Business
Kalaari Capital picks up three startups to mentor and fund
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]iming to fund and nurture potential start startups, Bangalore- based venture capital firm Kalaari Capital has picked three startups for its newly-launched seed and incubation program— KStart.
The three startups- Active.ai, a customer engagement platform for financial services companies, Affordplan an alternative finance platform for healthcare services and web video streaming venture Indee- were chosen over 400 applicants.
Kalaari Capital is an early investor in online retail companies like Snapdeal and Myntra. The venture capital firm is investing a little over Rs 3 crore in the three ventures.
Vani Kola, managing director at Kalaari Capital, said, “We are investing about $500,000 in each of them through a convertible note so that they can keep their options open in terms of future dilution and valuation.”
She expects to pick about four startups every quarter. Kalaari is planning to invest up to $20 million in as many as 40 startups as a part of its seed and incubation program over the next two years.
Raising $290 million in funding last year, the venture capital firm has stayed away from seed-stage investment till now unlike industry peers. KStart has also roped in top executives like former Cisco chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior, Airbnb’s global expansion head Varsha Rao, Ratan Tata and top lawyer Zia Mody to mentor and advice startups.
Tejbir Singh, co-founder of Affordplan, said, “Having been in an entrepreneurial environment before, we know how valuable this program is with (services) like finance, legal service and (KStart’s) partnerships with Google, IBM and Amazon Web Services, which come into play every day.”
Singh founded the company with Hemal Bhatt, former executives at cab hailing application TaxiForSure. Affordplan has a network of 70 hospitals in the pipeline in Delhi-NCR and targets patients with non-critical healthcare conditions.
Indee, founded by Sharan Reddy, is used by media companies like 20th Century Fox and Reliance Entertainment to promote and test content before public releases.
Active.ai automates customer interactions using insights powered by algorithms and is targeting banks, wealth managers and asset managers. It has been founded by Ravi Shankar, Parikshit Paspulati and Shankar Narayanan.
