Persistent Venture Fund’s second investment – DxNow, a boston based life sciences startup

Persistent Venture Fund’s second investment – DxNow, a boston based life sciences startup

– By Prathamesh Patil

Persistent Systems has announced that it has invested in DxNow, a privately held Boston company that is developing advanced micro-fluidic and imaging technologies for point-of-care diagnostic solutions. DxNow is the second recipient to receive seed money from the Persistent Venture Fund, an early-stage investment fund announced last month, focused on supporting innovation in areas of Persistent’s expertise and involving social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing (SMAC) technologies.

DxNow products and technologies will be initially applied to infection detection in renal dialysis patients and will subsequently address applications in forensics, male fertility, global health and rapid detection of microbial species in the environment to ensure public health and safety.

The product related to dialysis, the DxNow Infection Detection System™, will be a simple-to-use micro-fluidic device that enables early detection of infection in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients, before the infection has serious health impacts. The system will alert patients and caregivers simultaneously when an infection is detected via easy to use enabling technology that allows for timely clinical intervention – reducing the need for costly emergency room visits and hospitalization.

“Today there are approximately 300,000 PD patients worldwide and that number is expected to grow to more than 400,000 in the next four years,” said William T. Sharp, CEO, DxNow. “Our goal is to provide a device that delivers better patient outcomes, and reduced costs and complications, as well as peace of mind for PD patients and their caregivers by enabling early clinical intervention when infection is detected. Persistent Systems expertise in life sciences as well as mobile and cloud computing make them an ideal partner.”

“DxNow is providing an innovative solution to a critical problem, reducing the current time of infection detection from days to minutes with greater accuracy,” said Dr. Sridhar Jagannathan, Chief Innovation Officer, Persistent Systems, Inc. “Our investment in DxNow draws on Persistent’s significant expertise in medical technologies and life sciences. We look forward to advantaging DxNow in their journey to creating breakthrough products and saving lives.”

DxNow will use mobility and cloud computing to help ensure timely, accurate and effective monitoring for the onset of infection — critical to reducing costs and improving patient outcomes

Focus on PALF’s third Indian investment – Avanti Learning Centres

Focus on PALF’s third Indian investment – Avanti Learning Centres

– By Prathamesh Patil

Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF), a collaboration of British publishing and Education Major Pearson and Village Capital has invested into Delhi-based start-up Avanti Learning Centres. This come after Sudiksha sukand Experifun Learning Solutions winners of Edupreneurs India 2013. Both startup got seed funding of $50K.

Avanti will use this seed investment round, which is expected to be aroung $500K and  also participation of two additional angel investors, to develop a comprehensive online-offline learning and monitoring system, to expand on content creation and to build new centres.

Avanti Learning Centres helps to prepare students from low-income backgrounds for college entrance exams, focusing on the highly competitive career paths of engineering and medicine. Students spend up to 18 hours a week at a centre and are charged only $20 per month. Costs are kept low by a large network of volunteers and partners, including universities, public schools, policy makers and private sector businesses, who assist with teaching and administration.

The centres produce significant learning outcomes, with 80 per cent of students showing a 20 per cent or more improvement in performance on standardised tests, and three-quarters of enrolled students measured as being on track for admission to a top college.

Avanti was initially founded as a non-profit in March 2010 by Akshay Saxena and Krishna Ramkumar. The company boasts an impressive track record to date, with students at their centres consistently outperforming those in traditional, high-end classroom coaching programs. The centres lean heavily on technology and media, such as recorded videos and online testing, to facilitate powerful personalised education plans, and also foster a peer-to-peer learning environment.

“It was this commitment from Akshay and Krishna to focus on improving the education of low-income communities, combined with an innovative learning model, that was the most attractive aspect of the investment opportunity” explains PALF executive director, Katelyn Donnelly.

“Avanti is particularly exciting because it is a non-traditional pedagogy with very strong initial results. Our investment allows us to partner with a mission-led company to bridge a crucial gap between secondary and higher education for low-income learners.  PALF is enthused to support the Avanti team to successfully grow across India, and we look forward to working with them to deliver on their long-term vision.”

Akshay Saxena commented:
”Once we decided that a for-profit model was the best way to reach scale, we knew we would need expert strategic insight and advice. We are incredibly excited to be working with the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund as they bring unrivaled education expertise to the table that can help us achieve our long-term objectives.  We look forward to building upon the relationship with Pearson as we improve outcomes for low-income learners in the years to come.”

A look at Experifun and Sudiksha’s niche funding from Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

A look at Experifun and Sudiksha’s niche funding from Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

– By Prathamesh Patil

A company operating low-income pre-schools, and a team who design next generation science learning aids have scooped a share of $150K investment. Experifun and Sudiksha Knowledge Solutions beat off competition from hundreds of education startups in India to take home seed funding in the inaugural ‘Edupreneurs’ programme, a partnership of Pearson and Village Capital.

Launched in July 2012 with $15 million of initial Pearson capital, Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF) makes minority equity investments in for-profit companies to meet a burgeoning demand for affordable education services in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The purpose of the fund is to improve access to quality education for the poorest families in the world by investing in committed to innovative approaches and improving learning outcomes.

Led by a team of alumni from the IIT and the IIM A, Experifun helps science teachers bring their subject to life by providing them with kits and activities to conduct classroom experiments. Designed in its R&D lab in Bangalore, Experifun products are patentable, affordable and suited to both urban and rural schools.

Sudiksha operates pre-schools in underprivileged urban neighbourhoods, where there is often a shortfall of education provision. It does that through an innovative model that recruits local women to run branches under an incentivised profit sharing scheme, thus developing the skills of female adults alongside children.

