India Funding Roundup: A Vocational Training Platform, Game Studio, and More

Our latest funding roundup compiles investments made in startups with business models centred around food tech, education, gaming, and on-demand beauty services.

Vahan
Social enterprise incubator Villgro Innovations Foundation has invested an undisclosed sum in education startup Vahan, which is working to improve English speaking for adults from low-income backgrounds so that they can target better employment. Co-founder Madhav Krishna said that his startup is working on an application designed to work on basic, feature phones as well as smartphones, and is also creating an 'intelligent instructional agent', like Apple's Siri for learning English.

TrulySocial
Indian mobile game development and publishing company Nazara Games said that it had made an undisclosed investment in TrulySocial, a London-based mobile games studio. TrulySocial will build contemporary social world games for mobiles and tablets across the globe by the end of this year, which will be a story driven and lifestyle themed, designed specifically for women on mobile platforms, the company said.

MyGlamm
On-demand beauty services provider MyGlamm has reportedly raised $6 million (roughly Rs. 40 crores) in a funding round led by French cosmetics maker L'Occitane, with participation from existing investors Tano Capital and Times Group-led Brand Capital. Founded in 2015 by Darpan Sanghvi, the startup currently provides home beauty services in Mumbai and Pune, and offers apps for Android and iOS users, and plans to expand to its services to Bengaluru, NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur, Indore, and Ahmedabad this year.

Petoo
Bengaluru-based Axilor Ventures has invested $1 million (roughly Rs. 6.65 crores) in food-tech startup Petoo. Operational since 2015, the startup operates in 20 locations in Bengaluru, and serves lunch, snacks and dinner with a menu centred around Indian cuisine. The funding will be reportedly used to develop back-end operations, speed up food research, and add to the manpower resources, the company said.