25 companies within Huddle Accelerator funded in 2021 – aims to double tally in 2022 with newer sectors in the horizon

The startup ecosystem within 2021 boomed with 42 unicorns emerging in 2021, over $14 billion invested in Indian startups in Q3 of 2021 with multiple early stage startups growing in emerging themes.

Huddle’s portfolios receive support across multiple business functions in order to provide early stage startups with financial, social and intellectual capital.

Here’s a list of Huddle accelerator ventures that went onto raising capital in 2021 across Seed and Series A funding:

Wellversed

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Aanan Khurma, Aditya Seth and Ripunjay Chachan

Head Office: Delhi

Sector: FMCG – Nutrition & Wellness

About: Intent focused full-stack nutrition brand for preventive healthcare.

Funding Status: Series A – notable investors – Jubilant Foodworks and Huddle

The New Shop

Founded In: 2019

Founders: Aastha Almast, Charak Almast and Mani Dev Gyawali

Head Office: New Delhi

Sector: Retail

About: Creating India’s largest brand of 24×7 convenience stores with omni-channel presence

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Anthill Ventures, Hustle Partners, Abhijeet Pai, Huddle

BoldCare

Founded In: 2019

Founders: Rajat Jadhav, Rahul Krishnan, Harsh Singh, Mohit Yadav

Head Office: Mumbai

Sector: Healthcare & Wellness

About: Digital Clinic for Men – D2C brand focused on men’s sexual wellness, haircare and health performance.

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – NB Ventures, Shiprocket, Huddle

Celcius

Founded In: 2020

Founders: Swarup Bose, Rajneesh Raman and Arbind Jain

Head Office: Mumbai

Sector: Logistics & Supply Chain Management

About: India’s largest online ‘Cold Chain’ logistics marketplace connecting shippers and reefer transporters

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Lumis Partners, Magehold Singapore, Keiretsu, Huddle 

Evenflow

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Pulkit Chhabra and Utsav Agarwal

Head Office: Mumbai

Sector: E-Commerce Aggregator

About: Acquiring and scaling internet first brands towards operational efficiency and higher return metrics.

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Village Global, Equanimity, 9Unicorns, Kunal Shah (CRED), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm)

EFeed

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Kumar Ranjan and Ravi Chauhan

Head Office: Pune

Sector: Agri-tech

About: Building India’s first full-stack, direct-to-farmer, animal-feed procurement platform

Funding Status: Seed  – notable investors – Better Capital, Huddle 

Astrek Innovations

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Jithin Vidya Ajith and Robin Kannathu Thomas

Head Office: Kerala

Sector: Health-Tech

About: Cutting edge exoskeleton and hardware to enable mobility and rehabilitation for those with lower limb disability

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – IAN Fund

Perfora

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Jatan Bawa and Tushar Khurana

Head Office: Gurugram, Haryana

Sector: D2C – Oral Care

About: New-age D2C first oral care brand

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Sauce VC, Bala Sarda (Vahdam), Huddle

Yobee

Founded In: 2019

Founders: Chella Ram and Salil Mathur

Head Office: Mumbai

Sector: Fin-tech

About: Trading Platform – simplifying trading and returns for everyone

Funding Status: Seed

ZFW

Founded In: 2017

Founders: Madhav Kasturia

Head Office: New Delhi

Sector: Retail-tech

About: Hyperlocal fulfilment platform for F&B and HORECA

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Expert Dojo, Arjun Vaidya 

Brainwired

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Sreeshankar Nair and Romeo Jerard

Head Office: Kerala

Sector: Agri-tech

About: Enhancing livestock health through their proprietary monitoring and tracking system

Funding Status: Seed+ – notable investors – Mumbai Angels, India Accelerator

Cell Propulsion

Founded In: 2016

Founders: Nakul Kukar, Paras Kaushal and Supratim Naskar

Head Office: Bengaluru

Sector: Electric Vehicle

About: Electric-mobility company revamping India’s commercial logistics ecosystem

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – growX ventures, Micelio EV Fund, Endiya Partners, Huddle

EFeed

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Kumar Ranjan and Ravi Chauhan

Head Office: Pune

Sector: Agri-tech

About: Building India’s first full-stack, direct-to-farmer, animal-feed procurement platform

Funding Status: Seed  – notable investors – Better Capital, Huddle 

Nirmalaya

Founded In: 2020

Founders: Bharat Bansal

Head Office: Jaipur

Sector: D2C

About: An organic fragrance brand

Funding Status: Seed

F5

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Raghav Arora, Lalit Aggarwal

Head Office: Delhi

Sector: Retail-Tech

About: One-stop omnichannel solution for daily workplace consumption.

