Serial entrepreneur Mayank Bidawatka, whose last venture Koo was the Indian equivalent of micro blogging platform X (formerly Twitter), has raised around $4 million in seed funding round for his latest venture Billion Hearts Software Technologies. The round has been led by Blume Ventures with participation from General Catalyst and Athera Venture Partners, the company said in a statement.
The seed round immediately followed the angel round of around $250,000 the company raised recently from top-tier angels such as Phanindra Sama, ex-co-founder of redBus; Ankit Bhati, ex-co-founder of Ola; Raveen Sastry, ex-co-founder of Myntra; Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi Group, etc.
VCs and top tech executives had also backed Billion Hearts’ angel round including Darshit Vora, Partner at Acherman Capital, Vibhore Sharma, Partner at Capital 2B, Nithin Chandra, Director of Product Management at Facebook, Bhaskar Raju, Engineering Head at Rattle and Nizamabad TiE Angels.
Speaking on the seed round, Bidawatka in a LinkedIn post said, “I’ve always believed that a strong board is as important a pillar as the product, the market and the team. During the fundraise we cared more about the colour of the money than the money itself. We cared about how a prospective investor felt about the company and the product’s vision more than the size of their fund.”
“In the process, I respectfully said no to some funds even if they were keen to invest, but didn’t have the right amount of belief we were looking for. And while having these conversations, we found the partners that were most excited about what we wanted to do,” he said.
According to the company, it is currently working on a “digital consumer product” that’s relevant for a global market and audience. The first product is likely to have its beta launch in a few months within a close circle before opening it up to those that sign up for the beta.”
Bidawatka said the product is “for all smartphone users in the world.” The company has already set aside a 25 per cent ESOP pool for its team “who started building this without knowing anything about how this will come together.
“Billion Hearts aims to create digital products for a global user base. The first product is slated for a beta launch in a few months. While the product is still in stealth, it deals with a wide use case that’s relevant for all smartphone users around the world, across age groups. It will use deep tech to solve the problem,” said Blume Ventures’ Partner Karthik Reddy.