[Funding roundup] LimeChat, EximPe, Glip, iTribe, HBox, Laurik, Myraah raise early-stage deals

LimeChat raises $4.2 million seed funding 

LimeChat, a chatbot startup, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Stellaris Venture Partners, with participation from Pi Ventures, Titan Capital, and marquee angel investors. The funds raised will be utilised to strengthen its product and expand its go-to-market operations.

Founded in 2020 by Aniket Bajpai and Nikhil Gupta, LimeChat is developing a conversational marketing ecosystem to help D2C brands improve retention. 

In the last six months, LimeChat has witnessed a 3x growth and has expanded its client base to over 125 brands in India and across the globe including Mamaearth, MCaffeine, and Wow Skin Science to name a few. 

Nikhil Gupta, Co-founder of LimeChat, said, “As we continue to build a category-defining SaaS company for global ecommerce brands, with Stellaris’ track record in building global SaaS leaders and defining growth stories of leading D2C brands, we could not think of a better partner to support us in this journey.”

EximPe raises $3.5 million in seed round led by Leo Capital 

EximPe, a B2B cross-border fintech startup, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round anchored by Leo Capital. 

The round also saw participation from other investors including RB investments, Founder Bank Capital, iSeed Ventures, 2am VC, LetsVenture, and BoldCap. 

Additionally, it included participation from landmark angel investors including Kunal Shah, Founder, CRED; Rajesh Raju, Managing Director - Kalaari Capital; Axel Wehr, Partner - Firestartr.vc, Aprameya Radhakrishnan, Co-founder and CEO, Koo; and Ankit Nagori, Founder - Curefoods to name a few.

Founded by Arjun Abraham Zacharia in June 2021, EximPe aims to reimagine cross-border trade by digitising its workflows and providing financial services, in partnership with leading Indian banks

Arjun Abraham Zacharia, Founder, EximPe said, “We are ecstatic to have gained investor confidence in our efforts to create a neobanking service platform that will reinvent cross-border trade and eliminate the industry's current inefficiencies.”

Glip raises $3 million Pre-Series A funding

Glip, a creator tool suite for gamers to create and monetise, has raised $3 million in its Pre-Series A round led by Prime Venture Partners.

The round also saw the participation of existing backers Better Capital and iSeed. Prominent angels include Paavan Nanda (WinZO), Nilay Arora (Tencent), Suhail Sameer (BharatPe), Ravish Naresh (Khatabook), Vivek Hallekere (Bounce), Kumar Aakash (Matrix), and Misbah Ashraf (Jar), among others.

Founded in 2020 by Parth Choudhary and Ishan Shrivastava, Glip has built three tools for content creation — recording, streaming, montage editing, and is now experimenting with monetisation tools — live NFT auction and stream modifiers.

The capital from the current round has already helped Glip's monthly active users grow 400x to two million users in three months. "We are setting the groundwork to onboard 10 million gamers by the end of the year," said Ishan Shrivastava, Co-founder of Glip.

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iTribe raises $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors including Kunal Shah

iTribe, Bengaluru-based fintech startup, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors such as Eximius Ventures, Kunal Shah (CRED), Incisive Ventures, and several angel investors. 

The pre-seed funding round saw participation from the leadership team of CRED (Harish, Swami, Sreeni, Ketan), Pearl Agarwal (Eximius Ventures), and angel investors such as Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli and Rishikesh SR (founders of Rapido), Reeju Datta (founder of Cashfree), and Gaurav Dahake (founder of BitBns).

Founded in 2021 by second-time entrepreneurs Nikhil M and Pruthvi Raj E, iTribe is a one-stop solution for customers to get news related to stocks, advisors, and investment ideas in real-time without any bundle.

Nikhil M, Co-founder, iTribe said, “We aim to make iTribe a place for anyone to learn and become informed investors and traders.” 

iTribe plans to deploy the funds to build new technology tools that make adoption by the front line much more accessible, accelerating the organisational adaptation needed to produce results. 

HBox raises $700,000 in seed funding round led by Arali Ventures

HBox.ai, healthtech Startup, has raised $700,00 in seed funding round led by Arali Ventures. The US-based healthtech startup will deploy the funds to increase its market penetration and build out its product stack.

Founded in 2021, HBox is building a unique ‘Virtual-First’ care platform, enabling primary to specialty clinics in the US to provide virtual care to its patient base and went live with one clinic in March 2021 with its first offering ‘Remote Patient Monitoring-as-a-service.’ 

Banu Prasad Dhanakoti, Co-founder and CEO of HBox Inc, said, “We, at HBox, are at the forefront of this disruption and are building a virtual first care network and platform by reimagining care delivery using technology and innovative partnership-based business model with existing care providers.”

HBox has grown rapidly signing customers in eight US States, resulting in a contracted base of 2,00,000 Medicare patients and in the first year, the startup witnessed a growing CAGR of 30 percent on a month-on-month basis.  

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Laurik raises $485,790

Laurik, a nutraceutical startup, has raised a funding amount of $485,790 in its ideation stage. 

Founded in 2020 by Lavanya Sunkari and Archana Chindam, Laurik is a D2C nutraceutical startup that produces Lauric enhanced coconut shots. 

Laurik is also one of the 100 brands in the world and second nutraceutical brand in India to be awarded with the Clean Label Certification from the Clean Label Project — the highest level of United States (US) certification in recognition .

Lavanya Sunkari, Founder and CEO, Laurik said, “Being recognised by the Clean Label Project as one of few companies in the world for creating clean products, validates our mission to unlock the power of nature with exceptional innovation to make products that are healthier, and safer for daily consumption.”