The winners were selected not by an expert committee or a judging panel, but by a group of much tougher critics and stronger supporters – their peer group of 14 education-focused startups who made it to the final round of competition. All 14 fledging firms have spent the last few months with Pearson and Village Capital in a series of workshops and peer review sessions all around India, designed to ready them for investment, and ignite the pipeline of next generation education businesses. Culminating with a presentation by each finalist to an audience of potential investors.

Announcing the winners, Pearson’s executive director of the PALF, Katelyn Donnelly, commented:
“These inspiring entrepreneurs are excellent examples of the innovations desperately needed to improve access to, and quality of, education for low-income learners around the world.  Both Experifun and Sudiksha have established strong traction with customers and shown early promise to transform learning outcomes and scale quickly.

Village Capital has served over 350 ventures worldwide, building disruptive innovations in energy, environmental sustainability, agriculture, health, and education. Village Capital has launched 22 programs in 7 countries to-date and made 30 peer-selected investments.

CarDekho owner Girnar Software raises $15 million in Series A funding from Sequoia

CarDekho owner Girnar Software raises $15 million in Series A funding from Sequoia

– By Prathamesh Patil

Jaipur based Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd. which owns cardekho.com – the automotive marketplace has raised $15 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. Sequoia’s Shailesh Lakhani will be joining the board of the company.

The funds will be utilized to fuel cardekho.com’s expansion plans.

The company has plans to launch an array of dealer focussed tools and services based out of mobile platform. Consumers can also expect an enhanced mobile app experience which will not only allow them to instantly click photos and list their used cars, but also enable them to connect with new and used dealers and read reviews on the go.

Newer offerings from Girnar Software  include Bikedekho.com (a similar portal for bikes), mobiledekho (a mobile information portal) and Pricedekho.com (a price comparison site for gadgets).

Apart from offering consumers with an online platform to list their used cars on a freemium model, Cardekho.com offers a variety of research tools, expert reviews, user reviews, on road prices in all cities along with pictures and list of dealers. It also offers an end-to-end solution by facilitating car finance and insurance options to its consumers.

CarDekho.com has gathered critical business momentum through its strategic partnerships with leading OEMs and accounts for 10% of national sales for them. CarDekho currently works with over 2000 new and used car dealers including leading organized retail used car dealers like Mahindra First Choice and Carnation.

“Cardekho is focused on creating an experience for consumers buying a new or used car and super-focused on creating business value to dealers across India. To make it an end-to-end solution, we also facilitate car finance and insurance. In this e-commerce era, where most start-ups are losing money, we are one of the few who are able to run real business which generates profits.” quoted Amit Jain & Anurag Jain – Joint Managing Directors of Girnar Software.

Shailesh Lakhani said, “India is one of the largest car markets in the world, and the purchase of a car is amongst the most considered decisions for a consumer.  As most consumers begin their search for a new or used car online, Amit and Anurag have built the ideal product to help them research, compare, and begin a purchase transaction.  We are delighted to partner with them to scale their business to new heights.”

Emerging market focused investment bank Elara Capital was the sole financial advisor to the transaction

India’s recent internet IPO success Justdial is also planning to launch a price discovery engine.

A glance at Accel and Helion backed Product Discovery Platform MySmartPrice

A glance at Accel and Helion backed Product Discovery Platform MySmartPrice

– By Prathamesh Patil

Product discovery and price comparison portal, MySmartPrice.com, is making its foray into the world of fashion with its new section – MSP Fashion. Founded in 2011, MySmartPrice is currently funded by Accel Partners and Helion Ventures Partners, the website sees a monthly traffic of over 7.5 million visitors.

MSP Fashion aims to bring all e-commerce stores and products on a single platform, which gives shoppers a wider choice of products when looking for merchandise online. The fashion segment is one that is vastly different from electronics, and with MSP Fashion, MySmartPrice is looking to tackle the issue of product discovery while making it easier for users to identify the latest trends. This is being done through a user-driven product curation mechanism which automatically identifies trending items based on user activity.

The beta version of MSP Fashion launched a month ago, and currently boasts over 15,000 users, with more than 2,000 products being added to users’ collections on a daily basis. The site consists of over 200,000 products from over a thousand brands. The listings include items from over 20 e-commerce retailers in India, ranging from Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, Snapdeal and HomeShop18 to niche sellers like Bewakoof, FabFurnish and Happily Unmarried, and is expected to include 50+ stores in next 2-3 months.

Online e-commerce in India has seen a huge surge in recent times, and has witnessed the rise of many new retailers catering to the fashion segment. This has led to a new problem for users, where they have to go to different e-commerce sites to find the product they are looking for. MSP Fashion aims to solve this issue by letting users browse catalogues from various stores through a single location.

For instance, users looking to buy a shirt online have to resort to visiting retailers like Myntra or Jabong, and viewing the products on offer there. Instead, users can navigate to MSP Fashion and discover trending shirts on both sites, along with listings from a host of other online retailers. Once they find the shirt they are interested in, they would be able to purchase it by clicking on the ‘Buy Now’ button, which would then redirect them back to the e-commerce site.

In addition to browsing products across categories, users have the ability of adding items to their own collections by logging in through Facebook and creating an account, as well as browsing other users’ collections. Adding an item to a collection is as easy as clicking on the ‘WoW’ button. These collections can then be shared with friends through the Facebook Share button.

Other features that will be added to the site include the availability of content from more e-commerce retailers, with over 50 stores targeted to be fully integrated within the next two to three months. Additional sections will also be available to users in the near future that include deals, offers and sales from a host of e-commerce stores. This offers section would serve as a single location from which users can browse the latest deals and discounts across stores, brands and categories