Phoenix Group and Cypher Capital announce new projects, alliances, investments

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November 25, 2022

The United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based VC firms Phoenix Group and Cypher Capital held a gala event this evening to announce new collaborations, projects, and investments.

The UAE-based Cypher Capital is a multi-strategy crypto investment company that offers services in venture capital, public markets, nodes, mining, etc.

Munaf Ali, CEO of Phoenix Group, launched the event by announcing a new partnership with Kevin O’Leary and O’Leary Financial Group for Cypher Capital, as well as plans to launch Fenix Games, an online gaming platform built on Web 3.

Also, he disclosed the latest $1.5 million investment by the group in Rekt Studios. In his closing remarks, he stated that Cypher Capital Group was optimistic and remained bullish about the future of Web3 and blockchain projects, despite the prevailing challenges in the cryptocurrency market.

Representatives from Fenix Games and Rekt took part in a series of fireside chats to lay out their vision.

Rudy Koch, Co-founder of Fenix Games, commented, “With the transition from retail to free-to-play, we saw the democratisation of access, resulting in the addition of billions of new gamers and over $150 billion in revenue last year alone. With Web 3.0, not only are we able to include players and creators in the value chain of games, but through blockchain-driven digital asset economies, we can further enhance engagement and open new revenue streams for developers.”

Commenting on the roadmap of Rekt Studios to develop a gaming ecosystem with “Unseen”, Co-founder and COO Alex Peterson said,” We are really excited to unveil Unseen for maybe the first time in public. Here among so many influential and inspiring people, it is a true honour to talk about our fully immersive, decentralised virtual ecosystem. This project is centred around gaming and real-world utilities, and it is a platform built by the people for the people.”

Later, Bill Qian, Chairman of Cypher Capital Group, sat down in a fireside chat with the Canadian businessman, entrepreneur, and television personality, Kevin O’Leary. Later, Canadian businessman, entrepreneur, and media personality Kevin O’Leary sat down for a fireside talk with Bill Qian, chairman of Cypher Capital Group. They announced a new $200 million fund concentrating on infrastructure and middleware investments in the Web3 market.

Bill Qian elaborated, “This partnership allows us to push the boundaries of investment by taking our strong joint experience and track record in Web3 investment and focusing on the incredible opportunities that are arising in the field of infrastructure and middleware on an almost daily basis. There are abundant opportunities available, and the creation of this fund will serve to capitalise on those opportunities and give best-in-class technology partners a boost and an opportunity to grow.”

Closing the event, Bijan Alizadeh, Chairman of Phoenix Group, said, “The value proposition for consumers at the heart of Web3—one that unifies data, functionality, and value, and in doing so, creates opportunities for new and more efficient forms of applications and asset ownership—is a powerful one.”

Celebal Technologies bags $32 million

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November 24, 2022

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Celebal Technologies, which specialises in AI, big data, and enterprise cloud, has received its first institutional funding from Norwest Venture Partners, who will acquire a minority stake in the company for USD 32 million (about Rs 261 crore).

The startup from Jaipur said that the investment would help it expand into Europe, the Middle East, and Japan and strengthen its presence in its existing markets in North America, India, and the Asia-Pacific region. The funds will be used to build solution accelerators and increase delivery capacity.

Anupam Gupta and Anirudh Kala founded Celebal, which in addition to being a partner for Microsoft Azure, employs more than 1,600 software developers and provides services to more than 100 clients globally.

Co-founder Kala, who also serves as Celebal’s CEO, expressed confidence that Norwest’s extensive business and technology services sector knowledge, combined with its global portfolio presence, will aid in strengthening and expanding the company’s operations in important markets and emerging industries like sustainability.

Leading venture and growth equity investment company Norwest Venture Partners is headquartered in the US.

For the deal, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas served as Celebal’s exclusive financial advisor, and Avendus Capital served as the company’s legal advisor.

Healthtech AI startup RedBrick AI raises $4.6mn in seed funding

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November 23, 2022

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Healthtech AI platform RedBrick AI announced that it had raised $4.6 million in a seed funding round to accelerate the development and adoption of artificial intelligence in clinical settings through rapid data annotation on medical imagery.

With participation from Y Combinator and angel investors, the round was led by Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge.

The RedBrick AI SaaS platform provides web annotation tools for 2D and 3D data to enable expert access to specialised tooling from their browsers. The complexity of existing annotation tools, quality control, and machine learning integration are only a few of the problems that its technologies address as being specific to the annotation of medical data.

The platform’s annotation tools are accessible through the browser and can be used without prior training. Additionally, RedBrick AI provides semi-automated tools to annotate complex 3D medical images.

Also, RedBrick has quality control procedures in place to ensure the quality of annotations, which are essential for obtaining regulator certifications for AI algorithms. It includes effective quality control operations on the platform that can aggregate the opinions of multiple clinicians for each annotation case, all while drastically cutting down on project management time.

Shivam Sharma, CEO and co-founder of RedBrick AI, stated, “With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence in clinical settings, researchers need excellent tools to build high-quality datasets and models at scale. Our customers are in the vanguard of this growth, pioneering everything from surgical robots to automated detection of cancers. The new funds will be integral to the growth of our engineering team in India and to expand our suite of products. We’re incredibly excited to be powering the next generation of researchers in building AI for clinical settings.”

