Serial entrepreneur and Shaurya Chakra awardee’s startup raises Rs 16 Cr from Prime Venture Partners

Security management solution for gated premises, myGate, on Thursday, announced it has raised Rs 16 crore (approx $2.5 million) in its first round of funding, led by Prime Venture Partners. The company will use the funds to invest in technology, and scale to two million homes across the top seven cities in the country within the next two years.

Started in 2016, myGate claims to have validated close to 24 million visits through its mobile app across 100,000 homes. Further, the company states that 5000 guards are already using myGate in Bengaluru.

With this round of funding, the company is also looking to expand its presence to Pune, Hyderabad, NCR and four other cities.

At present, the company says most of its growth continues to be organic, with word-of-mouth contributing significantly to its topline.

Speaking on the fund-raise, Vijay Arisetty, CEO and Co-founder of myGate, who is a former Indian Air Force pilot said,

“Security for gated-premises is a multi-billion market that is fundamentally underserved by often obsolete legacy providers and solutions. In Prime, we found a hands-on investment partner with a long-term vision and practical execution expertise; we are excited to have them join us as our extended team.”

Having served in the Indian Air Force for 10 years, Vijay is also an alumnus of Indian School of Business and served as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs for four years. He won a Shaurya Chakra for his role in evacuating victims of the 2004 tsunami in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

In addition to myGate, Vijay has also founded two other startups - Pyngcabs in 2011, and Kitchensfood in 2014.

The other founders of the startup include Abhishek Kumar, who was a former VP at Goldman Sachs; Shreyans Daga, an IIT-ISB alumnus as well as a former IAF pilot, and Vivaik Bhardwaj who was a Director at Google.

Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, commented,

“I’m delighted to welcome MyGate to the Prime portfolio and feel privileged to be part of this journey. We first experienced MyGate as consumers and loved the product experience; when we met the team, we were very excited by their incredible vision to transform the physical security experience as well as their focus and relentless pursuit of excellence.”

How does it work? 

The company states that security at gated communities has long followed conventional “man-guarding”, paper and pen system. The process is inefficient and error-prone, making the life of security guards difficult. In addition, authentication of residents, visitors, and support staff is a huge challenge.

Through the mobile-app-based system for iOS and Play Store, the solution logs visitor (including delivery agents and cabs) entries and exits digitally, with complete visibility and control of the resident.

The resident can then confirm to the guards manning the main gate on either the visitors, or apprise them with a list of pre-approved visitors.

myGate also offers several advanced capabilities such as e-intercom (automatic visitor authentication), child safety alerts, staff attendance, infrastructure-free vehicle management, touchless resident identification, clubhouse access management, management reporting, and visitor overstay alerts through their mobile app.

The market opportunity

Referring to the market opportunity, the company says there is already Rs 3000 crore invested in the security and safety infrastructure in 2017. Further, this amount is touted to grow to Rs 10,000 crore by 2020.

The company’s market research also states that the top seven cities in India alone have close to 15 million gated flats and villas in the country, inhabited by 35 million residents.

With a two-day onboarding process combined with a pay-as-you-go (SaaS) commercial model, the company charges communities anywhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 30,000 per month, paid by the residents. The pricing is determined by the configuration setup, determined by the number of gates, houses and other factors. 

However, the company also looks to increase its focus from just residential complexes to other gated premises including office buildings, schools and factories.

In the apartment management space, there is also ApartmentADDA which provides ERP solution for gated communities. Their product GateKeeper provides a direct competition to myGate.