Startups Geekster, Trainman, others raise early-stage funding

By Shubhobrota Dev Roy

  • 20 Jul 2022
Credit: 123RF.com

QuantumBit Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs edtech platform Geekster, on Wednesday said it has secured pre-Series A funding of $1.3 million (around Rs 10.14 crore) led by Inflection Point Ventures, with participation from Japan-based publishing firm MyNavi Corporation.

The round also saw participation from existing investors We Founder Circle and ah! Ventures.

The Gurugram-based company plans to deploy the fresh proceeds for team expansion, programmes roll out and building scalable learning and hiring platform.

Founded in 2020, by Ankit Maggu and Sahil Miglani, the career-focused tech education platform Geekster offers upskilling programmes to make college graduates work-ready.

“Our offering has witnessed great response from the students and employer partners alike and we shall be working aggressively to scale our operations in the next few months,” said Maggu.

“Geekster has been successful in designing a tech education platform with its unique model of skilling which allows tech graduates to hone their skills at zero cost until they get a paying job. And at the same time, it engages industry professionals as educators on the platform keeping the content relevant and practical,” said Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures.   

Inflection Point Ventures is an angel investing platform with over 7,100 CXOs, HNIs, and professionals to together invest in startups. The firm supports new-age entrepreneurs by providing them monetary & experiential capital and connecting them with a diverse group of investors.   

The firm backs new-age entrepreneurs by providing them monetary and experiential capital and connecting them with a diverse group of investors.    

Trainman bags $1 million 

Gurugram-based online train ticket booking platform Trainman has marked the closure of its seed round after raising $1 million (Rs 7.5 crore) from marquee US investors including Goodwater Capital, Hem Angels and others.   

The round also saw participation of angel investors including Justin Hamilton and Ivy Growth Associates.   

 The startup plans to use the fresh funds to further enhance its platform for people looking for seamless train travel experience in India.    

Founded in 2016, Trainman provides a one-stop solution for booking train tickets online, for checking PNR status and predicting ticket confirmation status before booking.   

“Emerging as a leading solutions provider in the industry, with over 10mn installations, Trainman delivers cost-effective services using a comprehensive back-end system to streamline the train ticket processes, said Vineet Chirania, founder and chief executive officer, Trainman.   

Seekho fetches $400,000 in seed funding 

Edutainment startup Seekho has secured Rs 3.75 crore (around $400,000) as a part of its seed funding round led by We Founder Circle.  

The round also saw participation from SucSEED Innovation Fund, with Toppr’s Co-founder Hemanth Goteti and other executives.  

The Rajasthan-based company plans to use the fresh funds to expand into new languages and scale its content library. 

Founded in 2020 by Rohit Choudhary, Keertay Agarwal and Yash Banwani, Seekho aims at defining a new category of edutainment content by combining educational content with recreational byte-sized videos, building a ‘Netflix for Learning,’ the company said in a statement. 

“At Seekho, we are thrilled to have WFC and SucSEED as strategic investment partners. With such strategic angels on board, we intend to scale up to one lakh paying subscribers in the next six months,” said Rohit Choudhary, founder and CEO, Seekho. 

“Seekho has the potential to revolutionize the education system and benefit society in a great way,” said Gaurav VK Singhvi, co-founder, We Founder Circle.  

Adaptive   

Infrastructure automation company Adaptive on Tuesday said it has raised an undisclosed seed capital from Antler India, Pareto Holdings, Adept Ventures, Hustle Fund and Haresh Chawla (partner at True North).   

The platform will use the fresh money to hire talent and build product.   

Founded in 2021 by Ronak Massand and Debarshi Basak, Adaptive aims to empower technical stakeholders to build DevOps solutions using templates and functions.

“We are going after a $70 billion process automation market globally. By automating and templating cumbersome processes undertaken by developers and technical stakeholders, we want to build the universal internal ops platform for organizations for all infrastructure and SaaS tools,” said Massand.