Transition VC launches fund for green firms

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November 23, 2022

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An energy transition-focused venture capital fund, Transition VC announced its first fund with a target corpus of ₹400 crores and a greenshoe option of ₹200 crores.

The Transition VC, based in Bengaluru, will fund 40 early-stage startups in industries like climate tech, net zero building design, energy storage, green hydrogen, electric mobility, and energy.

According to the VC fund, the corpus would be used over the following three years for investments between $500,000 and $1 million.

For global startups, a fourth of the fund value will be set aside.

In the new energy field, Transition VC has also formed partnerships with incubators, accelerators, fellow VCs, and organizations that can work collaboratively with startups to conduct pilot projects and support their expansion.

The VC firm had recently received approval from the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

By the end of this calendar year, it aims to complete the fund’s first close.

A team of entrepreneurs and executives, including Raiyaan Shingati, Mohammed Shoeb Ali, Mustafa Wajid, Naresh V. Narasimhan, Tejas Goenka, Saif Qureishi, and Rajesh Doshi, came together to establish Transition VC in 2021. Shingati and Ali oversee the fund.

Speaking on the fund launch, Raiyaan Shingati, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Transition VC, said, “Climate Change & Energy Transition is a business opportunity, as they demand reinvention of every segment of the industry. We are at the beginning of a new era! Major shifts like this don’t come around that often, but we are starting to see one now, and it’s going to shape how people consume energy for decades to come.”

“We are optimistic, and we see an opportunity of more than 12 unicorns coming from India in this decade just in the Energy Transition & ClimateTech space,” added Shoeb Ali, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Transition VC.

Koo offers to hire affected Twitter employees

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November 19, 2022

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Local microblogging service Koo has offered to hire the affected Twitter employees after new CEO Elon Musk fired several staff from his company.

In a tweet on Friday, Mayank Bidawatka, a co-founder of Koo, offered to hire some of the former Twitter employees.

“Very sad to see #RIPTwitterAand related # to this going down. We’ll hire some of these Twitter ex-employees as we keep expanding and raise our larger, next round,” Bidawatka tweeted.

“They deserve to work where their talent is valued. Micro-blogging is about people power. Not suppression,” he added.

Musk ruthlessly fired over half of Twitter’s 7,600 employees earlier this month, shuttering various operations worldwide, including in India.

Additionally, hundreds of workers recently left the company before Musk’s deadline to accept his “extremely hardcore” manner of working or quit the company.

Meanwhile, Koo recently announced that it had become the second-largest microblog available to the world.

The platform, launched in March 2020 and has reached 50 million downloads, has experienced growth.

Fern Hotels & Resorts opens new property in Jambughoda, Gujarat

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November 18, 2022

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The Fern Hotels & Resorts, one of India’s environmentally sensitive hotel chains, has launched its newest luxury resort, Bhanu The Fern Forest Resort & Spa in Jambughoda in Gujarat. In the State, this is the company’s 23rd operational hotel.

Speaking of the launch, Suhail Kannampilly, CEO of Concept Hospitality-The Fern Hotels & Resorts, said, “The Fern Hotels & Resorts are the biggest hospitality players in Gujarat, with hotels in all the major cities and in resort destinations covering beaches, temple towns, historical monuments, jungle safaris, forest resorts and wildlife sanctuaries in the State. Our hotels are well known for their environmentally sensitive and eco-friendly facilities, services and operations.”

Bhanu The Fern Forest Resort & Spa, Jambughoda, is an elite resort next to the Jambughoda Forest in Gujarat, surrounded by a wildlife sanctuary, lakes, and mesmerizing views of lush greenery. The resort has 108 luxurious, elegantly furnished rooms, suites, and villas, ranging from 344 sq ft to over 800 sq ft.

Along with the local attractions, the resort is close to the Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park and Pavagadh Hills, both of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Statue of Unity is also within driving distance from the resort.

EdMyst launches AI-powered Skilling Application for Students of DSEU

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November 18, 2022

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A workshop on “Becoming Industry Ready – Importance of Behavioral Skills” was held on Friday for more than 200 final-year Delhi Skills and Entrepreneurship University (DSEU) students. The event was led by EdMyst’s globally-renowned communication coach, Vijay Vikram Singh.

One of the country’s best voice-over professionals and voice coaches, Vijay is most famous for giving his voice to the Bigg Boss narration.

Prof. (Dr.) Rihan Khan Suri, the Pro-Vice Chancellor of DSEU, who has undertaken several initiatives to strengthen the industry-academia connection at DSEU, delivered the keynote for the event. He emphasized the value of developing their soft skills during the keynote as they prepare for their placements and the corporate experience.

The students were captivated by Vijay’s workshop as he discussed the value of a growth mindset, shared anecdotes about taking calculated risks, and provided practical frameworks and tools to help them improve communication skills relevant to the corporate world.

