Existing investors, such as Artha Venture Fund, Ajay Kaul (ex-CEO of Dominos India), and VSS Investco ( the investment vertical of Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma), also joined.

A large part of this funding will be deployed to expand Daalchini’s industry footprint and further its tech capabilities. The company wants to make its solutions asset-efficient and accessible to 10 million retail points in India and 450+ F&B D2C brands.

Founded in 2017 by ex-Paytm colleagues Prerna Kalra and Vidya Bhushan, Daalchini takes affordable snacks and home-style meals to its customers through technology-efficient models, such as automated kiosks, mobility retails, and smart vending machines. The firm provides many food and beverage options, available 24×7 and accessible without delivery charges or long wait times. 

Daalchini has tied up with leading companies like Reliance, Aditya Birla Group’s Hindalco, Vodafone, GE, Genpact, NITI Aayog, Housr, MX Player, Samsung, Paytm, Snapdeal, Byjus, EY, OLX, OYO, Loreal and VIVO, among others. Its vending machines are installed in corporate and co-working spaces, educational institutes, hospitals, and railway stations, offering food and beverage products from over 160 brands.

Providing a high-return customer acquisition platform for D2C brands, Daalchini has collaborated with more than 160 brands like Sleepy Owl, The Whole Truth Foods, Open Secret, Yoga Bar, Slurrp Farm, BRB, Cremica Opera, Cravova, Millet Bowl, Yogapulp as well as industry giants like Dabur, Nestle, Mars.

Daalchini’s Retail-as-a-Service platform enables these brands to grow in hundreds of physical stores while tracking real-time insights digitally.

Currently, the Daalchini app has more than 200,000 monthly active users.

Daalchini claims it has grown 300 per cent in the last 12 months. It generated INR 12 crore revenue in FY2022. More than 90 per cent of its vending machines are EBITA positive.

Daalchini aims to clock INR 50 crore in revenues with a GMV of INR 130 crore in 12 months.

The company intends to grow from 850+ to over 5,000 smart and autonomous retail points in the next 12-18 months.

Kalra said: “Daalchini aims to establish its footprints at every 200 meters of habitable area with its autonomous smart stores and vending machines. Today, our country has just a few thousand vending machines, while the US or Japan has more than one autonomous store for every 200 people. We are far from the true potential of this kind of retail.”

“We quickly expanded our network to 11 states and 23 cities with 850+ stores. We will continue leveraging our unique tech and supply chain for fresh and packaged food to reach 50+ cities,” she added.

According to the Kearney India Retail Index, the retail industry, dominated by the food and groceries sector, will grow at a 9 per cent rate from $779 billion in 2019 to $1.4 trillion in 2026 to $1.9 trillion in 2030. Despite the pandemic, research finds that the industry has and will continue to grow on the back of value e-commerce and an unprecedented reach across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. These trends align parallelly with Daalchini’s growth trajectory and plans, which will help unlock growth opportunities in untapped markets of the country.

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Existing investors Survam Partners and Indian Angel Network also joined.

The funds will be utilized to fuel growth in existing and new geographies, strengthen the business and tech team, marketing, and new additions to the product suite.

Launched in 2018, Hudle is a mobile app for sports enthusiasts to discover and book sports activities. It currently offers users to book a choice of 30-plus sports at over 700 venues across the country.

It also provides “All Access Passes”, a sport-specific subscription for players to play their preferred sport across India with a single subscription.

The consumer platform is complemented by inventory management and invoicing software for sports clubs and venues, enabling them to manage daily operations smoothly.

Vinay Bansal, Founder and CEO, Inflection Point Ventures, said: “Hudle is bridging the gap by enabling users to discover & book various sports venues and events and pursue their favourite sport as a hobby or as a fitness activity.”

According to a Research & Markets report, the global participatory sports market is expected to reach $416 billion in the next five years.

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The Hindi internet user base (201 million) in India is set to overpower English-language users (199 million) by the end of this year, estimates a Google-KPMG report. And it is not just Hindi, nine out of ten internet users in the country are likely to use an Indic language.

Marathi users, along with Bengali, are driving volume growth, while Tamil users are the most digitally engaged. The pool of Hindi, Marathi (and Bengali) users accounts for 75% of Indians browsing the internet. YouTube backs this growth in regional content consumption and states that 90% of all video consumption is in local languages. Moreover, 60% of its watch-time comes from beyond the borders of the six largest Indian cities.

