Qyk, a hyper-local professional services start-up, has received about $1 million (₹6.5 crore) in pre-Series A investment led by growX ventures, an early-stage investment firm. Existing seed investors – Tracxn Labs, Powai Lake Ventures and Sahil Barua (co-founder, Delhivery) – participated in this round. Qyk helps customers find verified service providers for over 100 categories of professionals, including piano teachers, tax consultants, photographers and dieticians. Qyk has over 10,000 professionals across 100 categories and handles hundreds of requests every day.

IAN invests in Instasafe

Indian Angel Network, a leading group of angel investors who invest in and mentor start-ups, has invested in Bengaluru-based InstaSafe, a cloud-based security solutions provider that helps mobile and remote workers access enterprise apps, email and web on a software-as-a-service (Saas) model. It did not disclose the investment amount. CIO Angel Network also invested in this round. The money will be used to develop product features and hire talent.

Ratan Tata on investment spree

Ratan Tata, Chairman-emeritus, Tata Sons, has invested in Infinite Analytics, a venture incubated at MIT. This is Tata’s first investment in pure technology segment and second in an MIT-incubated company; the first being Altaeros Energy. Tata also invested in Holachef, an online marketplace for chefs. Launched in September 2014, Holachef had raised ₹20 crore in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital in June and ₹2 crore in seed funding in February from India Quotient.

Mechanic App gets ₹20 lakh

Native Angel Network, headquartered in Madurai, which invests in start-ups in smaller towns and cities in Tamil Nadu, has invested about ₹20 lakh in Coimbatore-based Mechanic App. The app will help connect car and two-wheeler mechanics with customers and with auto components vendors.

Turant Delivery acquires Zippon

Turant Delivery, a Delhi-based logistics and delivery start-up, has acquired Zippon, a Bengaluru-based low-cost relocation logistics provider in the packers and movers segment. The deal size was not announced. Turant is a B2B and B2C logistics delivery company and the acquisition will improve Turant’s presence in the logistics market

Online lingerie retailer Zivame raises ₹250 crore

Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment of the Malaysian Government, and Zodius Technology Fund have invested in the ₹250-crore Series C fund raise by online lingerie retailer Zivame. Existing investors Unilazer, IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital also participated in the round. Zivame will use the money to expand its business. Our Bureau

Deal of the Fortnight

Reverie raises $4 mn in Series A from Aspada and Qualcomm Ventures

Reverie Language Technologies, a Bengaluru-based local language technologies company, has raised about Rs 26 crore ($4 million) in Series A investment from Aspada Investment Company and Qualcomm Ventures.

Reverie’s enterprise-class Language as a Service platform helps organisations deliver their applications and content in local language, thus enabling them to improve their market reach. The cloud-based platform helps apps and content go multi-lingual. According to the company, there is no need to re-write any piece of software on this platform and completely localised content gets delivered in real-time.

Sahil Kini, Vice-President, Aspada, and Varsha Tagare, Senior Director, Qualcomm Ventures, will join Reverie’s board as it looks to increase its presence in the consumer Internet, financial services, government and enterprise software verticals. According to Reverie, it will also use the money to build and grow its sales and marketing efforts in West Asia and South East Asia.

This investment will boost Reverie’s efforts at facilitating the creation of multi-lingual apps as it looks to extend its language platform to over 10,000 local language app developers in the next 12-18 months.

Kini of Aspada explains the importance of the investment and of Reverie’s platform: “Over 150 million Indian internet users, which is more than half of the total user base, is unable to access the tremendous innovations on the mobile web. The only way to address this problem is by building the full-stack of user experience in local languages spanning translation, input methods and in-app search.” English has been the language of the Internet so far, but Reverie envisions a world where multi-lingual apps will help users not conversant in English, do more with services offered in the digital world.

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