Delhi:TravClan, one of the fastest growing global B2B travel tech platforms, having grown 10x in the since the pandemic hit, has raised USD 2.2 million in Pre-Series A round. The investment round was led by TheVentures, a Korea and Singapore based venture capital firm, and Leo Capital, who had also led the seed round in August 2019. The round also saw participation from global and marquee angel investors.
Technology is playing a crucial role in the revival of travel businesses globally after the industry was severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. TravClan has been at the forefront of helping travel business leverage technology to earn a livelihood. TravClan is empowering travel agents and new age travel entrepreneurs to build and grow their travel business online by setting up websites and sell products digitally. It also provides marketing tools that allow its users to generate more demand from social media, and earn more profit by booking flights, hotels, holidays with suppliers across the world at best B2B prices on its platform.
Speaking about investment, Arun Bagaria, Co-founder & CEO, TravClan, said, “Covid-19 has severely affected livelihood of more than 100 million people across the world who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. However, the urge to travel is innate to every human being and we are seeing strong consumer demand as vaccinations pick up. At TravClan, we are rebuilding the entire industry, one travel business at a time. We are humbled by the strong customer adoption and the profound impact we have been able to create in the lives of thousands of travel entrepreneurs using TravClan daily. This milestone is a result of our entire team’s belief and motivates us to continue working harder to empower travel businesses”
TravClan was co-founded by Arun Bagaria, Chirag Agrawal, Ashish Thapliyal who have previously worked with each other in key leadership roles at Oyo, Travel Triangle and Cars24. From their personal experiences of working in travel industry, the founders deeply understand the challenges faced by 200,000 plus small and medium travel agents in India. Some of these include generating demand online, sourcing flights, hotel and holiday bookings at best prices, finding reliable on-ground suppliers and cost-effective payments and credit solutions. TravClan is a global ecosystem for travel and is building an end to end operating system for anyone selling travel.
Rajul Garg, Founder & Managing Partner, Leo Capital, added, “We partnered with Arun, Chirag and Ashish in August 2019 when the business was growing rapidly before the pandemic hit. The resilience, conviction and ability to grow displayed by the founders at a time when other companies struggled to survive, speaks volumes about the quality of founding team. With governments globally are driving vaccination at unprecedented pace, revival in travel is imminent. We are excited about the tremendous opportunity to build a global travel platform that solves challenges faced by millions of travel companies”
Pre-Covid, about 70% of the company’s business was from international holidays. Post pandemic, TravClan has reimagined how travel agents and advisors can restart their business and earn their livelihood. Thousands of travel agents have taken their business online and built their website using TravClan. TravClan helps these agents market and grow their business online while managing entire operations including bookings, collection & payment of money, invoicing online. It also provides its agents a simple and convenient way to book travel products. This is reflected in the company’s growth as its monthly bookings have increased nearly ten times compared to pre-COVID levels, and the customer base has more than tripled organically.
Speaking about it, Chris Kim, Partner, TheVentures, said, “The travel and hospitality sector accounted for one in four job creations in the world in 2019. TravClan makes it easier than ever before for anyone to start monetizing their passion by selling travel and related experiences to customers. TravClan is expanding the assistance-led travel market as it allows new age travel advisors and digital travel influencers to start their business in an easy, cost-effective and digital-first era to meet the demands of the new-age customer. We are strong believers in the business model and excited to partner with the company at this pivotal point.”
TravClan’s vision is to empower SMBs in travel across the world to grow their business. It aims to bring on board over 10 million SMBs and enable a GMV of over $10 billion by 2025 on its platform. The company has already crossed the pre-COVID revenue, and now aims to grow 10x over the next 12 months. TravClan’s successful fundraise reverses the trend in an industry which is among the hardest hit by the global pandemic.
About TravClan
TravClan is a disruptive B2B Travel Platform bringing in the technology-driven transformation to the US $100 billion offline travel market in India and South East Asia. The Leo Capital funded venture was established in 2018 by Arun Bagaria, Chirag Agarwal, and Ashish Thapliyal who previously worked in senior leadership roles at startups like Oyo, Cars24, TravelTriangle. Within a short span of two years, TravClan has become a one-stop-shop for travel agents offering them support in generating leads online, creating their own website, planning holiday packages and itineraries, and offering global hotel bookings as well as flight ticket sales, etc.
New Delhi: India’s leading HR consulting firm, Marching Sheep has embarked on an awareness journey on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021, the theme for which this year is #ChooseToChallenge. The Journey, through a series of live interviews, will showcase how women from different walks of life chose to challenge and excel in their respective fields and will be celebrating their achievements.