It is to reach this larger audience, who speak and read in vernacular, that DYT introduced the new capability. The language change is available on both Apple and Android apps. The feature comes with the option to switch to any preferred language – English, Hindi, Marathi or Tamil – at any time. Users even have the flexibility to reverse the localization.

Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng said, “We’re ecstatic and excited with the launch of new languages on the app because it allows us to embrace the power of ‘Bharat’ and cater to regional content creators, a niche that has been steadily growing in the last two years. It’s our first step towards supporting vernacular creators and bring them to the notice of brands, finally shifting focus from creators who produce only English content.”

KPMG reports that 88% of Indian language internet users are more likely to respond to a digital advertisement in their local language as compared to English. This has given rise to a burgeoning vernacular content market in India, estimated to be worth $53 billion. It evidences that regional content and its creators will drive the next phase of growth in content consumption and digital marketing. DYT’s move to launch the app in more languages gives them access to this bank of creators.

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– The company will use these funds to boost its international business and push the next stage of growth. 

Gurgaon-based HR Tech Startup Advantage Club today announced that it has raised USD 1.7 Million in a fresh round led by Y-Combinator, Broom Ventures, Liquid.vc, and Kunal Shah. Leading angel investors from the US, Middle East and Southeast Asia also participated in the funding round.
The company will use the influx of fresh funds to bolster its already flourishing international business and unlock new avenues of growth. At present, the company has operations in over 60+ countries, including India, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, USA, UAE, and others. Advantage club’s vision is to evolve as a single global platform for employee engagement and financial wellness.
Speaking on the announcement, Sourabh Deorah, CEO and Co-Founder at Advantage Club, said, “Advantage Club has emerged as the leading employee engagement platform in the country and we are growing 20% MoM, this growth has come on the back of re-inventing the wheel around employee benefits and engagement by building deep engagement products further personalized according to each user’s behavior.”
“With the new fundraise, we are gearing to take our platform to an unexplored new customer base internationally, especially in SEA, MENA and North America markets and add financial wellness products like Early Wage Access to our existing comprehensive employee engagement platform,” he added.
“As we go global, we are excited about having investors with global outreach. They not only bring their network but more importantly bring their learnings from different markets,” said  Smiti Bhatt Deorah, COO and Co-Founder at Advantage Club.
Launched in 2016, Advantage Club is a global platform for employee engagement and financial wellness, with benefits like perks, rewards and early wage access on a single platform. The company is live with 370+ companies across 60+ countries including Concentrix, Teleperformance, Hexaware, EY, Target and more. They are currently focused on India, SEA and MENA regions, chasing a $13b revenue opportunity. Before starting the company, the couplepreneurs did their Masters from UCLA and worked at Amazon(US) and Microsoft(US).

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Understanding the core of various businesses for enabling their e-commerce presence with solutions suited to their needs is the reason behind Marmeto’s success. Today, Marmeto is one of India’s leading tech enablers that has been serving over 500 top brands including Cred, Paypal, ITC, Epigamia, mCaffeine, Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals, MPL Sports, and many more. Operating 100% remotely with double the capacity since the onset of the pandemic, they’ve served numerous brands with their army of growth-driven ‘Marmetians’.

In July 2017, Shashwat Swaroop laid the foundation for Marmeto and was joined by college-friends-turned-partners Prabhat Prasad and Saurav soon after. Marmeto’s growth in the past 4 years has been completely organic and largely referral-based. They started their journey with the domestic market. To describe that experience, Shashwat quotes Steve Jobs – “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I don’t rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” Internalizing this, the trio believes that it is important to understand the business goals of a client to be able to synergize and create a future-proof tech solution that will transcend different stages of growth.

“Delivering professional solutions in a personal way” along with the aforementioned thought process has led to the expansion of this bootstrapped startup into a leader in India’s saturated e-commerce development market. As they turn 4 on July 1, Saurav shares, “We’ve come a long way from a team of 3 that worked around the clock to deliver the best output. One thing that hasn’t changed though is that we continue to prioritize client satisfaction. We owe it all to the ones who put their faith in us!”

In today’s times where tech is evolving faster than ever and the market volatility is making it difficult for companies to stay afloat, Marmeto is paving the way with innovation on Shopify. “Consistent innovation and solutions to fit the brand’s needs form the core of Marmeto. Without this, we’re just another web development company. As a part of our thorough quality check, we offer post-delivery support of up to 30 days to make sure that the integrations are seamless and in fact value additive in nature.” adds Prabhat.

