Ecosystem Weekly | 31st July’22

July 31, 2022
Homepage, Startup Newsletter, Venture PulseNo Comments

One of the biggest funding news of the week is of Jai Kisan raising $50 Mn as part of the first tranche of its ongoing Series B round. The startup aims to be a full fledged solution for rural financing requirements.

The company’s flagship app is Bharat Khata, available in 9 regional languages, which the company claims is used by over 100,000 rural businesses. The company claims to possess unique insights to over $1Bn worth of rural commerce and 5 Mn individuals.
No one would disagree that there exists a lot of opportunities to unlock growth in rural India. Reams of analysis, articles, posts are written every month, on how to go about bringing a transformation in rural hinterlands.
Often the prescriptions tend to be top-down, laden with a patronizing bureaucratic overhang. The government, and the companies, focused on the rural economy, should do well to avoid the predictable trap. The biggest example being – the unceremonious repeal of the hurriedly imposed farm laws. The government, policy experts, and the corporate sector, were not able to communicate the perceived advantages of the said laws to a substantial set of stakeholders whose livelihood depended on it.
In that context, the fact that Bharat Khata app is already present in 9 vernacular languages, would be a step in the right direction. But only a step, as it would need to be in 20 more dialects, to be truly available to the end user.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded the app and selected the Hindi language. Rather than native Hindi words, it appears the app has transliterated the English interface in the devanagari script. For example, the phrases “To collect”, “Stock Value”, “Overdue” are written as टू कलेक्ट … rather than the appropriate equivalent.
This might be a small UI related observation but it reveals a scope of empathy in designing for the user base quite different from the conventional one.
At Ecosystem Ventures, we tend to maximize empathetic conversations with our consulting & investing clients, fitting ourselves in their shoes, to deepen the quality of our shared insights
Ecosystem Ventures This Week
Key Highlights – Clients

We are pleased to share that one of our healthtech portfolio companies – Navigene – India’s first diagnostic venture focused on Non-invasive Preventive Testing through Proprietary Technology, has shown growth of 91% in Q1 of FY23 as compared to Q1 of FY22 with 220+ total hospitals onboarded. It has processed 16000+ samples in the last 12 months.

With transforming preventive diagnostics by Identifying 5x more bio-markers, 40% lower cost and 80% simpler logistics it has also started associating with the Government for projects of testing Sickle Cell disease and other diseases that are now beginning to reflect in the revenues.

With both Government and private businesses growing, they are looking to grow 2.5x in monthly revenues in the next 3 months.

We wish them All the best in future endeavors.

Startup Funding Summary

Jai Kisan, a Mumbai-based rural fintech startup, has raised $50 Mn in Series B funding from GMO Venture Partners, Yara Growth Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, Blume Ventures, Arkam Ventures, Mirae Asset, Snow Leopard Ventures, Northern Arc, Alteria and MAS Financial – Read More

SuperShare, a Bangalore-based content sharing app, has raised $7 Mn in Series A funding from Lachy Groom, Accel India, Lightspeed, Tanmay Bhat, MythPat and other HNIs – Read More

ChattyBao Technologies, a Delhi-based e-commerce startup, has raised $5 Mn in Seed funding from Vertex Ventures, Info Edge Ventures, 7Square Ventures and other HNIs – Read More

Threado, a Gurugram-based community management platform, has raised $3 Mn in Seed funding from Vertex Ventures, Gemba Capital, Speciale Invest, PointOne Capital, Deepinder Goyal, Pankaj Chaddah, Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, Abhishek Goyal, Aneesh Reddy, Tonmoy Shingal, Archana Priyadarshini and Sri Rajan – Read More

Wify, a Mumbai-based tech platform, has raised $2 Mn in Pre-Series A funding from Blume Founders Fund, Unitus Ventures, Singularity Ventures and HePo NL – Read More

M&A Snippets

Bangalore-based digital payments platform PhonePe has acquired New York-based software development OSLabs for ~$60 Mn – Read More

Mumbai-based financial services company InCred has merged with America-based private equity firm KKR, for an undisclosed amount – Read More