[Funding Roundup] Beco, hBits, EVeez, and Nawgati sign early-stage deals

Beco raises $3M led by Rukum Capital in Series A 

Sustainable home and personal care brand Beco raised $3 million in a Series A round led by Rukum Capital, Priyavrata Mafatlal, Better Capital, Prashant Pittie, and Titan Capital.

Other investors, including Bimal Parekh, Sweta Amrish Rau, Arjun Purkayastha, Harish Narayanan, Rehan Shaikh, Shantanu Deshpande, Kolte-Patil Family Ventures, Gaurav Arora, Avinash Badaia, and Exceed Entertainment, also participated in the round.

The startup will use the funds for R&D (product innovation, development in sustainability), marketing, supply chain functions, and talent acquisition across verticals to boost growth. 

Founded in 2019 by Aditya Ruia, Akshay Varma, and Anuj Ruia, Mumbai-based startup Beco aims to make sustainable living convenient by providing easily accessible and affordable products for Indian consumers.

The startup aims to expand into 10,000 offline retail stores across India and will also widen its product range to include a new set of cleaner products and an all-new personal hygiene care category, including a multipurpose spray, bathroom cleaner, and laundry detergent sheets. 

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hBits raises Rs 20 Cr in angel round

Commercial real estate startup hBits, which offers fractional ownership (FA) to investors in Grade A properties, raised Rs 20 crore in an angel funding round.  

Investors participating in the round include Nirmal Jain (Chairman and Founder of IIFL), Incred Capital (Part of The Incred Group), Jayesh Parekh (ex-Managing Partner, Jungle Ventures); Awdhesh Krishna (ex-Managing Director, Snow Leopard (Kirloskar Family Office) and Global Head of HR, Wholesale Corporate Banking at Nomura Services Limited).  

The company will use the capital to acquire new assets under management (AUM), customer acquisition, and expansion of the business to newer cities.

hBits uses machine learning to gather historical sale and rental data, also available on its platform for everybody to access. The company will further strengthen its technology to bring more transparency to information sharing and increase the ease and security of transactions.

The startup has an AUM of Rs 150 crore from its eight assets. It aims to bring in 40 new Grade A properties and achieve investments under management at Rs 1,000 crore within a year. The company has 30,000 investors on its platform.

hBits plans to use blockchain technology to make all transactions paperless. All the contracts are digitally signed, and investors can buy and sell transactions themselves through its platform, thereby cutting the need for intermediaries.

Presently, hBits has almost 1.50 lakh square feet of area under management in eight assets that it manages in Mumbai.

EVeez raises fresh funds from Ev2 Ventures and ah! Ventures' angel platform

Gurugram-based e-mobility-as-a-service startup EVeez has raised an undisclosed amount led by Ev2 Ventures (Ev2) as part of its seed round to build deeper tech capabilities and geographical expansion. The funding round also saw participation from ah! Ventures' angel platform.

Founded in 2020 by Gaurav Rathore and Abhishek Dwivedi, EVeez says it clocks a monthly growth of over 15%. It has a presence across Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Bengaluru and plans to expand to 12 more cities soon.

In the past year, the startup has grown 5X to over 1,500 e-bikes, with an enviable customer acquisition cost (CAC) close to zero. It aims to expand to deploy more than 10,000 e-bikes within the next year (each e-bike adds a net lifetime value of over Rs 1.2 lakh).

Equipped with advanced IoT devices that provide rich usage data and valuable insights to subscribers, EVeez has partnered with ecommerce, 3PL, transportation, and last-mile delivery giants like Swiggy, Xpressbees, Uber Moto, Zomato, Zepto, and Shadowfax. Moreover, it also services over 100 SMB clients, covering a range of sectors.

Fuel aggregator Nawgati raises funding from MapMyIndia

Fuel aggregator Nawgati has raised an undisclosed sum at a valuation of $4 million from MapmyIndia. 