The exclusive awareness journey is aimed at exchanging ideas, facilitate a candid conversation around relevant topics and trends, and engage in collective learning. It will also delve into the obstacles and hurdles that women face and overcome in life. The campaign is meant to raise awareness about the various issues that women face in their daily lives ranging from stereotypes at work, Societal biases, women safety and empowerment to women having to prove their leadership and worth.
“We are pleased to conduct this one-of-a-kind awareness journey preceding the International Women’s Day. Celebrating women is not about just one day….it’s about supporting their efforts, achievements, aspirations each day, day after day. Women have consistently played a phenomenal role in our society, but they are not always acknowledged for the same. Women can be both gentle and fierce, and now is an ideal time to support their journey, be allies, be inclusive. That is what true women empowerment would mean – being each other’s strength. Kudos to the strong and courageous women who show fortitude in the face of adversity and fiercely stand up against all odds. It’s time to celebrate their achievements” said Ms. Sonica Aron, Founder & Managing Partner, Marching Sheep.
About Marching Sheep:
Marching Sheep was founded in 2013 by Ms Sonica Aron, an alumnus of XLRI Jamshedpur and a certified coach for psychometric instruments to deliver tangible business values through enhanced people management strategies. From a wholly bootstrapped company based out of Delhi, which started as a single woman army, they have become an established HR advisory firm. In last 8 years, they have encompassed major industry players and innovative startups as their partners and clients.
The high impact ROI based interventions designed and implemented by Marching Sheep are framed on strong values of authenticity, commitment to delivery and integrity. They offer Projects/ intervention-based and Retainership based models, depending on the organizational requirements and project specifications. The professionals working possess high levels of professional ethics and commitment to delivery and integrity. They provide nation-wide services across all industry segments upholding diversity and inclusion as a journey for society at large.
Elucidata, a biomedical molecular data company, announced today a $5 million pre-Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures. The financing round also saw participation from Hyperplane Venture Capital and a few angel investors.
The funding will enable Elucidata to capitalize on its position as a leading provider of structured biomedical molecular data to the life sciences industry. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand US operations, bolster marketing efforts, and continue hiring world-class talent in India.
Elucidata was founded in 2015 by University of Chicago and MIT graduate Abhishek Jha, IIT Delhi graduate Swetabh Pathak, and Dr. Richard Kibbey (MD PhD) at Yale School of Medicine. The Delhi- and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company is focused on developing Polly, a data platform for drug discovery.
The company said that its proprietary cloud platform Polly is the largest repository of biomedical data for scientists trying to discover drugs. With Polly, scientists can get access to curated and analysis-ready data from over 100,000 biomedical datasets, a number that is doubling each quarter, accelerating data-driven discovery efforts.
Commenting on the fundraise Vikram Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures, said, “In the pharma industry, biomedical data of drug discovery is increasing in diversity and volume at a rapid rate. In this scenario, it gives us immense pleasure to collaborate with a team which is driven by a vision of drug discovery and pharma R&D. Their platform, Polly, helps in making a large range of biological big data accessible and available to the scientists for machine learning.”
“Polly’s SaaS offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing demand for solutions that extend the reach of publicly available and proprietary biomedical data for the age of data science in drug discovery,” said Abhishek Jha, Co-founder and CEO, Elucidata. “As an industry, we’re just scratching the surface of how powerful molecular data can be when made FAIR. The strong backing from IvyCap Ventures and Hyperplane would amplify our ability to help our partners improve in their data-driven drug discovery.”
Naimish Patel, managing partner at Boston, Massachusetts-based Hyperplane, said “Hyperplane is proud to be partnered with Elucidata in their mission of enhancing the predictability and speed of drug discovery through their collaborative bioinformatics platform. Having already demonstrated clear product-market fit and grown a strong base of top tier pharmaceutical and biotech customers, this new infusion of capital positions the company for accelerated market growth in the years to come.”
Elucidata launched Polly in April 2019 and now has over 30 partners in industry and academia as its customers. In the past seven months, Elucidata has seen increased demand while expanding adoption at enterprise clients such as Genentech, TRV, Alnylam Therapeutics, and Agios.
