[Funding roundup] MedisimVR, Fast&Up, MOPP Foods, Pickyourtrail, and more raise early-stage deals

MedisimVR raises Rs 3.5 Cr in Pre-Series A led by Inflection Point Ventures 

MediSim VR, a medtech startup working in the field of healthcare simulation, has raised Rs 3.5 crore in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from Chennai Angels and Jana Balasubramaniam (MedTech investor).

The funds raised will be used for scaling up their product offering and adding more skill training content to their library.

MediSimVR said it aims to make comprehensive medical training accessible and affordable across the world through their current offerings, which include Procedural Simulation, Virtual Patient Simulation, and Clinical education. They have been able to onboard almost 500 medical students in the last four months.

The key product offered by MediSimVR is the Virtual Reality based skill training platform that covers all the skills required in the MBBS curriculum. Some of the other features include performance analytics and evaluation metrics to better assess the learning pattern and competency.

Sabarish Chandrasekaran, Co-founder and CEO, MedisimVR, said, 

“The future healthcare workforce of India needs a futuristic training methodology and an alignment among visionary entities for rapid scaling up. At MediSimVR, we are excited to partner with IPV as we embark on this journey of change.”

Ok! Acquired invests $130K in edtech, NFT startups

Ok! Acquired, a Bengaluru-headquartered investment tech firm, has invested $1,30,000 in two startups. Ok! Acquired along with its board of investors have invested $1,00,000 in Uppskill, a Web 2.0 edtech startup, and $30,000 in Bliv.Club, a Web 3.0 NFT derivative startup. 

Founded by brothers Subh Jha and Sujit Jha, it is a one-stop platform for those who want to buy or sell companies from any part of the country. 

The investment tech firm has created a robust platform for business owners in sectors like real estate, IT, food, construction, and agriculture, both startups and small and mid-sized, to list their businesses with all relevant information along with documentation that substantiates their existence. The team of Ok! Acquired audits the documentation and makes it visible on their platform under specific industry lists for interested investors all around the world. 

Ok! Acquired focuses on providing transparent investment opportunities for all investors and solely operates as a mediator. The firm has no business interests other than the fees it charges for its services, which is again very nominal. 

Cricketer Mayank Agarwal begins new innings as an investor with Fast&Up

Punjab Kings (PBKS) captain and opener Mayank Agarwal has started new inning as an investor in Fullife Healthcare Pvt Ltd, the parent company of sports nutrition brand Fast&Up. The cricketer has joined Fullife Healthcare’s ranks as an investor for an undisclosed amount.

Fast&Up, which is synonymous with running, cricket, kabaddi, badminton, and football, is in partnership with over 100 professional Indian athletes and active association partnership with Tata Mumbai Marathon, Airtel Hyderabad Marathon Expo, Skechers Performance Chennai Marathon, Airtel Delhi Half Marathon, TCS World 10K, Goa River Marathon, etc.

The brand claims to be having informed choice and informed-sport certification across its flagship products, available across 40,000+ pincodes throughout India via its retail and omni channel strategy.

Speaking about this investment, Agarwal said,

"I have been using Fast&Up products to support my on-field performances since the early days in my International career. Having worked closely with the team at Fast&Up for a number of years, they have showed a nuanced understanding of how to elevate an athlete's fitness in order to achieve peak performance."

Agarwal first began using Fast&Up products during his breakthrough domestic season in 2017-18, when the batsman incorporated distance running into his training routine.

"I have been quite mindful of where I invest, as my principles have always been to put my money in a product and a brand that I truly believe in. Fast&Up ticks every requirement on the list for me, and I believe the potential for growth and range of products that Fast&Up has will make the brand the apex choice for many sportspersons across India and the world in the coming years," he added.

India Accelerator invests in MOPP Foods, a D2C startup

Gurugram-based D2C food startup MOPP Foods has secured seed funding from the existing investor network of India Accelerator. With this funding the startup plans to expand capacity in its existing cloud kitchens across Delhi NCR. 

“We are currently clocking about 25,000 orders a month with a GMV ARR of Rs 8 crore,” said Geetika Anand Gupta, Co-founder, MOPP Foods.

Founded in 2019 by Geetika Anand Gupta and Gaurav Gupta, the startup currently operates three brands – MOPP - Mad Over Parathas and Pakodas, Mealy and Mad Over Curry across Delhi NCR. MOPP has reinvented the recipe of pakodas to make them delivery friendly, as they are less oily, do not become soggy and remain crispy on delivery.

“We started off with an aim to build a single brand QSR chain focused around popular street-foods and snacks, parathas, and pakodas. We strongly believe that these street-foods carry a wider appeal compared to burgers, pizzas, or momos, but still there is no big brand or chain trying to uplift them in an organized segment. While we have evolved into a multi-brand cloud kitchen over the last two years, our original aim to uplift popular Indian street-foods remains the vision of our brand MOPP,” added Gaurav.

The startup claims to have grown at a CAGR of 80 percent over the past three years, and is looking to achieve even faster growth now on as the pandemic challenges seem to be behind us. It is looking to raise additional funding to fuel the next stage of scale across Delhi NCR.

BlackSoil invests over $4.5M in three new-age startups 

Venture debt player BlackSoil on Thursday announced that it has provided $4.5+ million of growth capital to three distinguished startups. The startups are namely Blu-Smart Mobility, an electric shared mobility platform; BigHaat, an agri inputs digital marketplace platform, and Loan Tap, a fintech offering personal loans.

