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Kunal Shah, Varun Alagh, Gokul Rajaram invest in PropReturns

Real estate investment platform PropReturns has raised an undisclosed amount of funding via a strategic round from a slew of angel investors including Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), Gokul Rajaram (Board Member, CoinBase and Pinterest), Varun Alagh (Co-founder, Mamaearth), Sandeep Agarwal (Co-founder, ShopClues and Droom), Nitin Jain (Co-founder, O’AgriFarm), Karan Virwani (CEO, WeWork India), and 1947 Rise, among others. 

The company said it will add more asset classes, increase the investor base, tie up with more channel partners/real estate brokers, developers and property owners, and expand the technology team. It is also looking at geographical expansion beyond Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, to Pune, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. 

Founded in 2020 by BITS Pilani graduates Kenish Shah, Jayant Panwar, and Somil Mathur, PropReturns lists rent generating-commercial properties, plots, distressed opportunities, REITS, and real estate debt to enable investors to earn rentals incomes or gains from capital appreciation.

It uses artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms and a proprietary database to provide market trends and financial analysis for investors to make data-backed decisions besides making the process smoother.

At present, the platform claims to have listed over 600 investment options.

“In just one year of operation, PropReturns has conducted transactions worth more than Rs 100 crore through the platform. Our goal is to build the largest real estate investment ecosystem in India and this funding will be deployed in scaling up the company by growing transaction volume along with team expansion,” said Co-founder Jayant Panwar.

SaaS startup Attentive raises $5M from Sequoia Surge, InfoEdge Ventures

Attentive Inc, an AI-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) startup, has raised $5 million from Sequoia India’s Surge Fund and InfoEdge Ventures. 

The startup offers a SaaS-based sales automation platform to the outdoor service industry that includes landscaping, snow removal, paving, and pest control businesses. They claim to be the only AI-based solution in the market and are used by major commercial landscaping companies in the US.

Some of its clientele includes the likes of Juniper, US Lawns, Beary Landscaping, Greenscape, Nanak, Perficut, United Land Services, Merit, Continuum Services, and East Coast Facilities.  

The latest funds will be used to build the platform, add more modules to automate the remaining landscaping workflows, hire talent across product, technology, and sales, and expand operations across the US and Canada, said co-founder Sarthak Vijay.

“With rising inflation and labour rates, landscapers are looking to automate archaic manual workflows and gain efficiencies. We are the only ones with the technology infrastructure to truly automate traditional workflows and save time on manual tasks like measuring each and every site feature to bid on a new property,” said Shiva Dhawan, Co-founder and CEO at Attentive.

Founded by IIT Delhi graduates Shiva Dhawan and Sarthak Vijay, Attentive aims to create software that solves the pressing concerns of over 600,000 landscaping and outdoor service businesses by changing the way they perform sales and operations.

Commenting on the fundraise, Amit Behl, Partner at InfoEdge Ventures, said “It’s rare to see a product company from India get the kind of acceptance, appreciation, and customer love that Attentive is getting from its early client base in the US. With this round,  the company is well-capitalised on its journey of being responsive and diligent as it builds out an AI-led vertical SaaS product for the $200 billion large but fragmented landscaping and outdoor services industry in the US.”

Content monetisation platform ConsCent raises Rs 13.26 Cr

Content monetisation platform ConsCent has raised a total of Rs 13.26 crore (about $1.75 million) in a bridge round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Early-stage funds Varanium Capital, RiSo Capital, SucSEED Innovation Fund, Sigurd Ventures, Startup Angels Network, AngelList, PitchRight Ventures, and angels Vijay Sivaram (CEO, Quess IT Staffing), Sandeep Aggarwal (Founder, Droom), and Gazal Kalra (former Co-founder, Rivigo), also participated.

This is ConsCent’s second round since it raised a seed capital of Rs 4 crore in August 2020 from AngelList, WhiteBoard Capital, PitchRight Ventures; and marquee angels like Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Ritesh Malik (Innov8), Sandeep Agarwal (Droom), Suhail Sameer (BharatPe), and Varun Alagh (Mamaearth).

