Silence Laboratories, four others raise early-stage funding

By K Amoghavarsha

  • 29 Feb 2024
Jay Prakash, co-founder and chief executive officer, Silence Laboratories

Privacy-tech startup Silence Laboratories, software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups Zvolv and Nurturev, construction material marketplace Bandhoo, and ambulance service provider Dial4242 raised early-stage funding, the companies said on Thursday.  
 
Silence Laboratories  
Silence Laboratories has raised $4.1 million (Rs 34 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Pi Ventures. The round also saw participation from Kira Studio and undisclosed angel investors.  

The funding will be used to scale Silence Laboratories’ technology and business team. The company will also use the fund for research and development (R&D) and to expand its presence across geographies.  

Founded in 2021 by Jay Prakash and Andrei Bytes, Silence Laboratories is a privacy tech company that enables enterprises to adopt privacy-enhancing technologies through a fusion of cryptography and security engineering.  

In 2022, the startup raised $1.7 million in a seed funding round led by Pi Ventures. ImToken Ventures and a slew of angel investors also participated in the funding mop-up.   

Zvolv 
AI-based SaaS platform Zvolv has raised $1.9 million (Rs 16 crore) in a funding round led by Silverneedle Ventures. The round also saw participation from existing investors JSW Ventures and other undisclosed investors. 

Zvolv plans to deploy the fresh funds to expand and improve its low-code/no-code (LCNC) hyper-automation capabilities by integrating a trust-based generative AI layer into enterprise AI applications. It also plans to expand its offerings in the US market. 

Founded in 2018, by former Apple and Texas Instruments technologists Hardik Gandhi and Sujoy Chakravarty, Zvolv enables enterprises to deploy cutting-edge AI and automation features in their products and services, using generative AI securely. 

In 2021, the startup raised $1.5 million from technology-focused venture capital (VC) fund JSW Ventures and Silicon Valley-based VC fund Riso Capital. 

Nurturev 
Nurturev has raised $1 million (Rs 8.3 crore) in a pre-seed funding round led by early-stage investor Antler. The round also saw participation from Sparrow Capital, ISV Capital, Blume Founders Fund, and angel investors like Kunal Shah (Cred) and Deepak Diwakar (Mindtickle), among others. 
The Pune-based startup was founded by Sayanta Ghosh, Nikhil Ojha, and Rajat Jain. Its platform captures information about budgets, challenges and priorities of organizations from multiple third-party sources. 

Using AI technology, the platform offers contextual business insights, tailoring a revenue pipeline for key customers in the B2B market. 

It helps companies figure out new revenue pipelines as well as upsell and cross-sell within existing customers, along with integrating the company’s existing tool stack and CRM workflows. 

Bandhoo 
Bandhoo has raised $886,479 (Rs 7.35 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Venture Catalysts. The funding round also saw participation from angel investors including Neeraj Aggarwal (BCG), Manish Gupta (Indegene), S Sriniwasan (Kotak), Amit Khera (McKinsey) and Abhishek Kumar.
 
Founded by Prashant Gupta and Sridhar Sundaram, Bandhoo has multiple cloud-SaaS and marketplace solutions that cater to the construction ecosystem, including developers, builders, contractors, material suppliers and construction workers.  

It is headquartered in Bengaluru and serves clients and users across India. It claims to have more than 20 developers, 10,000 material suppliers, 1 lakh contractors, and 2.5 lakh construction workers using its platform. 

“This funding will help us in our tech product development, as well as go-to-market (GTM),” said Sundaram, co-founder, Bandhoo. 

Dial4242 
Ambulance service provider Dial4242 has secured $120,609 (Rs 1 crore) in a seed funding round from angel investor Raj Neravati.  

This funding infusion will help the startup in improving its service of delivering 10-minute ambulance services across India and expanding its footprint across the nation. 

The startup claims to have seen a jump of 50% in its valuation, in 4 months from its last funding round. 

Founded by Jeetu Lalwani, DIAL4242 has built a network covering over 750 cities with a fleet of 12,000 ambulances. The client list includes Tata Group of companies, Kellogg’s Marico, Samsung, NTT, Sony Entertainment, Wipro, Siemens, Emoha.  

Dial4242 Ambulances also provides occupational health center (OHC) services setup & operations, first aid training and medical staff to corporate clients.