25 companies within Huddle Accelerator funded in 2021 – aims to double tally in 2022 with newer sectors in the horizon
The startup ecosystem within 2021 boomed with 42 unicorns emerging in 2021, over $14 billion invested in Indian startups in Q3 of 2021 with multiple early stage startups growing in emerging themes.
Huddle’s portfolios receive support across multiple business functions in order to provide early stage startups with financial, social and intellectual capital.
Here’s a list of Huddle accelerator ventures that went onto raising capital in 2021 across Seed and Series A funding:
Wellversed
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Aanan Khurma, Aditya Seth and Ripunjay Chachan
Head Office: Delhi
Sector: FMCG – Nutrition & Wellness
About: Intent focused full-stack nutrition brand for preventive healthcare.
Funding Status: Series A – notable investors – Jubilant Foodworks and Huddle
The New Shop
Founded In: 2019
Founders: Aastha Almast, Charak Almast and Mani Dev Gyawali
Head Office: New Delhi
Sector: Retail
About: Creating India’s largest brand of 24×7 convenience stores with omni-channel presence
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Anthill Ventures, Hustle Partners, Abhijeet Pai, Huddle
BoldCare
Founded In: 2019
Founders: Rajat Jadhav, Rahul Krishnan, Harsh Singh, Mohit Yadav
Head Office: Mumbai
Sector: Healthcare & Wellness
About: Digital Clinic for Men – D2C brand focused on men’s sexual wellness, haircare and health performance.
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – NB Ventures, Shiprocket, Huddle
Celcius
Founded In: 2020
Founders: Swarup Bose, Rajneesh Raman and Arbind Jain
Head Office: Mumbai
Sector: Logistics & Supply Chain Management
About: India’s largest online ‘Cold Chain’ logistics marketplace connecting shippers and reefer transporters
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Lumis Partners, Magehold Singapore, Keiretsu, Huddle
Evenflow
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Pulkit Chhabra and Utsav Agarwal
Head Office: Mumbai
Sector: E-Commerce Aggregator
About: Acquiring and scaling internet first brands towards operational efficiency and higher return metrics.
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Village Global, Equanimity, 9Unicorns, Kunal Shah (CRED), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm)
EFeed
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Kumar Ranjan and Ravi Chauhan
Head Office: Pune
Sector: Agri-tech
About: Building India’s first full-stack, direct-to-farmer, animal-feed procurement platform
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Better Capital, Huddle
Astrek Innovations
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Jithin Vidya Ajith and Robin Kannathu Thomas
Head Office: Kerala
Sector: Health-Tech
About: Cutting edge exoskeleton and hardware to enable mobility and rehabilitation for those with lower limb disability
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – IAN Fund
Perfora
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Jatan Bawa and Tushar Khurana
Head Office: Gurugram, Haryana
Sector: D2C – Oral Care
About: New-age D2C first oral care brand
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Sauce VC, Bala Sarda (Vahdam), Huddle
Yobee
Founded In: 2019
Founders: Chella Ram and Salil Mathur
Head Office: Mumbai
Sector: Fin-tech
About: Trading Platform – simplifying trading and returns for everyone
Funding Status: Seed
ZFW
Founded In: 2017
Founders: Madhav Kasturia
Head Office: New Delhi
Sector: Retail-tech
About: Hyperlocal fulfilment platform for F&B and HORECA
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Expert Dojo, Arjun Vaidya
Brainwired
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Sreeshankar Nair and Romeo Jerard
Head Office: Kerala
Sector: Agri-tech
About: Enhancing livestock health through their proprietary monitoring and tracking system
Funding Status: Seed+ – notable investors – Mumbai Angels, India Accelerator
Cell Propulsion
Founded In: 2016
Founders: Nakul Kukar, Paras Kaushal and Supratim Naskar
Head Office: Bengaluru
Sector: Electric Vehicle
About: Electric-mobility company revamping India’s commercial logistics ecosystem
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – growX ventures, Micelio EV Fund, Endiya Partners, Huddle
EFeed
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Kumar Ranjan and Ravi Chauhan
Head Office: Pune
Sector: Agri-tech
About: Building India’s first full-stack, direct-to-farmer, animal-feed procurement platform
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Better Capital, Huddle
Nirmalaya
Founded In: 2020
Founders: Bharat Bansal
Head Office: Jaipur
Sector: D2C
About: An organic fragrance brand
Funding Status: Seed
F5
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Raghav Arora, Lalit Aggarwal
Head Office: Delhi
Sector: Retail-Tech
About: One-stop omnichannel solution for daily workplace consumption.