Founded by former journalists Sunny Sen and Sounak Mitra, ConsCent provides a complete micropayment to subscriptions stack with analytics and engagement tools to content companies. It is built on top of a universal login and interoperable payment mechanism that helps companies get more paying users and convert them over time into long-term subscribers, and manage their renewals.

The startup, at present, provides technology to India Today Group (India Today, Cosmopolitan, and Business Today), Outlook India Group (Outlook India and Outlook Business), MidDay, Indian Retailer, Amar Ujala, Udayavani, Amar Chitra Katha, EPIC On, Tinkle Comics, and New Indian Express.

ConsCent will primarily use the new funding to expand the product. “We will expand our technology team and launch over 15 new products and features over the next 12 months in the areas of payments, engagement and retention, and design. We are also developing an entirely new AI/ML-based personalisation engine to ensure the highest level of content affinity for each content consumer,” said co-founder Sunny Sen.

Mitesh Shah, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures said, “Content in the form of news is a powerful consumption tool. Increasingly, serious readers are preferring to move to a subscription-led model because amidst the noise it is challenging and time-consuming to get meaningful content. We believe this amalgamation of content and fintech has the potential to disrupt traditional content as we know it.”

Quantum computing startup BosonQ Psi raises $525K

BosonQ Psi (BQP), a quantum-powered SaaS software venture, has raised $525,000 in pre-seed funding led by 3to1 Capital.

Angle investors from India and the US, including Abhay Tandon, Vijay Sethi (ex-CIO of Hero Motor Corp), Chandan Chowdhury (former MD, Dassault Systems), Saptorshi Hore, Neeraj Khandelwal, Ankur Jain, Vijay Rajagopal, Abhishek Sureka, as well as Shankar Rachakonda and Anand Reddy also participated in the round.

The startup was founded by Abhishek Chopra, Rut Lineswala and Jash Minocha in 2020. It claims to be developing the world’s first quantum-powered engineering simulation software—BQPhy. The MVP was launched earlier this year at the Quantum Business Europe conference. The team is currently carrying out pilots with global automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing companies.

It is looking to launch the alpha and beta versions later this year, followed by the commercial launch in 2023.

The startup aims to deploy the funds to accelerate product development and expand in Asia, North America, and Europe to address the growing demand. Further, the startup will invest the funds to hire international talent across tech, sales, and marketing teams.

“Large-scale engineering simulations are vital in developing engineering-heavy products, from cars to aircraft or from drug discovery to additive manufacturing. Quantum computing, with its unimaginable power, will unlock the new realm of such simulations which previously couldn’t be performed accurately or were cost and time prohibitive. With BQPhy, engineering and R&D teams can now avoid costly recall issues and speed their products’ innovation cycle, respectively. For businesses this means reducing both CAPEX and OPEX respectively,” said Abhishek Chopra, Co-founder and CEO.

Analytics startup Ganit raises Pre-Series A round

Chennai-based data analytics startup Ganit has raised an undisclosed amount as part of its Pre-Series A funding round led by Sangeet Kumar, (Co-founder and CEO, Addverb Technologies), Krishnan Vishwanathan (Co-founder and CEO, Kissht), as well as Anshul Gupta and Amit Raj (Co-founders, EatClub Brands), among others.

Founded in 2017 by Shivaprasad KT, Ashok Harwani and Hariharan R, the platform enables enterprises to translate data into actionable insights, by designing and deploying purpose-built AI/ML solutions. The aim is to minimise decision risk across industries. The company is currently working with companies in retail, pharma, consumer products and services, and BFSI industries.

It aims to deploy the funds to expand its product portfolio in various spaces including, but not limited to—the voice of the customer, forecasting, promotion planning, route optimisation, price optimisation, as well as fast-growing emerging areas such as ESG (environmental, social and governance). In addition, it is looking to double its headcount to 500 by the end of 2023. 

“We are excited about the possibilities in the data analytics and AI ecosystem and their impact on various industries. Our single-minded purpose is to empower businesses with data-driven decision-making capabilities,” said co-founder Shivaprasad KT.

(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day)