June Round-Up
Welcoming 3 new companies, consumer founder mixer, updated India Insights report, and more!
Dear Investors and Friends,
June was a jam-packed month at IQ.
We welcomed 3 new companies building in absolutely diverse spaces to our portfolio:
1. Distil, a speciality-chemicals procurement platform, raised $3.1 Mn in its seed round, led by Jungle Ventures and us.
They provide manufacturers in various industries, such as agro-chemicals, flavours & fragrances, etc., with formulations and fully customisable manufacturing solutions.
Read more about Distil’s seed round and what they’re building here.
2. POP, a payments and shopping rewards platform made for young India, raised $2.4 Mn in its seed round, led by us.
Through their app, users can seamlessly pay via POP UPI or POPclub Credit Card and earn POPcoins, which can later be redeemed to shop and enjoy exclusive benefits from a vibrant network of 200+ new-age D2C brands like Yogabar, Snitch, Zouk, Mokobara, and more.
POP is making payments and shopping more rewarding for customers and customer acquisition and loyalty easier for brands.
Read more here.
3. Maino.AI, a digital marketing automation platform, raised $1.8 Mn in a funding round led by us.
Brands of all sizes can leverage the platform’s marketing tools and automation capabilities to cut down on their reliance on slow and largely 3rd party agencies and accelerate their ROI with AI and ML-led marketing solutions.
They have enabled their clients to achieve a 50% reduction in CAC, a 70% faster TAT for creative assets, and a 3x improvement in ROAS.
Read more here.
On June 13th, 70+ founders joined us for our Consumer Unlocked Mixer at the IQ office. The evening buzzed with lively conversations and creative brainstorming sessions.
We held 2-panel discussions on building in the consumer space featuring Sameer Brij Verma (Founder & CIO, BroadBridge Capital Management), Nitish Bandi (Partner, Creaegis), Siddharth Dungarwal (Founder, Snitch), Ishendra Agarwal (Co-Founder, Giva), and Arun Paliwal (Co-Founder, RapidBox).
A big thank you to everyone who came!
ICYMI, we recently re-published our India Insights report with updated data from FY24.
Initially released in parts throughout 2023, this updated version reflects significant changes observed over the past six months. While some trends have accelerated, others have taken a pause, offering a fresh perspective on the evolving market landscape.
The report consists of 8 mini-reports that cover our thoughts on consumers, marketplaces, SaaS, two-wheelers, and much more. We hope you find this version of India Insights as insightful as the original. Also, keep an eye out for our reports on weddings and education coming out soon!
Read the updated version of 'India Insights by IndiaQuotient' here.
IQ Top Picks
Find 3 high-quality content recommendations handpicked by the IQ team below- stuff that is both enjoyable and insightful. Happy reading, watching, or listening!
1. Book: ‘Elon Musk’ by Walter Isaacson, former executive at CNN, TIME, and the Aspen Institute
The book offers a fascinating dive into Elon's journey from his early days in South Africa to becoming the driving force behind companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink. Isaacson shares his unique insights from 2 years of close-up access to Elon Musk, offering an intimate perspective on Musk's life and character.
It is an inspiring read for anyone interested in technology, innovation, and the determination it takes to change the world.
2. Report: ‘Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?’ by Goldman Sachs
We enjoyed reading the different perspectives featured in the report on whether large investments in AI will eventually pay off. An interesting read to understand the promise of Gen AI, its challenges, limitations, and future implications.
Check out Dwarkesh’s episode ft. Francois Chollet, AI researcher at Google, and Mike Knoop, co-founder of Zappier, on why LLMs might not lead to AGI.
The discussion highlights the limitations of current AI in core cognitive abilities and the need for architectural innovations and open collaboration to achieve breakthroughs in AI reasoning and generalization.
As always, we would like to leave you with some of the things our founders and the IQ team have been saying online:
1. Are VC firms in India having an existential crisis? Of late, it seems as though they are emulating their PE firm peers' more cautious approach towards investing.
Anand Lunia (IndiaQuotient) shares his two cents on this recent shift with Apoorva Mittal of The Economic Times on The Morning Brief Podcast. The episode also features perspectives from Abhay Pandey of A91 Partners and Digbijay Misra of The Economic Times.
Tune into the episode here.
2. Sumit Agarwal shares his 8-year-long journey of building Vyapar, one of India’s leading mobile-first accounting software stacks being used by 10 million+ small businesses, in conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory Media, and Avinash Deepak, SVP and Business Head of Airtel Business.
Watch the episode below ⬇️
3. Siddharth Dialani (Co-founder, BharatAgri) shares the story of a farmer who placed 90+ orders on the BharatAgri app over a year to increase his farm’s productivity:
We cannot end the newsletter without talking about India’s T20 World Cup win.
As we are sure you have already seen, 300k+ fans gathered at Mumbai's Marine Drive last Thursday for the Indian cricket team’s victory parade.
It is an incredibly proud moment for India, and the celebrations, in true Indian style, are as grand as they get.
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We’ll be back with another one soon.
Cheers,
Team IndiaQuotient.