Tag: Vikram Gupta

Business World, News

IvyCap Ventures announces the sale of its stake in Leixir Dental Group with 4x returns

Apr 22, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #CEO, #founder and Managing Partner, #Harmeet Bindra, #IvyCap Ventures Advisors Pvt Ltd, #Leixir Resources Pvt Ltd, #Vikram Gupta

Mumbai–IvyCap Ventures, one of the leading homegrown venture capital funds, announced the sale of its stake in Leixir Dental Group with 4x returns. Leixir is a technology-enabled provider of outsourced dental solutions serving both the independent dentists and dental service organizations (“DSOs”) as well as technology and distribution companies. Leixir is pleased to welcome Comvest Partners as an investor.

The company operates five dental laboratories across the U.S. in addition to a digital design and manufacturing facility in Gurugram, India. Harmeet Bindra, founder of Leixir, will continue in his role as CEO and Executive Chairman.

Commenting on this financial deal, Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures Advisors Pvt Ltd, said, “We are pleased to be part of Leixir’s journey in its climb to becoming one of the leading dental labs in the US in India. Leixir has been a pioneer in this space in India and has many firsts, particularly in the use of technology for engagement with dentists and in core manufacturing operations. We are pleased that Leixir has put India in the offshoring map of the global dental industry and confident that this will scale well in the years to come.”

IvyCap was the first institutional investor in Leixir in 2015. The core strategy was to build a cross border integrated dental lab network using digital technology to disrupt the sector. Leixir has since, acquired several leading labs in various geographies in North America and build an offshore centre for design and 3D printing in India. Leixir in the largest dental lab in India and is one of the largest dental labs in the US.The company has grown significantly since IvyCap’s investments.

“Today’s dental market demands high-quality production, fast turnaround times, digital design capabilities, and competitive pricing. Leixir is uniquely positioned to address all of these needs,” said Lee Bryan, Senior Partner at Comvest Partners. “Harmeet has built a truly impressive business, and we are very excited to partner with him and the Leixir management team.”

“This transaction represents an important milestone for Leixir. I am proud of the growth our team has achieved. We are extremely happy with our partnership with IvyCap Ventures. It had played an important role in chartering the growth of our company. We believe that Comvest is the ideal partner to support our future growth initiatives,” said Harmeet Bindra, CEO, Leixir Resources Pvt Ltd. “Comvest brings significant resources, a collaborative approach with management, as well as extensive experience, creating strategic and operational value for their portfolio companies.”

“Leixir is pushing the boundaries and redefining the role of today’s dental lab. The Company’s digital capabilities and proprietary end-to-end case management platform, MyLabConnect, are true differentiators which should enable Leixir to continue to capture market share,” said Marshall Griffin, Principal at Comvest Partners. “We look forward to working with Harmeet and the team at Leixir as the Company accelerates its growth trajectory as an industry-leading dental lab solutions platform.”

McDermott Will & Emery served as legal advisor to Comvest. Cain Brothers, a division of KeyBanc Capital Markets, acted as financial advisor and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP acted as legal advisor to Leixir in connection with the transaction. Financing for the transaction was provided by NXT Capital.

Business World, News

IvyCap leads 50 Crore INR Round into Leading Robotics Company, Miko

Apr 15, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Co-founder and CEO, #Founder and Chairman of Chiratae Ventures, #founder and Managing Partner, #IvyCap Ventures Advisors Pvt Ltd, #Miko, #Sneh R Vaswani, #Sudhir Sethi, #Vikram Gupta

Mumbai: Miko, the India-born global robotics leader, announced a 50 Cr INR fundraise led by IvyCap Ventures. Existing investors Chiratae Ventures, YourNest Capital, and angel investors led by Mr. Keshav Murugesh, former chairman of NASSCOMalso participated in the round.

The company has now scaled its user base to more than 140 countries globally with the engagement witnessing a 3X jump through the pandemic.The company is witnessing a massive surge in demand amidst the pandemic as parents are hunting for positive ways to engage kids in lockdown globally. Miko is also aiming for a portfolio of new products in the coming years.

Miko was started by three IIT Bombay graduates, Sneh R Vaswani, Prashant V. Iyengar and Chintan S.Raikar, along with global experts in engineering, mathematics, design and education. After the success of the first generation of Miko, the company launched Miko 2, a robot that can see, hear, sense, express, talk, recognize faces, remember names, identify moods, initiate a conversation and learn from its own environment to intuitively develop a bond with a child. Miko 2 cuts across a complex need-gap of education, technology, entertainment and hence an enabler in effective parenting, like none other. The company recently opened the Miko platform to allow child-focused content partners and developers to port their content on Miko and make it available to families on subscription. Subscription revenue is witnessing the fastest growth with nearly 50% of topline to be subscription revenue over the next 3 years.

