[Funding alert] Apartment security management startup MyGate raises $56M in Series B from Tencent, Tiger Global, and others
Post this funding, MyGate aims to achieve 10X growth and serve close to 15 million homes on its platform, across 41 Indian cities, and scale to almost 60,000 gated communities by the end of 2020.
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A year after raising its Series A round, Bengaluru-based security management startup for gated communities MyGate, on Thursday, announced that it raised $56 million as part of its Series B financing. The round was led by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, alongside US-based JS Capital LLC, and Tiger Global Management. Existing investor Prime Venture Partners also participated as a part of this round.
The startup will invest this capital in its technology architecture and hire almost 200 individuals across its product and technology functions. With a team of 700 employees, MyGate plans to take its employee count to 2,000 over the next year.
Further, with this funding, it is also looking to invest in marketing and branding activities to boost awareness around the brand.
Founders of MyGate (L to R): Shreyans Daga, Abhishek, Vijay Arisetty and Vivaik Bhradwaj (sitting)
With this round, MyGate has raised a total equity of $67.5 million until now. Last October, the startup had raised Rs 65 crore in its Series A round, led by existing investor Prime Venture Partners.
Founded in 2016 by Vijay Arisetty, Abhishek K, Shreyans Daga, and Vivaik Bhardwaj, MyGate has been building technology to enhance security and convenience for residents in gated premises.
Speaking on the funding, CEO Vijay Arisetty, said,
“We started MyGate to solve for the real problem of security and inconvenience faced by households everyday. We are thankful to our customers and investors who believed in our solution, gave feedback and guided us in our journey. Our mission of simplifying urban living has just started and we’re delighted to welcome marquee investors and business partners in Tencent, Tiger, and JSoros to be a part of our journey.”
Over time, new solutions have been launched to benefit the residents, management or builders and other stakeholders of the gated premises, such as Community Management tools, and a system for ecommerce players to better manage their deliveries.
One of the early backers of the startup, Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, said,
“Right from the first time I experienced MyGate as a customer just two years ago, it’s been great to see a fledgling startup execute consistently and holistically, and grow into a category-creating market-leader. We’re delighted by the progress of MyGate and welcome these marquee investors as the company prepares for the next wave of growth.”
At present, MyGate claims to be serving close to 1.2 million homes across 11 cities and 5,000 gated communities. The platform processes over 60,000 requests per minute, and facilitates over 45 million check-in requests every month.
Residents use the app to communicate with neighbours, discuss matters of the community and society on internal discussion forums, manage visitors (guests, deliveries, cabs etc), maintain attendance record and salary payments for daily help, discover services, pay society maintenance bills, among much else.
According to the founders, the startup is expected to serve close to 7,000 gated communities by the end of this year. Since its launch in 2016, it has also trained over 1.7 lakh guards on its platform. The startup claims to be growing at 13 percent year-on-year.
Salil Seshadri, Chief Investment Officer, JS Capital LLC, said,
“MyGate is a company with the rare ability to innovate for all of urban India on a single platform. We believe that their deep product focus and technological prowess will enable them to build solutions that bring positive gains to the entire ecosystem.”
While the startup has been one of the early movers in the space, it faces tough competition from Reliance Jio, which entered the apartment security market last month by listing its new app JioGate. The app has got more than 5,000 installs after a month of launch.
Experts claim that JioGate could trigger a dramatic growth of the sector in 2020 with its entry.
In addition to this, other competitive solutions to MyGate include Gatekeeper by ADDA, which claims to serve 3,000 gated communities; NoBrokerHOOD; and Lockated, which claims to integrate with home service providers like UrbanClap.
When asked about the competition from Jio and others, MyGate Co-founder Abhishek K, said,
“Competition in a specific sector is good, especially with players like Jio entering since it validates the space we are in. But for us, the gate and apartment security continues to be our bread and butter, and not just an ancillary offering. So, we are more likely to be focused on solving the problem. Having said that, competition does not trigger us to do something different than how we have envisioned our growth path.”
He also confirmed that the startup isn’t planning to introduce commerce or credit services on the platform for the next 18 months, stating that it ‘isn’t on the drawing board’ yet.
Post this funding, MyGate aims to achieve 10X growth and serve close to 15 million homes on its platform, across 41 Indian cities, and scale to almost 60,000 gated communities by the end of 2020.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
