Startup news and updates: daily roundup (July 29, 2022)

Supply chain management startup Roadcast secures $2M

Roadcast, an end-to-end supply chain management solutions provider, raised $2 million led by Jubilant FoodWorks.

Founded in 2015 by Vishal Jain, Anshul Jain, and Rahul Mehra, the Delhi-based SaaS company is a technology provider for logistics enterprises. It helps businesses across industries by providing them with a robust, scalable, and cost-effective solution to automate operations.

Roadcast will focus on global expansion and hiring the relevant talent to build the right framework for expansion and growth. It will use the funds towards investing in AI and analytics advancements to further the logistics vertical.

“We are thrilled with the faith that Jubilant FoodWorks has shown in the company. We believe logistics is one of the fastest-growing sectors globally. With the right support, we can ace and innovate the technological advancements in the sector, thus, helping commerce all over the world,” shared Vishal Jain, Co-founder, Roadcast.

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Spare8 raises $770,000 in a pre-seed round

Spare8, a micro-investment app, raised $770,000 led by 2am VC, a US-based early-stage venture capital firm, along with Broom Ventures, Incisive Ventures, Varanium Capital, and Magic Fund. Several marquee angel investors such as Ajay Adiseshan (Founder, Paymate), Anoop Mathur (Founder, Core Media), Jaydeep Deshpande (Head of Marketing, Google Cloud, India), Yagnesh Sanghrajka (Founder and CFO, 100X.VC), and Sachin Seth (CEO, BSE EBIX Insurance) also joined the funding round.

Founded in 2021 by Ronit Harisingani and Shardul Saiya, Spare8 is a micro-investment app working strenuously on a mission to simplify the way consumers invest, spend, see, and save money.

Ronit Harisingani, Co-founder, Spare8, said “We are grateful and humbled to have received such tremendous response from top-tier investors.”

The brand aims to strengthen its marketing and growth initiatives through this recent funding. It will also use this to build a lean but qualitatively strong team to scale quickly.

ABD India forays into the metaverse with the ABD MetaBar

Allied Blenders and Distillers (ABD) has made its debut in the metaverse with the ABD MetaBar—an immersive virtual reality space housing digital displays of its leading offerings. Visitors to the space can learn more about brands, watch new content, and discover key initiatives from the organisation. 

With its design, the ABD MetaBar—optimised for both mobile and desktop usage—taps into the growing interest in the metaverse amongst consumers, and their willingness to experiment with novel digital activations. 

Moving forward, the ABD MetaBar will evolve to allow for interactions with users and serve as a gateway for curated online experiences across consumer interest areas of fun, design, music, gaming, and the performing arts.

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Terralogic announces the acquisition of Codebele

Terralogic, a global leader in cybersecurity, IT, and software services, has announced the acquisition of Codebele, a Bellari-based software development company. According to Terralogic, this acquisition is aimed at increasing its software development services.,

Manoj Reddy founded Codebele in 2012. Since then, Codebele has seen tremendous growth and collaborated with clients including Myntra, EY, Hexaware, and Kotak Life. Codebele specialises in all aspects of application development, including website and mobile app development, frontend and backend programming, and cloud-based apps. It presently works with over 100 clients and has completed over 200 projects.

"Tier II cities have the same, if not more, potential than Tier I cities, with less traffic, costs, and other urban problems. Our objective with Codebele is to highlight the existence of Bellari as a premier center for a development firm," said Founder Manoj Reddy. 

He further added, "We want Codebele to have a worldwide presence and offer top-notch services to businesses not just in India but all around the world. By the end of the year, we expect to have a strong growth rate and a significant global footprint, proving that even Tier II cities can prosper when they have a truly competent workforce. We're certain that we will be able to achieve this with Terralogic."

ValueFirst partners with LeadSquared to offer customer conversations through SMS, WhatsApp plugin

ValueFirst, a global leader in the CPaaS (communications platform-as-a-service) space, has partnered with Bengaluru-based end-to-end sales execution and marketing automation platform, LeadSquared, to help brands across the globe offer seamless and joyful customer experiences while driving their sales. With this partnership, ValueFirst and LeadSquared aim to strengthen their commitment towards connecting businesses with their customers across different channels and driving customer experiences.

The ValueFirst SMS and WhatsApp plugin is now available on the LeadSquared CRM. With the plugin, users will be able to send SMS and WhatsApp messages from the CRM natively with a single click of a button. Users will be able to send automated messages to clients on defined actions as well as execute campaigns. The plugin will also provide insight-rich analytics to users to help them make better business decisions.

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xQ appoints Pawan Kumar Vadlamani as Co-Founder & VP of Global Sales

Edtech startup xQ has appointed Pawan Kumar Vadlamani as Co-founder and Vice President of the company’s global sales segment. With a rich experience in market expansion, brand building, category creation, handling multi-cultural cross-functional teams, sales value, and sustainable growth strategies, Pawan Kumar has joined to help expand xQ across the country and globally.

An alumnus of IIM Kozhikode, he has a sound understanding of both Indian and international markets. He has worked with Asian Paints for 14 years in roles of sales, marketing, and international operations.

Tekion launches campus recruitment drive in India; to hire 400+ engineers

Tekion, a cloud-native automotive retail SaaS platform, has launched a campus recruitment drive for 2022 in India. Over the next two months, Tekion’s Talent Acquisition teams will visit several engineering colleges across India to recruit 400 engineers, who will be part of the organisation’s global innovation teams.

Founded in 2016 by tech innovator Jay Vijayan, ex CIO of Tesla, Tekion’s offices in India are in Bengaluru (APAC headquarters) and Chennai (Regional Center).

“We’re harnessing the passion, entrepreneurial spirit, deep industry expertise, and the latest technologies to create something very special. We're creating a seamlessly integrated, elegant, and intuitive platform built with cutting-edge technology and powered by Big Data, Machine Learning (ML)/ AI, and IoT. We're inventing new technology along the way to overcome barriers and solve big problems, all while having a blast doing it," said Jay Vijayan, CEO & Founder, Tekion.

Tekion will hire freshers for roles such as Backend Engineers, Frontend Engineers, Data Scientists, Quality Analysts, Performance Engineers, Data Analysts and Application Support Engineers through campus recruitment. Some of the key states that Tekion’s teams will visit are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Odisha, Rajasthan, and cities such as Jamshedpur, Guwahati, Mandi, Roorkee, Noida, Lucknow, and Raipur.

(With inputs from PTI)

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