[Funding roundup] TestSigma, Upswing and ClaimBuddy raise capital

Open-source test automation platform TestSigma, plug-and-play finance platform Upswing, and healthtech startup ClaimBuddy announced their first rounds of institutional capital on Monday.

The day also saw strategic investments in separate deals by IndiaMART and Thermax, as well as an acquisition by Mahindra Logistics.

Simplifying test automation at scale

TestSigma has raised $4.6 million from Accel and STRIVE, with participation from BoldCap and a number of entrepreneurs and operators.

The investors include Shanmugam Krishnasamy, Co-founder and CTO of Freshworks; Kiran Darisi, Co-founder and VP of Engineering at Freshworks; Parsuram Vijayasankar, Co-founder and Principal Engineer at Freshworks; Vetri Vellore, CEO of Ally; Nitesh Banta, CEO at B12; and Ioann Fainsilber, Co-founder at Pintek, among others.

Testsigma was founded by Rukmangada, Pratheep Velicherla, Vikram Chaitanya, and Rajesh Reddy in 2019. The team comes with rich experience in developing enterprise SaaS applications for Zoho, Freshworks, Oracle, and HPE.

The TestSigma open-source test automation platform will simplify the testing and product-release stages for engineers, according to a press release from the venture.

While automated testing can balance software quality with the accelerated velocity of release cycles, the tool-chain to enable automated testing has many moving parts. This makes test automation a parallel development project in organisations, which means huge upfront and ongoing resource, tech, and expertise costs.

"What we’re trying to do at Testsigma is not just simplify test automation to speed up the testing, but also make it a sustainable, scalable process in which the tools don’t require ongoing maintenance, freeing up the teams to focus on value delivery instead of building and maintaining scripts and frameworks,” said Rukmangada Kandyala, Founder and CEO of TestSigma.

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Upswing aims to simplify open finance

Upswing Financial Technologies, founded by former bankers Anupam Bagchi and Nihar Gupta, has raised $4 million from marquee global fund QED Investors and a clutch of fintech founders.

Upswing will apply the funds to build a plug-and-play platform for open finance, and help fintechs and consumer tech players offer financial services seamlessly, according to a press release.

The company is working with leading banks on the stack, which will go live in a phased manner this year.

The platform will empower financial institutions with greater reach, said Nihar Gupta, Co-founder, Upswing. "It will allow consumertech players to offer differentiated financial products in weeks instead of months, sometimes even years.”

Leading fintech founders like Kunal Shah of CRED, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter, Rajan Bajaj of Slice, Lalit Keshre of Groww, Anurag Sinha of One Card, Shivashish Chatterjee of DMI Finance, Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal, and Sumit Gwalani and Sujith Narayanan of epiFi also participated in the round.

The round also saw participation from Better Capital, Amara VC, Multiply Ventures, Capier Investments, and Utsav Somani from AngelList.

Tech and financing for healthcare

Healthtech startup ClaimBuddy has raised $3 million in a Pre-Series A round of investment, co-led by Chiratae Ventures and Rebright Partners.

ClaimBuddy provides digital infrastructure to hospitals for their patients’ health insurance claims, and serves as a one-stop solution to process insurance claims, the company said in a press release.

Existing investors like Titan Capital and Relentless Ventures, including other private investors, also participated in the round.

"ClaimBuddy has witnessed 10x growth over the past year," said Khet Singh, Co-founder of ClaimBuddy. "With the funding, we look forward to accelerating the company’s effort for smoother claim assistance.”

The company has processed claims of more than Rs 100 crore, and works with 120 hospitals, according to the press release. "With this investment, we are looking ahead to provide the best support to hospitals and partner-doctors who are associated with us,” said Ajit Patel, Co-founder, ClaimBuddy.

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SpaceAge Labs raises $1.7 million in seed round

SpaceAge Lab, which has developed an IoT platform to automate operations and maintenance of water and wastewater infrastructure, urban greenery, and facilities, has raised $1.7 million in a round led by Silicon Solution Partners (SSP), and SEEDS Capital.