The raised capital will be used to fund product development and strengthen global alliances as the company builds a strong global brand Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures Advisors Pvt Ltd, added, “We have closely seen Sneh and team build Miko and are delighted to witness such a solid technology and product company built in India and catering to global markets. The global play and sound fundamentals have ensured the company’s consistent growth trajectory. Very excited to partner with them!”

Sudhir Sethi, Founder and Chairman of Chiratae Ventures shared, “The company has showcased consistent month on month capital efficient growth amidst the pandemic. With this round,Miko is now well positioned to grow to a $100M revenue company with multiple products in 2 years from now.”

“Miko has demonstrated strong retention metrics along withconsistent and sustainable growth. We are clocking nearly a million interactions every 48-72 hours and are on track to register 500% YoY growth in revenue. We are elated to welcome IvyCap Ventures in our journey and highly appreciate the support from all existing investors.” said Sneh R Vaswani, Co-Founder and CEO, Miko.

Business World

Elucidata announces a $5 million pre-Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures

Jan 28, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #a biomedical molecular data company, #Elucidata, #Founder & Managing Partner, #IvyCap Ventures, #Vikram Gupta

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.

Education

PurpleTutor raises seed funding from IvyCap Ventures and others

Jan 13, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Founder & Managing Partner, #Founder and CEO, #Gaurav Perti, #IvyCap Ventures, #PurpleTutor, #Vikram Gupta

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 Vikram Gupta, 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.”

Business World

IvyCap Ventures backs ed-tech startup Expertrons

Oct 31, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #AI videobot, #ed-tech startup, #Expertrons, #IvyCap Ventures, #Jatin Solanki, #Vikram Gupta, #Vivek Gupta

Venture capital firm IvyCap Ventures (whose portfolio includes companies like Purplle, BiryaniByKilo, Fingpay, Singularity, Convosight, Pharmarack) has backed Mumbai based Expertrons (Netflix for Career Hacks), with an undisclosed investment in a round that was also participated by the startup’s existing investors Iceland Venture Studio and Sarcha Advisors.

IvyCap is a fund management company which invests through the Global Alumni Ecosystems and invests in early to growth-stage companies, with highly scalable and innovative business models. This investment has provided a boost in Expertrons’ journey and mission to make a difference in the booming ed-tech space.

The founders said that this infusion will be utilized to build a larger consumer base, improve technology base, and put the company on a rapid growth trajectory without compromising on the superlative consumer experience that we have been known for always.

Speaking about this, Vikram Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner at IvyCap, said, “We are excited about this investment. Expertrons uses AI videobot technology for career guidance at a very large scale, a space that is ready for disruption. We look forward to working with the team that comes with a lot of passion to build a scalable and sustainable business.”

Expertrons was founded by IIT Bombay alumni and batchmates, Jatin Solanki and Vivek Gupta, with a vision to revolutionize the educational landscape of the country using the latest technology. Ever since the startup has been actively achieving seamless application of the AI Video Bot experience. By using a deep tech AI recommendation engine based on numerous data points, it personalizes the best-suited experts and career options for aspirants. This provides young professionals to make smarter career decisions.

In just a matter of a year, the company reports having about 15 million minutes of content watched by users on their app that currently dominates the market. In such a short span, the startup has managed to create a platform with over 1,00,000 aspirants and 1,500 professionals. It has gone as far as successfully tying up with over 80 universities globally. In the first six months of 2020, VCs have shown a clear preference for ed-tech startups.

The nation-wide lockdown due to Covid-19 has also triggered this significant rise in such investments with as much as $14 Bn in the past 9 months. Startups are moving pace to keep up in the run to achieve the estimated growth of the Indian ed-tech market to $3.5B by 2022.

By being one of the current leading players, Expertrons took a chance and acquired GrowVation, a social network for the tech community. With commendable impact, GrowVation has a history of several hundred published projects, with about 8,600 users, 22 partner institutes, and 50 partner companies. Devender Singh Bohra and Avinderpal Singh, co-Founders of GrowVation have joined the core team as part of the Business and Technology teams respectively.

The company has also developed use cases of their technology to drive sales, clear customer queries, generate leads, and even internal training for organizations.