Narayana Health’s Devi Shetty backs digital design startup

By Shweta Sharma

  • 27 Feb 2018
Devi Shetty

Digital design startup Lollypop has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Dr Devi Shetty, the founder and chairman of multi- and super-specialty hospital chain Narayana Health, and his family.

Bengaluru-based Lollypop said in a statement that the money will be used for expanding to multiple cities.

Owned and operated by Pixitree Digital Creatives Pvt. Ltd, Lollypop was founded in 2013 by Anil Reddy. It is a dedicated User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design studio which helps entrepreneurs strategise and craft their digital products such as apps, websites and wearables.

The firm has 77 employees and hopes to double this number by the end of this year.

Apart from designing, the studio also provides front-end development services and has a sister concern called Codebele, which looks after back-end development, with an aim to provide end-to-end solutions.

Lollypop claims to have worked with more than 20 firms across 11 countries.

“Lollypop has grown organically. Only design and technology together can shape the future and Lollypop has been doing well in reimagining many industries,” said Dr Devi Shetty.

Shetty had founded Bengaluru-headquartered Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd in 2000. A publicly listed company, it has a network of more than 20 hospital and seven heart centres across India and is among the country's top hospital chains in terms of revenue and market value.

Shetty is part of the advisory committee of the Indian Angel Network (IAN), the country’s most prolific angel network. Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys, Sunil Munjal, joint managing director at Hero Corp, are also on the panel.

IAN had marked the first close of its fund at Rs 175 crore (around $27 million) last April. Its most recent investment was in tech-enabled fashion startup 6Degree.

Wemo, another design startup which offers UX design expertise, was acquired last week by Gurugram-headquartered Bash.ai, an artificial intelligence-based HR automation tool provider.