Four startups – Boutline, Imly, Drawtyme and Routo has received Rs 10 lakh investment each in a recently concluded on-the-spot funding event in Mumbai, conducted by NASSCOM (National Association of Software & Services Companies) and Microsoft Ventures, as part of its 10,000 Startups program.
NASSCOM mentions that eight pre-revenue companies – Boutline, Imly, Drawtyme, Routo, Jojobu, Parkwalla, Qpeka and Kooki were shortlisted from the applications received for the 10,000 Startups program and given an opportunity to pitch their business ideas to a panel of 10 investors, from which the above mentioned four startups were selected for investment. Boutline & Imly have also been inducted to Microsoft Ventures accelerator’s fourth batch, starting later this month.
We are awaiting a response from NASSCOM for more information on the investors who provided this investment, although a tweet from 10,000 Startups suggests that the investment was provided in return for 8% stake.
Imly: Mumbai-based Imly offers an online marketplace for homemade food. It allows home chefs to setup an online shop to start selling home made dishes and allows users to browse and purchase dishes across various cuisines (Bengali, Continental, Goan, Maharashtrian, South Indian and others), desserts (brownies, cakes, cookies, pudding and Indian sweets among others), dips & sauces, salads and others. It also allows users to filter dishes by taste (gluten-free, sugar-free, vegetarian, eggless and others). All orders are through cash on delivery. The service is currently present in nine Indian cities including Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and others. Founded by Abhishek Singh.
Boutline: Bangalore-based Boutline is an event audience engagement platform, which allows event organizers to formulate social tasks and challenges to engage their audience. The platform is currently in invite-only mode. Founded by Sharath Acharya, Anand Satyan and Febin John James.
Drawtyme: Drawtyme allows teachers and instructors to create mobile-friendly interactive educational videos, which also facilitates students to record observations and doubts into the video itself for future reference. It is based on Flip teaching method and will be available on Android and iOS. The company is currently conducting private beta trials. Founded by Gaurang Kanvinde and Niranjan Kanvinde.
Routo: While we weren’t able to find any web presence for the company, NASSCOM mentions that Routo offers a suite of location sharing apps for business listings and location tracking.
***
ReelBox Media Entertainment, a wired and broadband based video-on-demand service provider, has raised undisclosed amount of angel funding from a group of angel investors which includes Naru Narayanan, a Chennai Angels member and Co-founder of Xcode Life Sciences, reports TechCircle. The company plans to use the investment raised to strengthen its presence in Canada and Europe.
Founded in November 2013 by Karthik Vaithianathan, Chennai-based ReelBox offers a video-on-demand service through a media streaming HDMI dongle which plugs into the TV. It provides movies across various languages like Kannada, Tamil and English (Hollywood) on a pay-per-view basis, although the focus seems to be on Kannada movies. It claims to have more than 3,000 Kannada movies in its catalog.
The company is targeting the US Kannadiga community and is currently not available in India. It claims to have 100 active users and 1,000 subscribers. Going forward, it also plans to expanding to Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Middle East in the future.
Besides this, ReelBox is also partnering with Kannada film producers to screen movies in Tier-1 theatres across USA and has also apparently created an exhibition network that allows producers to screen their movies on a revenue sharing basis in USA
***
Vizury, an online marketing company which provides behavioral retargeting solutions to businesses, is in talks to raise $20 million with existing investor Inventus Capital Partners leading the round, reports TechCrunch citing sources familiar with the company. Medianama had also heard the same from sources and when we contacted them last month, the company had said the deal hadn’t closed yet.
The investment is reportedly being done at a $60 – $70 million valuation and Vizury’s co-founder Chetan Kulkarni told TechCrunch that the investment raised will be used to strengthen its operations in China and Japan.
Prior to this, Vizury had raised $9 million from Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), Ojas Ventures and Inventus Capital Partners in October 2012. It had also raised an undisclosed Series A investment in February 2011, although the report pegs this investment to be $2 million.
Vizury currently offers three products – its flagship retargeting solution WebConvert, mobile retargeting solution MobiConvert and a display ad solution AdProspect. Its clientele includes Myntra, Yebhi, Freecultr, Zovi, Fashionara, Lenovo, Sony, HomeShop18, Jabong and others.
