[Funding roundup] ShoutO, Nayam Innovations, DAOLens, SaveIN raise early-stage rounds

Fashion discovery platform ShoutO raises $1.6M pre-seed capital led by Saama Capital

Fashion discovery platform Shouto.app, co-founded by former Amazon, AJIO and Myntra executives Maruthy Ramgandhi, Abhishekk Handa, and Ayyappan Lakshmanan, respectively, has formally launched its operations. The company has raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round led by Saama Capital. Other investors who participated include Whiteboard Capital, Amit Singhal—Google veteran and former head of search, Arjun Vaidya (Founder, Dr Vaidyas), as well as 25 D2C founder angels.

The funds will be invested in product development, creator acquisition and engagement, and building a strong founding team of engineers and creator success managers.

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Nayam Innovations raises funding from Bharat Innovation Fund, IAN Fund, others

Nayam Innovations Pvt Ltd, an IP-driven, medical device startup built with a bold vision to eliminate blindness from the world, has today announced that it has secured its latest round of investment. The round was led by IAN Fund, a seed/early-stage fund, and Bharat Innovation Fund—a leading deep tech-focused venture capital fund. The Vinod Jain Family office, Sameer Desai—President of Zydus Cadila, and a few angel investors also participated in this round.

This round of financing will primarily be used to complete human clinical trials to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the technology and set the stage for launching the product in India as well as the US, Europe, Singapore, China, and Japan.

Founded by Dr Julia Ann Kornfield, Dr Surendra Ponrathnam, and Tanuj Gigras, Nayam Innovations has developed a novel technology platform that allows surgeons to customizse the intraocular lens either before or after surgery to neutralise refractive errors like astigmatism, myopia (near-sightedness), and hyperopia (farsightedness). The company also aims to lower the manufacturing cost of hydrophobic foldable IOLs to make its technology affordable to every cataract patient in need.

DAOLens raises funds from 36 marquee angel investors

DAOLens has added another 36 marquee names to its growing list of angel investors which already includes Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Animoca Brands’ Simon Doherty, and Solana founder Raj Gokal.

New additions to the list include Softbank’s Varun Khurana, CoinDCX co-founders Neeraj Khandelwal and Sumit Gupta, and Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal. You can check out the full list of 46 investors below.

DAOLens is a Web3 startup looking to simplify how DAOs work by streamlining onboarding, contribution, and discovery of DAOs with its products.

To mark one of the densest rounds of pre-seed funding for a Web3 startup in history, DAOLens will be dropping one-of-a-kind, non-transferable non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to a select few investors today as a token of their gratitude for believing in the long-term vision of the company.

Sexual health wellness and lifestyle brand Kindly raises $3.25M from multiple investors

Healthtech startup Kindly has set out to support men and women across Asia dealing with sexual wellness and lifestyle disorders through its diagnostic-first approach. In line with its efforts, Kindly has raised $3.25 million funding from investors around the globe. These include Y Combinator, DG Daiwa, Olive Tree, Soma, Goodwater, and Gaingels.

Y Combinator (W22 cohort) backed startup will use the capital to accelerate its growth and expansion across India and international markets. It aims to acquire 130 million users, who will benefit from Kindly’s full-stack solutions and strengthen its position as a tech-enabled lifestyle brand with the launch of an app in the coming months.

Founded in 2020 (previously known as Janani.life), Kindly is a holistic sexual performance and a lifestyle brand focused on the sexual and reproductive health space. They are addressing the gap in the market of lifestyle disorders, sexual performance, and hormonal wellness—an $8 billion market opportunity—with their support and product range.

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Healthcare fintech SaveIN raises over $7M in seed round

Gurugram-based, finance platform for healthcare, SaveIN has expanded the reach of its 'Care Now, Pay Later' product to over 1,000 healthcare and wellness providers across the country, enabling on-demand credit and easy EMIs at the point of care. The startup has recently raised more capital taking its total seed funding to over $7 million.

The company is now present in over 30 cities, including all major metros and Tier-I locations, facilitating outpatient, and elective healthcare procedures like daycare surgeries, dental, dermatology, eye, veterinary, haircare, gym memberships, preventive wellness, and alternative therapies across its rapidly growing partner network.

“Since the launch of our business in January this year, we have grown to over 1,000 partners today coinciding with us raising a total of $7 million in seed funding over the last quarter. This rapid growth and unwavering investor confidence highlight the wide-ranging acceptance of our 'Care Now, Pay Later' programme and an endorsement of our unique approach towards building this transformational business. With over two million healthcare providers in India, we have a long way to go and we will continue to invest in our People, Product and distribution, to realise our vision of facilitating hyper-local, quality healthcare with enhanced affordability for one and all,” says SaveIN Founder and CEO Jitin Bhasin.

ZKX raises $4.5M in seed round from StarkWare, Alameda Research, others

ZKX, the first permissionless derivatives trading protocol built on StarkNet, StarkWare’s L2 network that leverages ZK rollups, raises $4.5 million in seed funding. Investors include StarkWare, Alameda Research, Amber Group, Huobi, Crypto.com, and others.

In addition, ZKX received investment from notable individual investors including Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon, and Ashwin Ramachandran, General Partner at DragonFly Capital.

The funding will be used for further development of ZKX’s core offerings, the ZKX open-source protocol, DAO funding and continued growth of the ZXK ecosystem.

(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)