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E-commerce marketplaces continue to grow as a result of various factors, such as convenience, extensive product selection, competitive pricing, and improved logistics and delivery services.

 

There are over 150 marketplaces and over 2.4M sellers investing more in their online presence and adapting their strategies to cater to the growing e-commerce market.

 

With significantly different processes and guidelines at e-commerce marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, and others), sellers and brands spend a lot of time in competitive research, monitoring, optimization of their listings, and learning platform-specific marketing tactics. This is inefficient and time-consuming for sellers, impacting their ROl on marketing budgets allocated to e-commerce channels.

 

We at z21 Ventures are pleased to announce our investment in Optiwise, an Al-driven eCommerce channel optimization platform revolutionizing the way brands and sellers enhance their online visibility, traffic, and conversions. Their innovative solution utilizes Generative Al to automate the optimization of listing content, price, and ad campaigns, making the process 100 times faster and doubling the revenue for the same marketing budget. They have over 250 brands and sellers using their platform and monitor over a million products daily, tracking at $1M in ARR. They recently launched two new features that have gained significant traction – 1) Chat GPT for eCommerce: for Walmart sellers to optimize their time by 100X and 2) Rich Media for Walmart so customers can leverage Amazon A+ content and create even more powerful content. Given their market traction and continued innovation, Optiwise is looking to cover the top 5 marketplaces in the US. Optiwise boasts an impressive customer acquisition cost, at only 33% of the first year’s subscription and less than 10% customer churn.

 

The financial services industry has been growing steadily in India with the rapid adoption of smartphones, the Internet, and UPI transfers (Real-time P2P money transfers) doubling every year, but there is still a large section of the population that remains underserved. According to a recent report by the World Bank, over 190 million people in India still do not have access to basic financial services. 

 

 

z21 Ventures is pleased to announce our investment in Money Club. The platform facilitates group savings by bringing together people with similar financial goals and backgrounds. This engine gamifies every user’s journey from small saving groups to big saving groups based on their transaction history on the platform. By analyzing the user’s transaction history and financial behavior, the platform can offer personalized & flexible recommendations for saving, borrowing, and investing.

 

 

In rural and semi-urban areas of India, approximately 400 million people lack access to funds during times of crisis and struggle to find secure platforms to save money with favorable interest rates. Money Club offers a solution to this challenge. It enables individuals to access funds during emergencies and provides a safe and secure option for saving money. With Money Club, individuals in these underserved areas can overcome financial limitations and improve their financial stability.

 

 

We are excited to partner with a platform that is making a tangible difference in the lives of millions of people in India by providing financial services that are accessible, affordable, and inclusive. Our investment in Money Club aligns with our vision of supporting innovative startups that are driving positive social impact, and we look forward to working closely with the Money Club team to help them achieve these goals

 

The Construction Industry contributes to 12% of the World’s GDP and employs about 7% of the Global workforce. And yet, it consistently ranks 2nd lowest in technology adoption, behind only Agriculture. VC Funding for Construction Technology constitutes <1% of Global VC funding. However, the landscape is rapidly evolving and VC Funding in this sector rose by 70x in the last decade.

 

Fundamentally, the industry requires a high level of organization and coordination to ensure that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the desired quality. Several startups and large companies have products to cater to this need for project planning and management such as Procore, Oracle, and Microsoft. However, the approach is to capture major activities using a Gantt chart-based project plan which has inherent limitations to capture the dynamic environment of a construction site. There are hundreds of action items within a major activity which are often not independent in terms of resource usage. The inability to track and allocate resources on a dynamic basis can often lead to significant delays.

 

We at z21 Ventures are pleased to announce our investment in livSYT, a cloud-based SaaS product that provides a scalable solution to this problem. They deliver AI-driven construction site operations management right from the overall project level down to the on-site micro-activity level. In addition, they provide real-time execution, monitoring, control, and optimization of resources to boost on-site productivity. With significant traction in India over the past year over several highway, metro, and building projects, livSYT plans to scale the product in the rest of the world.

 

z21 Ventures, an early stage venture fund with a vision to democratize early stage funding, is delighted to announce the launch of z21 Ventures Fund, their inaugural $5M early-stage venture capital fund, to invest in early-stage companies that are looking to drive growth by leveraging technology and talent in India.

 

The Indian startup scene is set to explode over the next decade. The country with an abundant pool of world class technology talent also has access to one of the most diverse and fast growing home markets. There is also a very strong India-US technology corridor with strong exchanges in technology, people and expertise. This has created a goldilocks moment in India’s startup ecosystem. z21 Ventures Fund will aim to focus and provide value to both the startups and investors.