Ankur Bansal, Co-founder and Director of BlackSoil said, 

“All our new partners have shown tremendous resilience and bounced back from the pandemic to enter a new phase of growth. We are happy to support them and hope our capital will contribute to help them reach the next level. They have unique value propositions and business models which have garnered the support of marquee institutional investors and made them an attractive investment opportunity for BlackSoil as well.”

Blu-Smart Mobility is a ride hailing platform that operates on all electric cars only, founded by Anmol Jaggi and Punit Goyal, covering the entire value chain of smart mobility, smart charging and smart parking. It was founded in 2019 and operates in Delhi NCR region. It has set up 10 charging hubs which have a total of 250+ charging guns, has a fleet of 1,000+ all-electric vehicles and has cumulatively recorded 1+ million trips till date.  

BigHaat is an agritech startup which provides integrated digital-first agriculture supply chain solutions and empowers farmers with accessibility to high-quality agri-inputs along with crop advisory service and provides output market linkage services to these farmers. Founded in 2015, the company applies science, data, and technology to provide personalised technical crop advisory in vernacular content to farmers. Along with providing access to over 7,000 SKUs of wide range high quality inputs and catering to farmers in 13,000+ pin codes of the country. 

LoanTap Credit Products is a homegrown, hyper-growing digital lender with its own NBFC, committed to delivering fast, flexible, friendly personal loans to its audience. Founded in 2016, Loantap is a Pune-based, RBI-registered, fintech NBFC, with an aim to provide a seamless consumer experience from application to disbursal. It offers an array of digital lending solutions wherein the ticket sizes range from $400 to $20,000 with tenors typically ranging from 12 to 60 months. Currently, their operations are widely spread across 22+ cities and use its proprietary underwriting algorithms for ensuring a loan approval TAT of fewer than two days.

Pickyourtrail raises undisclosed funding

PickYourTrail, a travel startup, has raised an undisclosed funding from Kunal Shah (CEO, Cred), Adit Parekh (Ex Blume Ventures) and Vinay Ahuja (Executive Director, IIFL Wealth) and existing investors. 

“The valuation and double down by both new and existing investors is a great validation to both the market potential. The entire team has shown great resilience in having survived the pandemic despite the two-year ban on international flights. The team adapted quickly and launched newer vertical like staycations, our global biz and also beefed up our  product and tech,” said Hari Ganapathy, Co-founder of Pickyourtrail.

As part of their global expansion plans, Pickyourtrail opened a new office in Dubai last week. 

The funds acquired will be used to continue gaining leadership in the leisure space and be the preferred travel brand for new age travellers across the world. 

“Going global was always on the roadmap and our initial experiments through the first and second wave of the pandemic gave us an opportunity to test out the market. There is a clear gap for a reliable global holiday travel brand and we believe that our expertise in catering to one of the most value conscious customer segments (India) puts us in a unique position to build out that brand with our market-leading tech! Markets like the USA have a $100 billion+ outbound travel scope and even a small share of that pie is a significant opportunity,” added Srinath, Co-founder of Pickyourtrail. 

Pickyourtrail offers exclusive international itineraries to each of its customers through its advanced D-I-Y tech product. With Pickyourtrail, travellers have the liberty to take control and fully customise their itinerary based on their budget, requirements, and interests — all completely online.

From booking a window seat on the plane to having a hotel room with a view or even planning a surprise dinner under the stars, now anyone can make their vacation a memorable one with a hassle-free experience. Crafting customised holidays is now a possibility with Pickyourtrail. 

D2C ayurvedic brand The Ayurveda Co raises $3M led by Wipro

D2C ayurvedic brand The Ayurveda Co (TAC) has raised $3 million led by Wipro Consumer Care Ventures, Rahul Gupta of Tricity Technologies and Harsh Gupta of School of Design and Entrepreneurship in their maiden round of funding. This will accelerate their growth towards becoming India's first and fastest growing D2C ayurvedic personal care and wellness brand.

The brand intends to ‘HEAL’ the world i.e. ‘Help Embrace Ayurveda for Life’ by making people switch to an ayurveda lifestyle. Funds will be utilised to ramp up growth, production capabilities and venture into the retail sector. In the next 12-15 months, TAC will be gearing up to grow to Rs 100 crore turnover, boost team and technology, expand market share, and strengthen its footing in the D2C space.

Param Bhargava, Founder, TAC, said, 

"Our mission is to introduce natural and ayurvedic products to every household in India. TAC has been launched with the vision to introduce right quality products at right prices for larger masses of India. Also, to spread knowledge about Ayurveda globally TAC will be launching its own 3C app soon. This partnership with Wipro will help us accomplish our goals and build a legacy ayurvedic brand from India for the World. We deeply value Wipro’s business ethics and principles, and this partnership will help us imbibe the same and grow responsibly."

After successfully establishing their first brand Khadi Essentials, TAC was started in June 2021 after almost three years of research by founders Param Bhargava and Shreedha Singh. TAC’s Co-founder, Shreedha quoted, “The wide acceptance and success of TAC is rooted in 5,000+ years old science of Ayurveda, my personal experiences with the benefits of Indian Traditional Medicine while I was suffering with a painful skin situation called Urticaria (Hives). We believe that this simplicity, might and efficacy of Ayurveda needs to be taken more seriously. This led us to develop high quality, user-friendly and ayurvedic formulations and solve for specific concerns.”