An auto-rickshaw hailing app and an electric motorcycle maker, a furnished rental platform for bachelors and a luxury fashion app – investments spanned a wide spectrum in India today.
Jugnoo
Photo credit: Pixabay.
Jugnoo, the on-demand app for auto-rickshaws (three-wheelers), closed its series B round with US$4.5 million today, taking the total to US$10 million for this round. Alibaba-backed mobile wallet Paytm led the last tranche with US$3 million, with Snow Leopard Ventures contributing US$1.5 million.
The series B round was initiated in November with US$3 million from Paytm as well as the founder and CEO of rival wallet FreeCharge, Kunal Shah. Rocketship VC also participated in the funding.
“We will invest these funds in improving our driver efficiency and increasing our numbers in cities where we are currently in the growing phase,” says Samar Singla, co-founder and CEO of Jugnoo, in a statement on the funding. The auto-rickshaw hailing app has a presence in 30 Indian cities, and has been experimenting with add-ons like grocery and food delivery.
See: More than mere taxis, Jugnoo raises $3m to use auto rickshaws for everything
Smytten
Photo credit Mainstream.
Smytten, a fashion app for premium brands, today announced funding from angel investor Rajan Anandan, VP and MD of Google for India and Southeast Asia. The amount of funding was not disclosed.
The invitation-only platform aims to use the funding to algorithmically personalize offerings for its users. “Data-driven curation has helped us get high engagement rates, with daily returning users beating industry standards,” says Swagata Narangi, co-founder of Smytten.
Swagata was earlier a director at Unilever, while his co-founder Siddharth Nangia headed business marketing at Google. Smytten launched six months ago with a mission to solve twin pain-points in luxury ecommerce: discovery and try-before-you-buy.
See: A tale of two startups and their different outlooks on what India’s shoppers want
Nestaway
Photo credit: Nestaway
Tork Motorcycles
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