By getting the business requirement converted into coding and offering on-time solutions, Marmeto has become the ultimate tech backbone to major brands seeking such solutions. One of their major success stories is Epigamia – a leading dairy product company. “When we started, the timing was a key for us. I remember once we had an issue with a website feature that was hampering functionality, which happened on a Saturday. Within 10 minutes, Saurav got the issue fixed for us. This was an extremely positive thing for us! The Marmeto team has exceeded our expectations and given us solutions that weren’t even in their scope of work”, says Shreyansh Mehta, Strategic Initiatives, Epigamia. A testament to their expertise, Marmeto launched Epigamia’s website soon after the onset of the pandemic solving their biggest pain point by developing a pin code checker solution at the highest level of the website. This improved the customer experience manifold, making it one of their biggest success stories.

Tech expertise is a part of Marmeto’s hygiene. But what really sets them apart is their ability to offer these solutions faster than their peers in the industry. Website is the most vital organ of an e-commerce brand’s presence and any mishaps need to be catered to on the highest level of priority and urgency.

Talking about one of the biggest evolving beauty brands “mCaffeine”, Marmeto helped the brand to mend a bridge between the tech and product. Marmeto has been catering to their needs for tech improvisations and optimizing their website for a better user experience. . Factoring scalability concerning growth in this process, helped support mCaffeine’s transition from a “startup” to a brand.

Vaishali Gupta, Head of Brand Marketing at mCaffeine says, “We’ve worked with partner agencies in the past but this has been the smoothest journey. They’ve been patient, and understanding and helped us understand tech the way no one did. It’s very rare to see that a services company is so particular on so many different levels.”

Marmeto’s services span from building successful e-commerce brands through growth-driven tech implementation to the simplest of consultations for a Shopify website. From defining audiences for creating a user-centric website that appeals to the target audience to end-to-end website development followed by Shopify POS development as well as app development, Marmeto covers the entire Tech Enablement Scope of Services.

Marmeto provides Shopify-centered tech solutions to clients across Beauty & Skin Care, Clothing & Accessories, Food & Drinks, Health & Personal Care, Home Decor & Kitchen, Mobile & Accessories, Kids brands, and so on.

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Rajat Singhania, Founder of HyLyt by SocioRAC said, “This tie-up is a significant progress for HyLyt, as we become chosen partners for EST Global, a Fintech for all the platforms that they are working on. EST Global has more than eleven global tie-ups and this opportunity will help us work with all of them.”

“It is our endeavor to keep on innovating the platform so as to make it one of the most efficient data integration and business chat platform that is designed with businesses in mind. Working with EST Global will test HyLyt’s competence and help us to re-evaluate and re-innovate continuously,” he added.

Sindhu Bhaskar, Co-Chairman and the Founder of EST Group iterated “Seamless communication and data management in DeFi is a must. And we are going to integrate the HyLyt as our main communication app for the team collaboration. Our products like BranchX, EST Lend, EST AgrX and EST Development Bank to name a few will have this incorporated in the basic app as well. It will thus become the main communication channel for our entire ecosystem spread in 16 countries in Asia, Europe, America, Latin America, and Africa.”

EST Globalis starting operations in India through digital banking with focus on development, powered by blockchain technology. It has four pronged banking products – for international settlements, enables fintech startups to leverage a multi-country presence in the region to connect mobile money users within the operator’s group, uses AI platform to facilitate doctors and clinicians to assess, monitor and manage mental health diseases along with social impact of banking in rural India.

EST Global is focused towards development wherein all the various strata of society interact and integrate with each other to achieve Financial inclusion, Banking transparency and stimulation of the rural economy.

Singhania said, “Along with EST Global, we will also enter the banking and rural economy. Advent of technology in the rural set-up will be a new experience for us. The aim of EST Global is to use banking and financial systems for developmental activities and HyLyt will match every step with this platform for tech led developmental activities.”

“HyLyt enabled integration with cloud data and advance options to structure and enrich data, will provide a much bigger platform of data and help EST Global never miss any data. This helps business to eliminate information silos and get a comprehensive view of all the notes, reminders, meetings, chats, pictures, videos at a glance. Information is empowerment and we at SocioRAC aim to provide curated content in seconds to amalgamate all the activities of EST Global,” Singhania added.