The CEO of EdMyst, Vivek Gupta, and Vijay demonstrated Edy, an AI-driven behavioral skilling application. With the click of a button, anyone can use the application to objectively assess their behavioral skills, such as conviction and resilience. Users only need to upload or record their video after choosing their context, such as sales presentation, interview preparation, etc. Users can then connect with coaching professionals for live one-on-one coaching sessions as needed depending on the analysis.

According to Dr. Neeta Pradhan, Head of Strategy & Partnerships of DSEU, the application can be very helpful for students in developing their overall personalities and interview preparation.

Further, Vivek Gupta said, “We are at the tipping point of a skill revolution. New-age business complexity and rapidly changing talent expectations require innovative solutions to make it easy for everyone to stay relevant and be a mainstream contributor.”

Using human-centered AI, behavioral science, and coaching professionals, EdMyst is a global platform that offers long-term behavioral transformation solutions for students and professionals. The final-year students of DSEU will receive complimentary access to Edy from EdMyst.

The purpose of the DSEU is to provide its students with a world-class skilling infrastructure to access aspirational jobs. This workshop and collaboration with EdMyst are in line with that objective.

India is not a viable market for crypto: Changpeng Zhao

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November 18, 2022

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The co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, stated that there isn’t much potential in the Indian crypto market.

At the TechCrunch Crypto conference, Zhao said, “To be honest, I don’t think India is a very crypto-friendly environment.”

According to Zhao, the high tax environment for crypto in India is a significant issue since it makes the market unviable for foreign competitors.

“If you are going to tax 1% on each transaction, there is not going to be that many transactions,” he said at the conference.

Due to regulations in place, he added that Binance is in discussions with other Indian crypto founders and influential people to identify a solution.

Before this, a Nasscom poll on the Web3 startup landscape in India revealed that, despite a strong talent pool and supportive investors, India’s growth and development had been slow due to regulations. The research points out that talent and investor outflow could accelerate India’s missed opportunity in the sector.

Ayurveda startup NirogStreet bags $12mn in Series B round

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November 18, 2022

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NirogStreet, an ayurvedic startup based in Delhi, has raised $12 million in a Series B funding round led by Jungle Ventures. Existing investors Spiral Ventures, ICMG Co-Creation Fund, and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash and Rajeev Kannan of the Japanese bank SMBC also actively participated in the round.

The round also includes investment from Anthony Weldon’s family office. The startup will invest the funds in upgrading its technology, service offerings, and supply chain.

NirogStreet, a startup founded in 2016 by Ram Kumar N, uses technology to deliver many services, such as digital health record management, smart clinics, peer-to-peer learning for over 50,000 Ayurvedic practitioners, and doctor prescriptions.

“NirogStreet is transforming the entire Ayurveda value chain by infusing trust, quality, access and scale to the industry. Ram and his team are building an industry-first Ayurveda ecosystem with their unique community-first, knowledge and commerce approach that transcends from ingredients to consumers,” said Anurag Srivastava, Founding Partner at Jungle Ventures in a statement.

In a round led by CE Ventures, the corporate venture capital platform of Crescent Enterprises and ICMG, the company raised $4 million in December of last year. Anuj Srivastava, the CEO of Livspace, and Gokul Rajaram, a board member of Coinbase and Pinterest, also participated in the round.

Niranjan Hiranandani, Shradha Sharma invest in Ratan Tata-backed Goodfellows

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November 17, 2022

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A senior companionship startup, Goodfellows has secured a new round of seed capital from investors, including Shradha Sharma, the founder and CEO of YourStory, and Niranjan Hiranandani, co-founder and MD of the Hiranandani Group.

According to the official announcement, the funds will be used to expand services to new locations, including Pune, Kolkata, and Bengaluru, improve the startup’s fast-expanding operations in Mumbai, and respond to the spike in countrywide requests for senior companionship. With its first corporate contract, Goodfellows will also test its corporate offerings.

“Goodfellows has understood the problem, looked for a solution, and worked out a concept around it. This is what makes it wonderful and unique. It is a concept needed in today’s world,” said Niranjan, an ardent supporter of youth initiatives.

On the funding, Shradha stated, “I believe some startups are meant to purely impact a community in a positive way, and Goodfellows is a great example of that. As someone who is in entrepreneurship to create impact more than anything else, I am happy to see Shantanu and his team go in this direction.”

Niranjan and Shradha will be part of the startup’s advisory board.

Goodfellow’s founder Shantanu Naidu commented on the investment, “Such investors that have a personal interest in creating true impact and supporting social entrepreneurship in the country give us the strength to continue with full faith in helping the country’s elderly combat this social problem.”

About 5.7% of the country’s senior citizens (aged 60 and over)—or approximately six million people, based on the 2011 Census—live alone without the assistance of family or friends, according to the 2021 Longitudinal Ageing Study in India study. While some depend on caregivers for help, the problem of loneliness or a lack of company has been the main factor contributing to their declining mental and physical health. Shantanu emphasized that various people have varied definitions of companionship for Goodfellows. To some, it might entail watching a movie, sharing old tales, going for a walk, or simply relaxing in a quiet company while doing nothing at all. Goodfellows aims to accommodate all of these activities.

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