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Auxano Ventures, Venture Catalysts, Mohit Satyanand, Huddle
Gladful
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Parul Sharma and Manu Sharma
Head Office: Jaipur
Sector: FMCG
About: Simplifying children’s nutrition by building India’s premier parent-led D2C nutrition brand.
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Antler India, Huddle, Shiprocket, Encubay Angel Network
Jade Forest
Founded In: 2020
Founders: Punweet Singh and Shuchir Suri
Head Office: Gurugram
Sector: FMCG
About: Thoughtfully crafted non-alcoholic beverages and miers
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Mumbai Angels
Rupyo
Founded In: 2021
Founders: Nikhila Sasry and Sameer Shashank
Head Office: New Delhi
Sector: Fin-tech
About: Early Wage Access Provider – making any day a pay-day
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Satin Creditcare
MyKare Health
Founded In: 2020
Founders: Senu Sam
Head Office: Kerala
Sector: Health-tech
About: Transforming healthcare experience through omni-channel optimisation
Funding Status: Seed
RACEnergy
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Arun Sreyas Reddy and Gautham Maheswaran
Head Office: Hyderabad
Sector: Electric Vehicles
About: Building India’s largest battery swapping infrastructure, focused on 3W + 2W segment.
Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – growX ventures, Micelio EV fund, Prophetic Ventures, Huddle
StepSetGo
Founded In: 2018
Founders: Abhay Pai, Misaal Turakhia and Shivjeet Ghatge
Head Office: Mumbai
Sector: Apps, Fitness, Software & Wellness
About: India’s largest and fastest growing rewards driven fitness platform
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Beyond Seed (Singapore), Seeders, Dexter Angels and Huddle
NeuroPixel
Founded In: 2020
Founders: Amritendu Mukherjee and Arvind Venugopal Nair
Head Office: Bengaluru
Sector: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision & E-Commerce
About: Helping fashion retailers create high quality catalogue images using deep tech
Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Entrepreneur First, IPV Ventures, Huddle
To name a few more reputed, growing and funded startups within Huddle’s portfolio are companies like Blue Tokai Coffee, GOAT Brand Labs, GripInvest, The Healthy Company, The Gaming Project, Qlan, Swageazy, HuddleUp.
The Indian startup landscape has seen several encouraging initiatives launched by early stage funds and accelerator programs to boost pre-seed and seed stage startups. Accelerator and early-stage initiatives from the likes of Y-Combinator foraying into Indian startups, Axilor, Antler, 100X VC, and funds like Artha, RPSG, Accel, have all launched programs to boost the early stage investment ecosystem. The support to early-stage ventures has exceeded beyond financial backing, with a large requirement of hands-on and on ground support to teams during days where they find a path towards predictable growth.
Similarly, Huddle’s portfolios receive support across multiple business functions in order to provide early stage startups with financial, social and intellectual capital. The Gurgaon headquartered accelerator with their fund remains bullish on its commitment to redefine the acceleration ecosystem in the country and will continue deploying the INR 50-crore fund announced earlier this year with at least 14 new startups across sunrise sectors during the first two quarters of 2022.
Speaking about the key highlights of the year, Huddle’s Founding Partner, Sanil Sachar, said, “The year 2021 showed extremely encouraging indicators in the early-stage ecosystem. In line with our aim of making India the largest startup economy in the world, we had one of the most momentous years as an accelerator and investor, having made 16 investments within 2021, and over 20 funded teams in a year with a few more investments in the pipeline before the year-end. We’re confident that the Indian ecosystem is going to continue building innovations that’ll lead most of the sectors, and to ensure this, to create the perfect grassroots ecosystem is our key aim by being actively involved in the acceleration and investment of our future businesses and leaders.”
Huddle has invested in several sectors, with an aim of backing ventures transforming traditional businesses or those creating new business models. From building teams across gaming, consumer internet, D2C, retail, SaaS for healthcare and HR, the accelerator has set their sights on newer industries too. These include building upon a circular economy thesis with a climate-tech focus, creating more D2C enablers within the consumer sector, a focus on metaverse across specific applications, SaaS products, AI/ML solutions and further doubling down on their mobility thesis.
Besides nurturing nascent ideas and creating future-ready businesses as an accelerator, Huddle has also been helming several co-acceleration and co-investment efforts across the country, helping startups benefit from the support of more than one startup enabler to transform industries for the better. Ishaan Khosla, Founding Partner at Huddle, added, “Building an inclusive ecosystem through co-acceleration will remain one of our top priorities for 2022. We plan to work towards it by providing startups with all the necessary support and capital to build businesses of the future. More initiatives like that of RocketFuelXHuddle or our EV accelerator earlier built alongside growX ventures are areas we’d like to initiate to bring the ecosystem even closer in building and backing ventures together from the early days. For 2022 we’re all set to continue our momentum and support.”