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Keeping true to what it stands for, BGR.in or Broad Guidance & Ratings has been providing

best-in-class ‘guidance’ to its users for all tech-related queries and keep its users updated with article, videos and reviews about the latest gadgets, gaming, apps, telecom and everything else that fall under the “technology” category. It helps its users resolve all tech related problems including finding the best deals, telecom plans and much more.

The platform now plans to re-define the future of the consumer tech ecosystem in India through a transparent and quantitative ratings system which shall change the way consumers make their buying decisions.BGR.in shall be the first platform to bring transparency to product evaluations and reviews at scale in India. Further, the platfrom is also expanding its product search and listings to include other tech categories like laptops, TVs and wearables making it one stop shopfor all of its users’ needs. 

As per, Rohit Chadda, CEO, Zee Group, Digital Publishing, ‘True to our name, Broad Guidance and Ratings, we are launchinga new product rating mechanism where all the tech gadgets will be rated based on standardised quantitative metrics. This will not only make the user experience better by enabling easier comparison among products but also minimise subjectivity to ensure accurate ratings, something which has been missing from the Indian Tech market as of now.The platform currently allows product search and listings of mobile phones which is where the new rating mechanism will first be deployed. This shall be further expanded to other product categories as they are introduced on the platform.” 

Keeping some old rules into play, BGR.in will still maintain itself to be the friendly neighbourhood tech website, providing detailed reviews and ratings for these categories which in turn will help its users to make the final buying decision by finding the best deals. 

“Over the years BGR has createdmany benchmarks and industry best practices that have been followed by competitors in the mobile phone category. With our expansion into other product categories, we wantto create similar benchmarks in those categories as well. ”, Chadda Added. 

Recently, ZEE Digital did the largest PWA launch for 13 of its national and regional news brands covering 9 languages to offer seamless news consumption experience to its users.Earlier this year, India.com launched its new mobile site to provide a more immersive experience to users which resulted intremendous growth for the brand in terms of monthly active users.

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As the world is going through the worst ever public health crisis, multiple challenges are cropping up with infections taking place from viruses. Many of these viral infections are proven to be airborne. Experts, scientists and ASHRAE claim that viruses like COVID-19 can easily spread through indoor air circulation systems, which means that a single infected person can trigger the infection to countless others. To overcome this biggest challenge of the pandemic, Airific Systems Pvt. Ltd., a Delhi-based tech start-up, has introduced ‘UVHeal SafeAir’ – an ultra-modern ‘UV-Based HVAC Air Disinfectant’ for central air conditioning systems to break the spread of airborne diseases.

UVHeal SafeAir uses the proven UVGI (ultraviolet germicidal irradiation) technology to disinfect the circulated air by destroying the DNA or RNA of the dangerous viruses & bacteria present and hence stopping these airborne pathogens from replicating– right at the point from where the air is supplied to any premises. The product is suitable to be used in all the public places equipped with central air conditioning systems like airports, hospitals, theatres, hotels, offices, schools & colleges, restaurants, and even industrial areas.

The International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA) & ASHRAE has also suggested that UVC disinfection technology can efficiently combat the viruses responsible for causing epidemics like COVID-19, SARS COV-1, SARS COV-2, MERS-COV, etc.

Ankit Sharma, Director, Airific Systems Pvt. Ltd. states, “At Airific Systems, we aim to work on a consumer-centric approach where we bring future-driven technology that makes the lives of our customers joyful. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected individuals as well as organizations. Now is the time when we adapt ourselves to the scenario. So, when it comes to the health, comfort, and well-being of the community, UVHeal SafeAir will turn out to be the most effective solution.” “Technology has always been at the forefront of all our products and businesses and UVHeal SafeAir is no different. There are many in built technology features within the product, and we have developed a special software based on computational fluid dynamics and using simulation tools to get the highest efficient design with the highest desired efficiency to work on customer solutions.“

About Airific Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Airific Systems Pvt. Ltd. is an innovative tech start-up – from the promoters of Advant IT Park Pvt Ltd. The company has been involved with several energy-saving assignments and has been rigorously experimenting over the ultra-violet disinfection system for a while now. The company, in collaboration with IOTomation Ecotech Pvt. Ltd., designs and develops innovative an intelligent building and energy management solutions. The company strives to create a safer, efficient, and more productive community for all.

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