Led · Series A · Oct 2023

DHARMA sells and plans multi-day travel experiences hosted by creators, influencers and brands, enabling fans to book passion-driven trips. The platform recently partnered with Paramount Global to launch Paris by Emily, the first official travel experience tied to the Netflix series Emily in Paris. DHARMA plans to expand its roster of creators and enter new verticals such as culinary, sports, fashion, and lifestyle tourism. The company positions itself at the intersection of the creator economy and macro trends like rising consumer spending on experiences and a desire for real-world connection. DHARMA says it is based in the UAE and emphasizes passion-based travel as its core conviction. The startup has raised prior rounds, and the company’s fundraising and partnerships are being used to scale its creator roster and product offerings. DHARMA builds travel brands for the passion economy by blending online SaaS technology with automated tour operations to help iconic people and brands monetize their networks through curated travel experiences. The company partners with public figures and brands—most recently launching Looking FC with Eric Cantona, a series of four-day immersive football trips crafted by Cantona. DHARMA also runs client programs for organizations such as Culture Trip, Bitso, Pernod Ricard, Equinox and meditation instructor Light Watkins. Founded in 2018, the founding team relocated to Abu Dhabi after being accepted into Mubadala’s Hub71 and remains a remote-native team with backgrounds at Uber, Airbnb, Equinox, Butterfield & Robinson and G Adventures. Management reports that 2022 Booked GMV was already 30x that of 2019 and 6x that of 2021, signaling rapid recovery and growth. The company says it plans additional brand launches and partnerships across categories from wellness to street art and cannabis.

Led · Equity · Sep 2023

Boisson operates brick-and-mortar shops and an e-commerce platform that curates non-alcoholic spirits and beverage brands for consumers and suppliers. Launched in 2021 in NYC, the company has expanded to eight storefronts across New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and grown its ecommerce channel. Boisson has executed strategic industry partnerships, including with Drizly, and positions itself as a tastemaker in the fast-growing NA category. The company reported a 300% revenue increase from 2021 to 2022 and is on track for triple-digit year‑over‑year growth in 2023. Boisson’s product strategy emphasizes curated collections, wholesale and retail distribution, and an omni-channel experience for customers. Recent leadership change—appointing Sheetal Aiyer as CEO with founder Nick Bodkins remaining as President—signals a focus on scaling and category expansion. Boisson operates retail stores and an e-commerce platform focused on non-alcoholic spirits and a curated collection of over 125 non-alcoholic beverage brands. Launched in 2021 in NYC by Nick Bodkins and Barrie Arnold, the company currently runs five retail locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn and offers nationwide shipping. Boisson has grown sales 7.5x and recently closed a $12M seed round that values the company at $47M. The company plans to expand its physical footprint to Los Angeles with three locations opening in August and September and intends to open additional stores in major U.S. and international markets. It will also launch an on-premise arm to offer wholesale distribution, product education, and consumer data to restaurants, bars and hospitality properties, and will debut new content platforms. To support distribution, Boisson has partnered with Ford Electric Vehicles for zero-emissions delivery to on- and off-premise accounts.

Participated · Series B · Sep 2023

Eloelo offers a creator-led social gaming and livestreaming platform featuring audio and video live chat rooms with interactive games. The company builds IPs around these offerings to support creators’ content. Founded in 2020 by Saurabh Pandey and Akshay Dubey in Bengaluru, Eloelo raised $22M in a funding round. The round was led by Courtside Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners, with participation from Mixi, Waterbridge Ventures, Lumikai Fund, Kalaari Capital, Convivialite Ventures, and Rocket Capital. Eloelo intends to use the funds to expand its business reach. The company plans to develop tools such as AR filters, AI-based moderation, and analytics to improve creator engagement and watch time. Eloelo is a homegrown live video streaming platform focused on creator-led interactive live experiences. Founded in August 2020 by ex-Flipkart executives Saurabh Pandey and Akshay Dubey, the startup enables creators to host live video rooms, build interactive communities, and monetize directly from fans. The product emphasizes a wide range of tools for creators and support for low-spec devices in tier-2/3/4 Indian markets to broaden access. Eloelo has crossed over 3.5 million users and 40,000 creators and reports 40% month-over-month growth. The company is preparing monetization at scale, exploring NFTs for top creators, and plans to expand its tech, product, and content teams while fostering new creator partnerships. To date the startup has raised roughly $16 million in total funding. Eloelo operates a creator-led live social gaming platform that brings indigenous activities such as tambola, antakshari, chidiya udd, and musical chairs to live formats with creators hosting games for their communities. Founded in August 2020 by Saurabh Pandey and Akshay Dubey, the company emphasizes creator partnerships and interactive entertainment to unlock monetisation for creators. Over the past six months Eloelo reports a 15x spike in users, crossing one million users and recording over 100 million game events, while onboarding over 15,000 influencers organically. Users reportedly spend 30–35 minutes daily on the app enjoying live games and streams. The company plans to use new funding to launch multiple creator-led live game and event formats and scale the platform toward the next 10 million users. Eloelo is a short-video social commerce app offering curated 60-second videos by top influencers, expert answers, and gamified shopping rewards focused on beauty, health and lifestyle. Launched two weeks before the article, the platform targets Bharat millennial users with a content-community-commerce blend. The company reported ~20,000 downloads within 15 days, over 80% from non-metro cities, and nearly 700,000 actions on the platform. The fresh seed funding will be used to build the core tech and non-tech team, pursue new product initiatives, and drive user acquisition. Eloelo positions itself as a discovery and distribution channel for brands in the beauty and wellness verticals through trust-driven short-form content. With the current round the startup's valuation stands at $2 million.

