5 rising startups in India

Valentine’s Day may be on Sunday, but startups in India aren’t wasting any time partnering with investments – and each other. A big data startup suggests that love is in the cloud, a steamy investment took place with an instant coffee and tea startup, and a retailer-supplier connection app was rewarded for its matchmaking skills. On top of that, yesterday two edtech firms became one. Celebrate early because no one does love quite like startups do. Here are our five picks.

RKSV

Online discount stock brokerage startup RKSV bagged US$4 million in series A funding today led by Kalaari Capital. Health care tech firm GVK Davix Technologies as well as a number of undisclosed investors also participated in the round.

As part of the investment deal, RKSV’s Vani Kola, MD, at Kalaari Capital will join RKSV’s board. Vani founded what would later become Kalaari Advisors in 2006 in the hopes of aiding early-stage ventures in India.

Brothers Raghu Kumar, Ravi Kumar and Shrinivas Viswanath founded RKSV in 2008. The startup moved into retail trading in 2012. Its system uses a proprietary algorithm to facilitate daily trading, charging a flat fee per trade. RKSV has memberships in the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), and the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX).

RKSV claims to have 50,000 users, a number the company plans to double by the end of 2016.

ActOnMagic

Bangalore-based cloud analytics and management products builder ActOnMagic made magic happen today, raising an undisclosed amount in a seed round of investment. Jayabalan Subramanian, co-founder of IT managed service provider Netmagic, led the round.

Founded by Madan Ganesh Velayudham in January 2014, ActOnMagic users can view and manage all public and/or private cloud infrastructure in one place. Madan is a PSG College of Technology alumnus, former software analyst at Hewlett Packard, and former product lead at VMLogix. In December 2011, he founded Bangalore-based GoGuroo, a social network aimed at connecting students with professionals to help with career discernment. The site has since become inactive.

The funds will be used to build talent and concentrate more on the Indian market.

Indulge Beverages

Indulge Beverages, a tea and coffee single-serve “capsule” maker, raised US$1 million from a group of angel investors today. Neeta Dempo Mirchandani of Kae Capital also contributed out of her own pockets, along with other individual investors in the round.

Based in Delhi, Indulge Beverages is also available in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad. The company sells under the Bonhomia brand and also offers BOHO, a single-serve coffee brewer, and Wipp It, a milk frother machine.

The startup will use the funding to expand its retail presence. It was founded by former merchant banker Kunal Bhagat and former PepsiCo executive Tuhin Jain in January 2012.

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