The B2B2C congestion management and compliance monitoring startup builds state-of-the-art systems for fuel stations. It is incubated and supported by BITS Pilani’s incubator PIED Society and the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

The startup will use the investment to strengthen the core team to scale Aaveg pan-India with all major fuel companies.

Nawgati’s offering—Aaveg—is live at Indraprastha Gas Limited’s CNG outlets in the Delhi region. The company has undertaken pilots with Indian Oil and Mahanagar Gas and has deployments in the pipeline with Gujarat Gas, Sabarmati Gas, and Adani Total. Product rollouts are also discussed with Think Gas, Torrent Gas, Indian Oil CGD, IRM Energy, HPCL, Green Gas, CUGL, and AG&P.

Vaibhav Kaushik, CEO and Co-founder said,

“The recent funding from MapMyIndia provides Nawgati with the necessary fuel (pun intended) to onboard all major fuel providers in the country. MapMyIndia’s experience in building excellent products for both large scale organisations and end-consumers will come in handy during Nawgati’s journey.”

Safeverse raises $1M

Metaverse training initiative Safeverse raised $1 million in a pre-seed round led by Gains Associates, Seedthrift, Encrypted Investments, and Uptrend, among others.  

The initiative will use the investment for infrastructural setup, product development, and getting key personnel from metaverse and blockchain domain onto the advisory panel. It will also utilise the investment for promotions and marketing to develop community and disseminate information about the long-term utility of the Safeverse project.

Safeverse is a Web3 venture of Zyenalabs—an AR/VR/XR company developing virtual training and safety products for global brands to reduce risk in the workplace and costs associated with training.

To assist in industrial training, ZyenaLABS has launched Safeverse, a first-of-its-kind Metaverse, wherein it provides safety training using AR and VR.

Rural healthtech startup Medyseva raises Rs 1.5 Cr  

Indore-based telemedicine healthcare startup Medyseva raised Rs 1.5 crore in pre-Series A funding under Startup India Seed Fund Scheme from AIC RNTU Bhopal. 

The startup also received funds from a group of angel investors, including Mohit Gulati, Mandar Joshi, Yamika Mehra, Ankita Vashistha, Aarti Gupta, and Dr Vivek Bindra, led by Horses Stable, to build a robust network of its flagship initiative Medyseva Kendra in rural India. 

The startup will utilise the funds to expand and strengthen its IT infrastructure, add more services to its portfolio, and onboard specialist doctors to ensure smooth delivery of services for the rural sector.

Medyseva wants to provide Indians from Tier II, III, and beyond towns, and rural areas access to high-quality doctors and medical services at their convenience and affordable prices. It has 20 clinics and plans to set up around 250 clinics by the end of this fiscal year.

The healthtech startup has set up Medyseva Kendras offering consultation and services, including pathology, radiology, hospitalisation, ambulance, and home care services. It also covers the entire spectrum of services—from having virtual consultations to getting surgeries, from booking diagnostic tests to digitising medical records. 

Peer Robotics raises $2.3M in seed round led by Kalaari Capital

Peer Robotics, a new mobile robotics solution transforming manufacturing, raised $2.3 million in a seed round led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from existing investors Axilor Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, and Innopact VC.

“Manufacturers regularly deal with lots of repetitive labour-intensive tasks that are great candidates for automation. Small and medium-size companies are struggling with the labour shortage today, not to mention high turnover. Also, many operations are still manual with employees operating at a high-risk of injuries and fatigue.  Solutions to date have been too expensive and complex,” said Rishabh Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Peer Robotics.

Peer Robotics is designed to work with humans, mirroring workflows in manufacturing operations on repetitive tasks, saving time, increasing efficiencies, and reducing injuries.

The company’s robots learn from humans in real-time allowing people on the shop floor to easily integrate and deploy solutions, alongside them with a flexible design, out-of-box deployment, and low maintenance.

Peer Robotics is part of STANLEY+Techstars Accelerator programme portfolio.