About Elucidata Corporation
Elucidata was founded in 2015 with a mandate to accelerate drug discovery by applying its AI-enabled platform, Polly, on vast heterogeneous semi-structured biomedical data. With the FAIR data principles as a guideline for data management, Elucidata’s proprietary technology transforms public and proprietary molecular data into a ready-to-use form as data lakes. R&D teams can build, publish, and host workflows to analyze data and make better data-driven decisions to discover therapeutic assets with high odds of success in the clinic. Elucidata has offices in Cambridge (MA), San Francisco, New Delhi and Bangalore.
About IvyCap Ventures Advisors
IvyCap Ventures is one of the leading homegrown venture capital fund management companies in the country managing INR 1,500 crores across three funds. Founded by Vikram Gupta in 2011, the company has been leveraging global alumni ecosystems to build technology-driven innovative companies.
About Hyperplane Venture Capital
Hyperlane is a seed stage investment firm founded by Vivjan Myrto, John Murphy and Brendan Kohler in 2015 and based in Boston, Massachusetts. It invests in startups working on machine intelligence, sensor technology, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality, and cloud computing technology.
Mumbai– Mumbai based Edtech startup, PurpleTutor has raised a seed round of funding led by IvyCap Ventures. The round saw participation from other investors including Krishna Kumar (Founder & CEO –Simplilearn). With this infusion of capital, the company plans to strengthen its technology, consumer base, and increase footprint.
Founded in 2019 by IIT Bombay graduates Gaurav Perti and Yatish Gupta, PurpleTutor offers live, online classes to kids aged 6 -16 yrs on computational thinking. The company has its own curriculum and is building technology to arm its teachers to ensure classes are highly personalized and customized. Since inception, the startup has over 30,000 registered users and is already at an annualized revenue of nearly $0.5 mn and is growing 50% monthly.
Commenting on the fundraising, Gaurav Perti, Founder and CEO, PurpleTutor, said, “We really wanted to build an outstanding product from the start and ensured our product, curriculum, and teacher quality were up there. Our Net-Promotor-Score of 74 is a testament to that fact. We’re focused on building technology to ensure that our teaching quality is superior and offer a great experience for students. Our recent fundraising will go towards expansion and building technology”
Lauding the company’s mission and expressing excitement on the association with PurpleTutor VikramGupta, Founder & Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures, said, “Keeping in view with India’s vision for Digital India, a child’s inherent curiosity and promptness to adopt new technologies must be tapped in every possible way. Thus, as an investor, it gives me immense pleasure to associate with PurpleTutor that has excellent potential to bring forth cutting-edge courses for making every child future-ready.”
“2020 has been a challenging year for businesses and customers alike. Earlier this year, customer experience (CX) teams across the globe had to rapidly adapt amid ticket spikes, customer cancellations, market volatility, and increased uncertainty. However, as the world moved forward, one week at a time, the global service requests eventually stabilized and new expectations and trends began to set in.
Customers now expect businesses to be more digital, accessible and empathetic. More than ever, they want and expect to connect with businesses the way they do with friends and family – effortlessly, especially over popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook. Businesses are working on merging values from a pre-COVID era with the ever-changing demands of a post-COVID world. While this may seem to be an overwhelming task, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of the basics, such as keeping your customers and their needs at the center of everything that you do. Businesses are, therefore, re-emphasising the need for a people-first approach and working hard to retain a human connection.
People around the globe are eagerly awaiting 2021 and the many promises that it brings. Looking ahead, we anticipate that CX will continue to remain a catalyst to business success as businesses reorganise their priorities to incorporate a seamless CX journey for customers. On the other hand, digital transformation will definitely take precedence in the coming year to accommodate more omnichannel services, better IT security, agile technology and collaborative tools. Businesses will also take steps to be more people-centric, not just toward their customers, but also toward their employees. Employee experience and engagement will be a major area where we will see a change as businesses rethink their digital workplace.
As the year comes to an end, there is a sense of hope and excitement in the air of what the new year holds and businesses will look to strengthen their customer experience as the year unfolds.”
Shiv Sundar, Co-Founder and COO, Esper
Shiv Sundar, Co-Founder and COO, Esper,
“2020 has proven to be a challenging year. However, it was also a year of new opportunities and avenues for us. One particular trend that we witnessed was the acceleration of digital transformation with traditional companies. Incorporating customer interactivity into their solution became a priority and the execution ranged from standing up self-service kiosks to augmenting the customer experience with innovative digital solutions. Android based devices, in particular, have been deployed at a large scale to meet these demands. This has underscored how important a product like Esper is to fill the large gap to enable enterprises – small and large alike, to deploy devices at scale and have rigorous control over how their applications are deployed and monitored on their devices.