 

z21 Ventures Fund aims to create a large pool of seed funded technology startups who are ready to disrupt various sectors across the world. The goal would be to identify early-stage technology companies and invest in them and then support them in their growth with help of a community of investors who are subject matter experts in different technology and business domains.

 

The z21 Ventures Fund strives to build a community of subject matter experts who are not only willing to invest as limited partners in the fund, but are also excited to participate in selecting, supporting and guiding the early-stage companies. These subject matter experts can really guide the early-stage startups that are just beginning to fine-tune their GTM, product strategy and product market fit etc. z21 Ventures Fund lowers the barrier to entry for subject matter experts to invest in and guide multiple early-stage technology companies by keeping a lower investment amount and providing access to a diverse set of early stage startups when compared with other peer venture funds and angel networks.

 

The Team Behind z21 Ventures

z21 Ventures was founded by Abhinav Shashank and Raj Singh. Abhinav is CEO and Co-founder of Innovaccer, a healthcare technology company. Innovaccer is one of the largest SaaS companies coming out of India and was valued more than $3B in 2021. Raj is the COO and Co-Founder at Hyperspec AI, a deep tech company developing technology for autonomous driving. Raj was one of the founding executives and head of product at Innovaccer between 2017-2022.

 

“We were very fortunate to have advisors and subject matter experts who guided us in our journey at Innovaccer as a health cloud leader; however, I saw many startups in India struggle due to the lack of access to subject matter experts who could contribute to their global growth.”, said Raj Singh, General Partner at z21 Ventures. “We are really proud to welcome many subject matter experts in different technology and business domains as limited partners who are excited about supporting and guiding the early-stage companies.”

 

“As a limited partner, I appreciate the focus of the z21investment hypothesis and the participation of a number of limited partners who are interested in helping support z21’s investments, not just passively participating in early stage businesses.”, said Evan Grossman, Chief Product Officer at CODAMETRIX.”I am really excited about engaging with the vibrant Z21 community and supporting the growth of many early-stage companies z21 Ventures invests in.”

 

z21 Investments
z21 Venture fund I has invested in TrueFoundry, HEN Nozzles, Inito and Explorex so far and going through due diligence of many early stage companies.

 

“z21 ventures not just invested in HEN but they have also provided some invaluable advice and feedback as part of their due diligence process. They have assembled a very talented and well balanced team with expertise in technology, business and manufacturing”, said Sunny Sethi, Founder and CEO of HEN Nozzles. “For us they are not just investors but an extended team with subject matter experts that can help propel us to the next stage. We are excited to partner with them and start making a difference”

 

“z21 Ventures is founded by entrepreneurs who not only understand the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey but they also help you along the journey as partners in the truest sense”, said Mainak Sarkar, Co-founder & CEO of Explorex. “We really value the continuous guidance and support from the z21 team to help us in our growth journey. I truly believe that other entrepreneurs can also expect this level of support from z21 Ventures.”

 

About z21 Ventures
z21 Ventures is a community driven venture fund for early-stage companies that are looking to drive growth by leveraging technology and talent in India.The z21 Ventures Fund aims to build a community of subject matter experts who are not only willing to invest as limited partners in the fund, but are also excited to participate in selecting, supporting and guiding the early-stage companies. For more information, please visit https://z21.ventures/

 

Media Contact:
Raj Singh – raj@z21.ventures

 

Education remains a key pillar for our society’s progress and EdTech startups from India are playing a pivotal role through their innovation to expand the outreach of education anywhere to everywhere. The EdTech sector has been positively impacted by the exponential growth of internet penetration in India and through the Government’s initiatives to accelerate e-learning through digital platforms, the Indian EdTech sector will continue to grow manifold. 

 

Whilst we have seen significant growth in the Indian EdTech industry in academic sectors through game-based learning, upskilling, online courses, etc., at z21 Ventures we have been looking to partner with an EdTech company which are working towards bringing innovative products in non-academic sectors and complement the traditional school model to support the Government initiative in building 21st-century skills for all students. 

 

We at z21 Ventures are pleased to announce our investment in KidEx, an EdTech innovator who has developed an exciting product to enable schools and parents to address these gaps in non-academic sectors and are helping build the future of Indian talent by a) enabling holistic development of every child and b) implementation of New Education Policy approved in 2020 (NEP2020) across K12 schools.