Blog

EV financing startup Vidyut raises $4M

EV financing and vehicle lifecycle management platform Vidyut raised $4 million in a mix of equity and debt in a round co-led by Force Ventures, Veda VC, and a clutch of strategic angels, including Sujeet Kumar (Udaan), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Kunal Shah (CRED), Sriharsha Majety (Swiggy), and Rajat Verma (Lohum). 

Founded in 2021 by Gaurav Srivastava and Xitij Kothi, Vidyut uses battery health data and a proprietary underwriting model to extract a high residual value for EVs to allow customers to get an effective interest rate of as low as 7%. It also offers ownership solutions for Mahindra, Altigreen Euler, and OSM vehicles. 

Vidyut plans to use the funds to double the headcount in its credit, engineering, and sales teams in the next 12 months and scale up the offering across OEM partners and geographies.

“While OEMs are pushing the frontiers of EV tech, the market has lagged in innovating on the financing front. The lifecycle and the ownership journey of an electric ride are very different from those of an ICE vehicle. The market needs financing solutions tailored for EVs,” said Co-founder Xitij Kothi. 

SaaS startup Onsite raises $1.5M in seed round from Artha Venture Fund

Construction tech startup Onsite on Thursday said it raised $1.5 million in a seed round from Artha Venture Fund, Foundamental, and Madhumala Ventures, among others. 

The startup will use the capital to accelerate product development and expand its market footprint. 

The Delhi-based contractor management startup offers a cloud-based business management platform to mid-sized construction companies to help them manage and track their projects. The idea is to allow contractors to replace the manual record-keeping to track the progress. It automates regular tasks and provides data analytics capabilities to better cash flow management and revenues for contractors.

“Onsite addresses the real challenges of the construction industry by empowering the mid-sized construction businesses that are the backbone of the industry. Our multi-lingual interface has enabled over one lakh businesses to streamline their operations through technology, easily and effortlessly,” said Akshansh Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Onsite. 

Sipika Nigam, Principal of Artha Venture Fund, added, “Considering that over 66% of construction companies in India are leaning towards digital transformation, we are confident that Onsite will play an integral role in benchmarking the Indian construction ecosystem with its international counterparts.”

Legaltech startup Amikus AI raises over Rs 96 lakh in pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures

Legaltech platform Amikus AI raised over Rs 96 lakh in a pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). The startup will use the funds to expand the product team. 

Amikus AI is targeting over $50 billion in the Total Available Market (TAM) with 20 lakh potential customers, including law firms of all sizes, in-house legal teams at startups, medium-sized and large companies, and boutique lawyers.

“Law firms and in-house legal teams in English-speaking countries such as India, the UK, the US, Singapore, Australia, and Canada make up $80 million of Serviceable Obtainable Market for Amikus AI,” it said in a statement. 

Founded in 2021 by National Law University alumni Saahil Dama and Avi Agarwal, the Bengaluru-based startup claims to automate the creation and assessment of legal contracts using artificial intelligence (AI).

Contract review and drafting have always been manual processes wherein lawyers spend hours reading and re-reading contracts repeatedly to weed out problematic clauses, red flags, and other issues. Amikus AI aims to streamline this process using AI, remove redundancies, and generate insights to improve efficiency and accuracy in contract review.

“Legal documentation has always been a time-consuming and tedious process for lawyers. To achieve the right draft manually, draft contracts usually undergo several edits, which more often create anxiety for clients eager for closures. Amikus AI aims to put this lengthy procedure to an end,” said Madhukar Bhardwaj, Vice President (BD & Investments), IPV. 

He added, “The platform will ensure not only time efficiency with its ready-to-sign contracts but also accuracy in their pre-vetted and attorney-approved drafts. We look forward to expanding their business across the globe.”

Jewellery marketplace Mabel raises $1.5M in seed funding

Jewellery shopping platform Mabel raised $1.5 million in seed financing led by Whiteboard Capital, Sauce VC and Incubate Fund to develop its product and scale team across domains. 

The six-month-old platform—launched by Anubhav Barsaiyan, Aashish Garg, and Milind Sharma—has aggregated over 50 brands and 10,000 designs on the platform. It aims to focus on traditional offline brands and bring them on board. 

In a press statement, co-founder Milind Sharma said that the company looks to enhance the customer experience by leveraging virtual try-on and AR besides taking the platform live outside India.

“For a category like jewellery that is high on the width of applications/needs and multiple considerations for selection, the supply side is driven by individual brands, making discovery and quality curation a significant difficulty. We are excited by the Mabel team’s vision of solving this complicated problem by becoming the destination for jewellery discovery and curation,” said Anshu Prasher, General Partner at Whiteboard Capital.