Founded in 2016 by Deepak Pitta, SpaceAge Labs was incubated at NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore.

Its flagship product is remoteEye — a complete, sensor-agnostic IoT/ AI platform that enables connected operations and maintenance.

SpaceAge Labs will use the seed funding to grow its team, expand internationally, and roll out several pilot projects across Singapore, Australia, and the US.

IndiaMART invests $1.8 million in Adansa Solutions

Online B2B marketplace IndiaMart has invested $1.8 million for a 26 percent stake in Adansa Solutions, which offers a cloud-based accounting software product for businesses under the 'Realbooks' brand.

"We are organising financial data for companies working pan India with offices in multiple cities and states, such as logistics, auto dealerships, ecommerce," said Anurag Mohta, CEO of Realbooks.

"We have created a platform for accounting firms and chartered accountants to provide services to their clients, and manage their compliances with integrated GST solutions," he added.

Indian businesses are diverse and have varied accounting and billing needs, noted Dinesh Agarwal, CEO of IndiaMART. "Unlike existing desktop-based software solutions, which were designed for traditional businesses, the team at Realbooks has consciously designed a cloud-first product that makes it appealing for new-age businesses."

TABLT Pharmacy raises $1.5 million

Kolkata-headquartered TABLT Pharmacy, which deals in medicines, OTC drugs, and other healthcare products, has raised $1.5 million in a Pre-Series A round.

TABLT Pharmacy was founded by Anish Agarwal and Anant Jain in 2018. Its Pre-Series A round has seen participation from JITO Angel Network, Tech Innovation, LetsVenture, Seeders Syndicate, and Angel Bay, among other angel investors.

“The company has achieved six-fold growth since April 2020," said Anish Agarwal, Co-founder of TABLT Pharmacy. "It is geared up for 4X growth in the next 15 months."

TABLT Pharmacy gained traction for delivering medicines in one day in markets beyond the top 10 cities. It also provides cold storage for medicines in Tier-II and III markets, according to a press release.

It has customers in four states, and aspires to expand across 10 states in the next two years. TABLT Pharmacy plans to open ‘fulfilment centres’ in Bhubaneswar, Patna, and Siliguri.

Thermax leads seed round in ExactSpace Technologies

Energy and environment solutions provider Thermax led a $1.4-million seed round in ExactSpace Technologies.

ExactSpace was founded in 2018 to accelerate the energy transition using deep-domain AI solutions that help decarbonise industrial plants, and eliminate unplanned failures.

“We’ve seen that precision use and analysis of data in industries help move the needle in this direction and we’ve been able to achieve these outcomes in the thermal power, oil & gas and industrial sectors.”, said Rahul Raghunathan, CEO of ExactSpace.

Its proprietary-AI platform Pulse combines algorithms that ‘learn’ about machine behaviour with expert knowledge of the industry it is deployed in to help operators make accurate or ‘exact’ decisions.

ExactSpace estimates the addressable market to be as large as $100 billion, and its platform is currently deployed in more than 60 plants globally.

Mahindra Logistics acquires ZipZap Logistics

Third-party logistics provider Mahindra Logistics has taken a majority stake in ZipZap Logistics, a last-mile logistics service provider in Hyderabad operating under the brand name of ‘Whizzard’.

The acquisition will complement MLL’s existing last-mile delivery business and EDeL, its electric vehicle (EV) based delivery services, according to a press release from Mahindra Logistics.

Whizzard operates an intra-city distribution network for digital commerce and last-mile delivery. It enables seamless handling of 60 million packages per year, across diverse segments.

Led by the founding team of Ankit Madhania and Arun Rao, Whizzard has grown 10X in the last three years, and serves customers with its full-stack digital capabilities and micro-distribution centres catering to more than 3,000 pin codes.