Led · Series D · Sep 2023

JOKR operates in Brazil as DAKI, offering instant deliveries and newer scheduled "shopping mission" 30-minute time-slot deliveries while expanding its assortment to about 10,000 products. It has developed an advertising business that allows brands to promote on the DAKI platform, which now accounts for roughly 10% of revenue. The company reports month-over-month growth, increased retention and ordering frequency, and management says it is above 25% gross profit with no single grocery order subsidized. JOKR previously exited some Latin American markets and the U.S. to refocus on a Brazil-only strategy and is expanding in existing metropolitan areas. The new capital is intended to put the company on a path to profitability and could enable a return to prior markets or other strategic options, including a public listing. Management highlights its advertising analytics and direct brand relationships in Latin America as a competitive advantage that attracted investor interest. JOKR operates an instant grocery delivery platform with vertically integrated supply and a technology stack it says leverages data science to improve customer experience. The company emphasizes a high Net Promoter Score (consistently above 80) and vertical integration to source locally and maintain competitive pricing. Since being founded in 2021, JOKR has rapidly expanded across Latin America but has pulled back from several markets and now operates in Brazil, Mexico and Peru. The company hit gross-profit status in April but remains loss-making overall, with losses narrowed to single-digit millions per month after exiting unprofitable markets. Brazil accounts for roughly 50% of JOKR’s business and is gross-margin positive; management says the business in Brazil is thriving and expects company-wide full profitability by Q1 2024. JOKR has raised capital to prioritize a smaller set of geographies where it can balance growth and profitability rather than pursuing broad geographic spread. JOKR operates an instant grocery delivery platform powered by local warehouse hubs, offering rapid, frictionless deliveries and a curated app experience. Launched eight months ago, the company now runs around 200 hubs in 15 cities including New York, Mexico City and Sao Paulo, with some hubs achieving operational profitability. Management says gross merchandise volume is growing roughly 15% week-over-week and that more than 50% of new customers come organically, though detailed financials were not disclosed. The product has been updated toward greater personalization and a broader grocery assortment including fresh produce, meat, dairy and packaged foods rather than only convenience items. JOKR plans to deploy capital to deepen neighborhood-level coverage (including potentially hundreds more hubs around Sao Paulo), expand into additional cities across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile, and grow further in the United States. The company will also invest in customer acquisition, marketing, data science, procurement and supply-chain technology, and aims to be carbon neutral within its processes by the end of next year. JOKR operates a fast grocery and retail delivery platform that promises 15-minute delivery and emphasizes sourcing and selling local products through its app. The company vertically integrates procurement and is building its own distribution warehouses to cut out middlemen. JOKR positions sustainability and local supply chains as core differentiators alongside instant delivery. Its team includes people who created foodpanda and Delivery Hero. The business launched operations across the U.S., Latin America and Europe three months ago and is live in nine cities across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Poland and Austria, and launched in New York last month. JOKR recently closed a large funding round to accelerate rapid geographic expansion and product buildout.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2023

Atmosfy is a short-form video app for discovering restaurants, nightlife, hotels and other local businesses. It aggregates authentic, in-the-moment user videos and lets people filter by hashtag, distance, cuisine, price and more to convey a location's atmosphere. Launched in 2021, the app has video content from more than 10,000 cities across over 150 countries and its team currently numbers 13 people. Founder Michael Ebel, a former Air Force captain and ex-Meta program manager, built Atmosfy to help local businesses attract traffic with authentic customer video. The company plans to invest in its technology and personalization features, expand its product categories and grow engineering, marketing and customer support headcount. Atmosfy intends to heavily invest in AI to improve personalization, curation and recommendations.