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Auxano Ventures, Venture Catalysts, Mohit Satyanand,  Huddle

Gladful

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Parul Sharma and Manu Sharma

Head Office: Jaipur

Sector: FMCG

About: Simplifying children’s nutrition by building India’s premier parent-led D2C nutrition brand.

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Antler India, Huddle, Shiprocket, Encubay Angel Network

Jade Forest

Founded In: 2020

Founders: Punweet Singh and Shuchir Suri

Head Office: Gurugram

Sector: FMCG

About: Thoughtfully crafted non-alcoholic beverages and miers

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – Mumbai Angels

Rupyo

Founded In: 2021

Founders: Nikhila Sasry and Sameer Shashank

Head Office: New Delhi

Sector: Fin-tech

About: Early Wage Access Provider – making any day a pay-day

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Satin Creditcare

MyKare Health

Founded In: 2020

Founders: Senu Sam

Head Office: Kerala

Sector: Health-tech

About: Transforming healthcare experience through omni-channel optimisation 

Funding Status: Seed

RACEnergy

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Arun Sreyas Reddy and Gautham Maheswaran

Head Office: Hyderabad

Sector: Electric Vehicles

About: Building India’s largest battery swapping infrastructure, focused on 3W + 2W segment.

Funding Status: Pre-Series A – notable investors – growX ventures, Micelio EV fund, Prophetic Ventures, Huddle

StepSetGo

Founded In: 2018

Founders: Abhay Pai, Misaal Turakhia and Shivjeet Ghatge

Head Office: Mumbai

Sector: Apps, Fitness, Software & Wellness

About: India’s largest and fastest growing rewards driven fitness platform

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Beyond Seed (Singapore), Seeders, Dexter Angels and Huddle

NeuroPixel

Founded In: 2020

Founders: Amritendu Mukherjee and Arvind Venugopal Nair

Head Office: Bengaluru

Sector: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision & E-Commerce

About: Helping fashion retailers create high quality catalogue images using deep tech

Funding Status: Seed – notable investors – Entrepreneur First, IPV Ventures, Huddle

To name a few more reputed, growing and funded startups within Huddle’s portfolio are companies like Blue Tokai Coffee, GOAT Brand Labs, GripInvest, The Healthy Company, The Gaming Project, Qlan, Swageazy, HuddleUp.

The Indian startup landscape has seen several encouraging initiatives launched by early stage funds and accelerator programs to boost pre-seed and seed stage startups. Accelerator and early-stage initiatives from the likes of Y-Combinator foraying into Indian startups, Axilor, Antler, 100X VC, and funds like Artha, RPSG, Accel, have all launched programs to boost the early stage investment ecosystem. The support to early-stage ventures has exceeded beyond financial backing, with a large requirement of hands-on and on ground support to teams during days where they find a path towards predictable growth.

Similarly, Huddle’s portfolios receive support across multiple business functions in order to provide early stage startups with financial, social and intellectual capital. The Gurgaon headquartered accelerator with their fund remains bullish on its commitment to redefine the acceleration ecosystem in the country and will continue deploying the INR 50-crore fund announced earlier this year with at least 14 new startups across sunrise sectors during the first two quarters of 2022.

Speaking about the key highlights of the year, Huddle’s Founding Partner, Sanil Sachar, said, “The year 2021 showed extremely encouraging indicators in the early-stage ecosystem. In line with our aim of making India the largest startup economy in the world, we had one of the most momentous years as an accelerator and investor, having made 16 investments within 2021, and over 20 funded teams in a year with a few more investments in the pipeline before the year-end. We’re confident that the Indian ecosystem is going to continue building innovations that’ll lead most of the sectors, and to ensure this, to create the perfect grassroots ecosystem is our key aim by being actively involved in the acceleration and investment of our future businesses and leaders.”

Huddle has invested in several sectors, with an aim of backing ventures transforming traditional businesses or those creating new business models. From building teams across gaming, consumer internet, D2C, retail, SaaS for healthcare and HR, the accelerator has set their sights on newer industries too. These include building upon a circular economy thesis with a climate-tech focus, creating more D2C enablers within the consumer sector, a focus on metaverse across specific applications, SaaS products, AI/ML solutions and further doubling down on their mobility thesis.

Besides nurturing nascent ideas and creating future-ready businesses as an accelerator, Huddle has also been helming several co-acceleration and co-investment efforts across the country, helping startups benefit from the support of more than one startup enabler to transform industries for the better. Ishaan Khosla, Founding Partner at Huddle, added, “Building an inclusive ecosystem through co-acceleration will remain one of our top priorities for 2022. We plan to work towards it by providing startups with all the necessary support and capital to build businesses of the future. More initiatives like that of RocketFuelXHuddle or our EV accelerator earlier built alongside growX ventures are areas we’d like to initiate to bring the ecosystem even closer in building and backing ventures together from the early days. For 2022 we’re all set to continue our momentum and support.”