The funding round was led by marquee investors like Murthy Aradhi, Co-founder at FastCollab, and Lakshmikant PB, Director of Finance at Antler, an early-stage venture capital firm. 

Laurik’s unique product has also received recognition from the Telangana government and T-Hub as they recently provided the startup with a fund through the T-Fund programme.

Myraah raises $350,000 in pre-seed funding

Myraah, an Indian technology startup, has raised $350,000 as pre-seed funding led by CEO and Co-founder of Xceedance, entrepreneur and technology enthusiast Arun Balakrishnan; Gurugram-based angel investor’s Xcelerator Venture Partners; and other angel investors. 

This fund will help Myraah build a Web3 platform that allows anyone to create their Web3 digital identity and manage their digital assets such as files, pictures, music, videos, notes, documents, NFTs, domains and websites.

Myraah’ s Web3 platform will allow netizens to establish ownership of content they create on the internet as well as monetise them. The company is already engaged with their 70,000+ user base to experience the Web3 platform. The company plans to onboard five hundred thousand users within this year to subscribe to their Web3 products and services.

Gaurav Kumar, Co-founder and CEO, Myraah, said, “We thank our investors for showing confidence in our platform. The advent of Web3 will usher a new era for over 600 million internet users in India and we hope to onboard 500,00 early adopters in the first year.”

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Wildermart raises $320,000 seed funding round 

Wildermart, a Bengaluru based healthy and sustainable grocery store start-up, has raised $320,000 seed funding round from angel investors to accelerate customer acquisition and retention, build brand salience, and hire right talent. 

Founded in 2021 by Shweta Thakur and Swaroop Mohan, Wildermart offers more than 1,500 products across over 30 categories and the products range from certified organic staples to F&V, clean label artisanal packaged foods to chemical free personal, and home care products. 

Shweta Thakur, Founder and CEO, Wildermart said, “We feel very validated in our vision at this stage. We can't wait to start realising it.We are feeling extremely fortunate to have got the kind of investors we have in this round. They all come with complementing industry expertise and we are certain that this partnership will strengthen our value proposition.” 

Swaroop Mohan, Co-founder, Wildermart said “This round of funding is going to help us set up our Bangalore foundation very strongly. This will give us a model which will then take to pan India in the next few years. We are also contemplating expanding to international geographies in a short while. This is a solution that the whole world needs right now.” 

Frigate raises $175,000 in pre-seed round

Frigate, Chennai-based cloud manufacturing startup, raises $175,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round from strategic investors such as  Vel Kanniappan - angel investor, Abhishek Raj Pandey - head of sourcing and procurement; Mamaearth, Prabhu Sengodan of SPK Groups, Founder of Zetwerk; Bitscrunch, M2P Fintech, Ippopay, Wilcosource US, and other angel investors from the US, Japan, Germany, and Singapore.

This new funding will be used to further strengthen Frigate’s technology stack. Frigate is planning to set up offices in Chennai and Bengaluru to increase the headcount to over 100 members within the next fiscal.

Founded in 2021 by Tamizh Inian, Frigate is an on-demand cloud manufacturing marketplace platform that provides fabrication, 3D printing, and CNC machining services quickly, risk-free and affordable for OEMs, SMEs, and startups. The company has onboarded 150 SMEs on their platform for making their metal and plastic parts from Tier-II and Tier-III cities. 

“We would like to acquire 200 more customers and be a $100M company in the next three years,” said Tamizh Inian, Founder and CEO of Frigate.

pinBox raises seed funding 

pinBox, a global pensiontech startup committed exclusively to digital micro-pension inclusion, announced it has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from ADB Ventures, Venture Catalysts (Vcats) and nine unicorns.

Gautam Bhardwaj, Co-founder of pinBox, said “We're hugely excited with this development. The funding support from VCats and ADB Ventures will help us upscale our capacity to effectively meet the growing demand for pension inclusion solutions from multiple countries.”

Founded in 2016 by Parul Seth Khanna and Gautam Bhardwaj, Singapore-headquartered pinBox uses its micro-pension technology platform, process innovation and a simple and intuitive user interface to address friction and access challenges in delivering micro-pension and insurance solutions to underserved informal sector workers. 

pinBox provides its ready-to-deploy pensiontech platform globally to governments and regulators seeking to expand pension and insurance coverage to non-salaried workers. 

In India, pinBox is working with HDFC Pension, Nippon AMC, SBI AMC and leading insurers to help deliver NPS and customised saving and insurance solutions to India's 400 million informal sector workers without social security benefits.

Kings Group Ventures invests in Pune-based WeIdliwale

Weldiwale, a food startup, received an undisclosed investment and also partnered with Neha Anand, Director of Kings Group Ventures to support the startup's expansion plans of decentralizing the idli in and beyond Pune.

Founded in 2019 by Chirag Jadhav and chef Abhishek Joshi, WeIdliwale brings South Indian flavours to Pune. WeIdliwale plans to scale the business beyond Pune with long-term goals of global locations along with Kings Group Venture’s Food and Beverage operations.

"WeIdliwale has always had a strong belief in collaborating with like-minded people and products, taking a humble dish to the next level with the right combination, and also having some fun with it along the way. We found a perfect partner, Neha Anand, who spearheads multiple national and international food businesses under Kings Group Ventures and is proud to announce that WeIdliwale will be joining the group," the company said in a press statement. 

The company also plans to open a second store in Viman Nagar, Pune. Its first store was started in August 2019 in Baner, Pune. The brands under Kings Group are Circle of Crust brand across Pune, King’s Dairy, and is preparing for the launch of the Fuji Cream frozen dessert line.