Led · Equity · Nov 2024

AvanStrate Inc. is a manufacturer of advanced display glass and related high‑performance glass products with R&D and operations across Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The company is accelerating development of next‑generation glass for advanced packaging and potential applications in semiconductors, biotechnology and automotive displays. Vedanta Limited plans to invest close to $500 million to expand R&D, scale up manufacturing capabilities and broaden product offerings. AvanStrate is exploring collaborative partnerships to speed technological development and market reach. The company recently launched the Super Green SaiSei high recycle rate display glass product and is positioning itself around sustainability and ESG priorities. Vedanta secured a 98% stake in AvanStrate earlier this year and now fully manages the business.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2019

Digi-Prex is a seven-month-old Indian startup that operates a WhatsApp-based subscription pharmacy in Hyderabad serving patients with chronic diseases. Patients share prescriptions via WhatsApp and Digi-Prex delivers medications on a recurring cycle while tracking refills and checking patient improvements. The company has amassed thousands of customers in Hyderabad and works with physicians, pharmacies, and medicine distributors to secure lower-cost supplies and share margins with partners. Digi-Prex undercuts over-the-counter pricing to offer discounted medicines and emphasizes partnerships to reach patients in distant neighborhoods. The startup raised $5.5M in a seed round from prominent investors and will use the capital to expand and enhance services. Planned uses include expanding to 10 Indian cities and providing patients with access to better physicians and more information about their diseases.

Led · Seed · Jan 2017

Loan Frame Technologies is a small-business lending marketplace connecting SMBs with a range of loan products. The company leverages machine learning to assess borrowers and match them with appropriate products against property. Its offerings include unsecured and secured loans, working capital, equipment financing, cash and non-cash loans, and e-commerce merchant loans. Loan Frame was co-founded in 2015 by Shailesh Jacob, Rishi Arya, and Akshun Gulati and is based in Gurgaon, India. It raised $2.25m in seed funding and intends to use the proceeds for platform development and hiring new staff.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2014

Citelighter offers student writing tools and a premium teacher/administrator service that enables assignment, monitoring and improvement of student work. The platform is available as free student tools or a paid premium service for teachers and administrators. Students in nearly 3,800 schools across more than 50 countries use Citelighter. Led by CEO Saad Alam, the company plans to use new funding to enhance the product, expand into additional schools, and grow headcount from 40 to 60 employees. The company is Baltimore, MD–based and targets K-12 education customers. The article reports a $2M Series Seed-2 raise to support these initiatives. Citelighter launched in fall 2011 as a platform and browser extension to help students manage online research, bibliographical data and citations. It built a learning database and tools that let students find relevant materials, automatically cite sources and collaborate via integrations with Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Observing classroom use, the company broadened its focus from a highlighting tool to an "all-purpose writing platform" that captures students' workflows. Citelighter is developing "Cognitive Prints," visualization tools that map each student's step-by-step writing process and produce color-coded, sequential logs teachers can use to analyze work habits. The founders intend the platform to help teachers improve writing proficiency by giving them detailed visibility into students' research and organization. Financially, the company has raised $1.5M from a mix of venture firms and angel investors to fund this product pivot. Citelighter, founded in fall 2011 and led by CEO Saad Alam, offers a browser-based research tool and extensions that let students capture facts, organize projects, export in-text citations, and generate bibliographies. The company launched a paid “Pro” tier that provides access to millions of credible academic articles from over 6,500 sources for $10 per month via a partnership with Cengage (starting with Questia). Pro surfaces premium content in curated "Knowledge Cards" assembled by a vetted team of 125 student "Knowledge Experts" and recommends material based on users’ research patterns. Citelighter has added Chrome and Safari plug-ins on top of an existing Firefox extension and plans to add PDF capture (to pull from Ebsco, JSTOR, and other databases) and social features around Knowledge Cards. The company is positioning itself as an Evernote-like capture tool tailored for students, differentiating from Zotero and Mendeley by focusing on quick, low-friction citation workflows. To support product expansion and Pro, Citelighter is raising a $750K seed round, with participation from media executives and entrepreneurs.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2011

Channelinsight (formerly InfoNow) provides a suite of channel sales management products designed to increase sales, optimize inventory, maximize returns on discounts and incentives, and ensure compliance. Its software is available through Salesforce CRM, as a standalone product, and via systems integrators including Accenture, PWC and KPMG. The company serves customers across the financial services, industrial and technology sectors, with named customers including Lexmark, AMD, Siemens and Polycom. Led by CEO Mark Geene and based in Denver, CO, Channelinsight plans to use new funding to accelerate product development and expand its sales and marketing organization. Financially, the company has raised a total of $21M to date following this recent round.