Looking ahead, we realize that the pandemic has ushered in a new era that will be more digital and virtual, even in remote locations. Industries like education, fitness, restaurants and healthcare will see a flurry of Android based devices and Android will become a dominant choice of OS for Touch based IoT devices. At Esper, we are moving ahead with a sustained hyper focus on our customer service. We have an amazing slate of features in the pipeline that will help our customers deploy and scale their device fleet. We are looking forward to a great new year for our customers, partners and our amazing set of employees.”
Gaurav Burman, APAC President, 75F
Gaurav Burman, APAC President, 75F
“2020 has been a watershed year for most sectors forcing them to transform themselves and adapt while going into the next year. In contrast, the building management and automation sector witnessed considerable traction despite the slowdown. This could be attributed to its potential in helping commercial buildings manage COVID 19 by controlling the spread of the virus through airborne particles. As a result the sector saw new products and services being launched supported by guidelines released by organisations such as WHO, CDC, ASHRAE etc to prevent the transmission of air-borne diseases.
Several business leaders have also leveraged the period of the lockdown and the work from home trend to scale up their commercial offices and workspaces with better technology in preparation for the return to normalcy. This has led to digital transformation in the workplace in creating smart, digitally connected spaces that use less energy, meet sustainability and safety goals, and boost workplace collaboration and productivity. There is also a trend towards optimising work spaces with an eye on long term sustainability. Our offerings in the space that have been popular include 75F’s preset systems to digitally monitor, analyze and control an environment and visibility to customized data analytics at all times from any remote location. As occupant comfort and environmental sustainability are increasingly being given priority in commercial spaces, the potential for smart buildings has grown considerably in 2020. While the commercial and retail sectors are already moving towards building automation, we expect the hospitality and health sector to follow suit in 2021.”
Paddy Viswanathan – Founder and CEO, C3M
Paddy Viswanathan – Founder and CEO, C3M
“COVID-19 has pushed businesses to adopt the public cloud and take a cloud first strategy. With critical workloads deployed in the cloud there is also an immediate need for secure and stable cloud infrastructure. Some of the largest companies in e-commerce, retail, internet and media, and consulting have started using our cloud security platform between May 2020 and today.
Apart from this, remote working has also been working well for us. Our team members are getting to spend quality time with their families, while being just as productive at work. In fact, we are contemplating making working from the office optional once the pandemic eases out. All in all, the year 2020 has been a blessing in disguise for us.”
Abhishek Patil – Co-Founder and CEO, Oliveboard
Abhishek Patil – Co-Founder and CEO, Oliveboard
“This year the ed-tech industry attracted students from schools, universities, businesses and individuals as classroom training was at a standstill due to the virus outbreak. At Oliveboard we saw a steady increase in online test preparation registrations as well. In addition, with both government and banking examinations in the pipeline, the online test preparation industry is about to experience its busiest season in the coming months.
Learning Analytics and Gamification will play inevitable roles in the online test preparation industry, as it will allow educators to assess and report student learning only on the web and will further assist them to better understand and optimize learning. For example, teachers will be able to see what kind of knowledge students most enjoy and use it accordingly (text, photos, infographics, or videos). They will be able to note which portions have not been delivered successfully and strengthen them next time. Besides, learning analytics can also help educators classify learners who may have academic or behavioural problems. Teachers could then build a way to help students achieve their full potential.”
Sharan Sai, Chief Business Relations & Public Relations, Hocomoco
Sharan Sai, Chief Business Relations & Public Relations, Hocomoco
“Despite the effects of the lockdown, India is one of the countries, that has been able to recover faster in terms of businesses being conducted. The construction activity saw a steep decrease immediately after the lockdown was imposed, however, by late May, the activities were back on track. India is witnessing a rapid growth of infrastructure across all the smart cities and metropolitans. With an average commercial space absorption square feet standing at 42 million, India stands tall among world nations. The pandemic has also worked out many realizations for many customers, like, people are now looking forward to independent housing and banks are boosting this through friendly loans for residential purposes. Overall, the construction industry in value terms is estimated at a CAGR of 15.7% and is expected to reach $ 738.5 bn by 2022, which is an immense growth. Fueling this growing market, the technology which is developed for construction is helping in making efficient transactions. Technologies such as blockchain usage for construction workflow is making it more secure and seamless in terms of carrying out the operations. We are confident that 2021 will definitely be the beginning of a new dawn in the construction segment.”
