7 rising startups in India – August 24, 2016

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Four edtech startups make our list of funded companies today, including one that brought in US$1 million. A wedding startup, a foodtech company, and a fintech small loans provider also make appearances.

ConveGenius

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The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) has pushed US$900,000 into mobile learning edtech startup ConveGenius. The company focuses on K-12 students.

Available for US$67 per year, the startup caters to 90,000 children in India and learning centers in Singapore. It was founded three years ago by IIT Hyderabad grads Jairaj Bhattacharya and Shashank Pandey.

InCred

Photo credit: sifotography / 123RF.

Fintech startup InCred has raised US$75 million in funding, marking India’s biggest fintech round so far this year. It has brought in Prashant Bhonsle, former country head of education lender Credila, to lead its education section.

InCred has also acquired InstaPaisa, which connects indviduals to institutional investors. As part of the deal, InstaPaisa’s CEO Nikhil Sama will join the InCred team.

InCred deals in small and medium-sized business loans, as well as loans for education, mortgage, and others. It has yet to launch but will target clients who have trouble securing loans from banks. It will take evaluate customers on a case-to-case basis – those applying for student loans, for example, will take into account a student’s background, grades, and study focus.

Unacademy

Edtech startup Unacademy has bagged US$1 million in an investment led by Blume Ventures, along with Stanford Angels India, WaterBridge Ventures, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Tandon, Tashish Tulsian, and Tracxn Labs.

A number of existing investors also took part in the round, including former Flipkart president of operations Sujeet Kumar, TaxiforSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishnan, RebBus co-founder Phanindra Sama, and CommonFloor co-founders Sumit Jain and Vikas Malpani.

Through Unacademy’s app, users can familiarize themselves with a variety of topics in over 2,400 online lessons and courses. Founded eight months ago by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta, the startup plans on launching Unacademy Create, an app for educators to create Unacademy lessons more easily.

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