Mumbai: Two start-ups co-founded by SPJIMR alumni have successfully raised around Rs 450 million in funding, strengthening the Institute’s support and efforts for promoting entrepreneurship among alumni and participants of its various management programmes. These start-ups are TYGR, a game-changing transport and logistics app platform, and Bezahlt, an invoice financing venture in Europe.
The institute said in a statement that TYGR, a game-changing transport and logistics app platform co-founded by SPJIMR alumnus Dipanjan Purkayastha has received pre-series, a funding of US $3 million (around INR 200 million). The funding was announced in December 2016, in which came from lead investor, Franchise India, Asia’s largest franchise, is the lead investor while a retail solution provider, and a group of fellow investors.
Dipanjan Purkayastha is an International Business major from the SPJIMR Class of 2002.
In another transaction, Bezahlt, an invoice financing venture in Europe co-founded by SPJIMR alumnus Naveen Prasad, has raised 3.5 million EUR (around INR 250 million) seed round mix of equity and debt. The fund was raised from multiple investors such as Point Nine Capital, Fly.vc, German start-up group, La Famiglia, Michael Brehm, Heiko Hubertz, Raffael Johnen (CEO Auxmoney) and Marcus Börner (CEO Optiopay).
Naveen Prasad is SPJIMR alumnus from the Global Management Programme (GMP) Class of 2011.
The successful funding of the two ventures came soon after SPJIMR announced that Appknox, a mobile security company co-founded by alumnus Prateek Panda, raised Singapore dollars 875,000 (INR 43.5 million) in its first major venture capital funding led by SeedPlus Singapore Pte Ltd.
The announcements capped a year in which SPJIMR launched a new platform to support entrepreneurs.
In an effort to promote enterprising skills among students, in 2016, SPJIMR launched a start-up incubation centre. The primary aim of this centre is nurturing, mentoring and advising fledgling ventures while it provides help and support to turn a range of ideas into viable business offerings.
Also in 2016, two of SPJIMR’s long-running entrepreneurship programmes, Grow Your Business (GYB) and Start Your Business (SYB), got together to bring on campus the largest collection of entrepreneurs ever for an alumni meet exclusively for the GYB and SYB alumni.
SPJIMR Dean Dr. Ranjan Banerjee said, “As an Institute that encourages entrepreneurship, we are always delighted to have our alumni and students move from being job seekers to job creators.”
“To see members of the SPJIMR family do this repeatedly and successfully not merely in India but on a global scale is a tribute to the ability of our participants and alumni. They have worked in diverse markets and built on the many opportunities now opening up in a business environment that is changing and evolving at a dramatic pace,” added Dr. Banerjee.