Prem Kumar, Founder & CEO, Snapbizz
Prem Kumar, Founder & CEO, Snapbizz
“The consumer retail segment has witnessed rapid growth in terms of digitization of MSMEs in 2020. This was fuelled by the current covid era which brought in new opportunities in the retail sector specially for Kiranas. As a result, over a million Kiranas have gone digital in recent months and their stores have gone online by accepting online payments, ordering supplies online, managing inventory, etc. The technology cover now enables them to leverage their strengths like proximity, personal touch, and flexibility further to acquire new customers effortlessly.
This year our SnapBizz team has succesfully helped neighborhood Kiranas gear up efficiently to compete against the larger ecommerce players in this industry. Kiranas have always been facing intense competition from major e-commerce grocery players who are aggressive in their campaigns to capture market share. The entrance of big players in the FMCG sector has been another cause for concern among them. However as it was evident, it was the Kiranas who provided a lifeline to the country when the lockdown struck with the Pandemic. This renewed trust in the neighbourhood kirana by people also prompted them to lembrace digitization to further enhance their relationship with customers. We see this as a positive trend and will only see wider adoption of technology by kiranas at the grass root level in 2021.”
Mangesh Panditrao, CEO & Co-founder, Shoptimize
Mangesh Panditrao, CEO & Co-founder, Shoptimize
“In the past years, online stores typically saw a rush only close to the festival days of Dussehra and Diwali. This year saw a longer shopping period as shoppers started buying earlier. With COVID putting a dampener on travel and socializing plans, shoppers probably anticipated going online to shop and decided to avoid the last-minute rush. Stores also started showcasing their festive offers early on to increase sales and conversions. The 30 day Diwali sales period saw a 484% increase in the online store visitors and sessions. While sales hit their peak on 23 October 2020, the entire three months of September to November saw heightened activity and sales.
At Shoptimize, for our clients, D2C eCommerce has become a critical channel, growing from 10% (previous FY) of overall eCommerce to 40% (current FY). There has been a GMV growth of 250% from festive season sales alone this year. In general, our clients have seen a GMV growth of 400% post covid. The various categories which witnessed this massive growth post-covid are fashion & apparel which saw a GMV growth of 150%, food & beverages a growth of 500%; and appliances & electricals a growth of 400%.”
Shabna Salam, Founder & Director, Maneraa
Shabna Salam, Founder & Director, Maneraa
“Covid-19 has brought about a dramatic and permanent shift in consumer shopping behavior in e-Commerce. The consumer today has become more cost-conscious and is investing increasingly in affordable fashion. We have also observed that customers from tier 2 and tier 3 cities who were previously reluctant to do online shopping now enjoy the perks of digital retail. On Maneraa’s website this year, we have seen consumers opt for pocket-friendly fashion with a willingness to experiment with new and relatively unknown brands. Though we are amongst the new players in the space, the customer response this season has given us great confidence especially with the spike in demand from tier 2 and 3 cities. It’s very likely that these trends are here to stay even after COVID as these are new customers who have joined the fray and they will only increase their usage as per industry norms. Looking ahead into 2021, we expect E-commerce retail to rise to 7% as opposed to the previous 1.6% thanks to the newfound demand and transforming consumer behavior.”
Sandeep Sankhla, Founder & Managing Partner, Glocal Mind
Sandeep Sankhla, Founder & Managing Partner, Glocal Mind
“The COVID-19 outbreak has severely impacted the entire healthcare industry and changed the working structure of its ecosystem. With the pandemic being the biggest healthcare crisis ever faced by man in this generation, the medical community has been working feverishly across the world to identify a vaccine and to understand the short term and long term impact of this on the world. And now with news trickling in that there could be sufficient doses available for more than one-third of the world’s population by the end of 2021, countries are busy working closely with the healthcare community to make sure that the purchase, distribution and storage of the vaccine can be carried out efficiently as per local market demands. Add to this many new trends such as Tele-Health, Electronic Medical Records, a focus on preventive healthcare and continued partnerships between the public and private sector can be seen gaining prominence in the healthcare research space. To understand these emerging trends across geographies, GLocalMind has conducted multiple market research studies including studying the Impact on healthcare practices, Impact on hospital operations, Adoption of tele-medicine, pricing perceptions for Covid Vaccine, healthcare innovation and transformation, etc.
With these changing market dynamics expected in 2021, we are working towards becoming an independent healthcare research facilitator to a larger aggregator model and therein creating a larger ecosystem for healthcare research studies globally.”
