this category. If you’re selling trust, missed deliveries and poor print quality will kill you faster than weak software ever will.

    Wahie put the pitch plainly: “Corporate gifting is no longer just about hampers, it’s a key lever for employee engagement, brand building, and customer relationships.” He also said HR and marketing teams still struggle with vendors, quality, and timelines across locations, and that Swageazy wants to simplify that through a tech-enabled fulfilment layer.

    InfoEdge’s Kitty Agarwal framed the bull case from the investor side. She said the firm has been impressed by Swageazy’s execution and repeat-led growth, and pointed to the mix of software and fulfilment infrastructure, plus early traction in the US, as the reason it continues to back the company. InfoEdge isn’t betting on gifting as a seasonal nicety. It’s betting that enterprise merchandise becomes a repeat workflow budget.

    How big is the market for corporate gifting software in India?

    The Indian gifting market is already sizable, and it’s still growing. IMARC estimates India’s gifting market reached $816.3 million in 2025 and projects it will hit $1.09 billion by 2034. Corporate gifting is listed as a major purpose-led segment inside that market, alongside personal gifting.

    The more interesting shift is digital. IMARC points to e-gift cards, virtual experiences, mobile payments, and UPI-linked gifting as major growth drivers in India. Mordor Intelligence, looking at the adjacent gift card and incentive card category, pegs that market at $13.98 billion in 2025 and expects it to reach $31.54 billion by 2030. That doesn’t mean every rupee flows to physical swag. But it does show companies are getting more comfortable treating gifting and rewards as programmatic spend rather than one-off festive purchases.

    Swageazy’s timing makes sense. Distributed teams, structured onboarding, employer branding, and account-based marketing all create recurring gifting moments. The old model call a vendor every Diwali and hope the cartons arrive still exists. But it’s starting to look dated.

    What should investors and buyers watch next?

    Swageazy isn’t trying to invent a new human behavior. People in companies have always sent gifts, welcome kits, festive boxes, and event merchandise.

    It’s trying to turn that spend into a repeatable system.

    That’s a better business than it sounds. If the company can keep enterprise buyers happy while tightening print quality, delivery speed, and international fulfilment, this corporate gifting platform could become sticky in a category that used to be painfully replaceable. The next thing to watch is simple: whether Swageazy can convert software convenience into deeper wallet share across India and its early US accounts.

    Read how DAAKit Raises $138K to Scale Hyperlocal Fulfillment to expand its last-mile delivery and local logistics network.

    FAQ

    What funding did Swageazy raise?

    Swageazy raised ₹5.4 crore in a follow-on round from InfoEdge Ventures, with participation from the founders of OnGrid and HROne. It’s not the startup’s first institutional round either it had previously raised ₹7 crore in seed funding in 2022.

    How does Swageazy’s platform work?

    It works like a control layer for enterprise gifting. Teams can choose products and packaging, upload brand assets, approve mockups, trigger orders through integrations or campaigns, and track fulfilment from one dashboard instead of juggling multiple vendors and spreadsheets.

    Who are the founders of Swageazy?

    Swageazy was founded in 2021 by Sameer Wahie and Sneh Setu. Both are ex-Uber operators, with Wahie bringing sales and scale-up experience from Times Group, Airtel, and Uber, while Setu comes from business systems and product operations roles at Uber and Cognizant.

    Is Swageazy a SaaS company or a gifting company?

    It’s both. Swageazy sells software-like workflow automation for HR and marketing teams, but it also operates warehousing, inventory, printing, and fulfilment infrastructure which is why it looks more defensible than a plain catalogue business.