Venture Catalysts makes its first Gujarat-centric investment; enables $250k seed funding into Don’t Scratch Your Head, a Saas-based start-up accelerated at GenNext Hub

Investment led by VCats Surat Managing Partner Gaurav Singhvi and Zaffiro Ventures

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Mumbai, July 6, 2016: Underlining its commitment to nurture entrepreneurship across the country, Venture Catalysts, India’s first seed investment & innovation platform, has announced a seed investment into Don’t Scratch Your Head (DSYH), a SaaS-based logistics reconciliation platform for e-commerce channels. Led by Gaurav Singhvi, Managing Partner – VCats Surat, and Mumbai-based Zaffiro Ventures, the $250k investment into DSYH closely follows on the heels of VCats’ physical expansion into Surat and marks its first Gujarat-centric investment.

Currently focusing on the e-commerce industry, Ahmedabad-based DSYH is a next-generation data analytics SaaS start-up disrupting the reconciliation space across multiple sectors. By allowing sellers associated with multiple marketplaces to reconcile accounts, payments, returned orders, promotional amounts through a single, consolidated window, DSYH has been addressing seller reconciliation, traditionally one of the biggest pain-points in the e-commerce seller ecosystem. Since the launch of its operations, DSYH has reconciled more than 500,000 orders with GMV of $7 Million through its platform, identifying between 5%-7% of GMV as avoidable reclaimable charges per user.

Speaking on the announcement, Dr.Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts, said, “We, at Venture Catalysts, have always been on the lookout for disruptive start-ups that are solving global problems through localised solutions. DSYH, with its innovative SaaS-based platform, has been developing a first-of-a-kind technology to identify and address the real-time logistics reconciliation challenges of Indian e-commerce sellers. Moreover, with an energetic, enthusiastic and experienced team at the helm of its operations, the venture is well poised to create a huge market impact with its product. We are confident that our investment will allow DSYH to evolve to the next stage of its growth as it looks to build better engagement systems for the entire e-commerce seller ecosystem.”

Having enabled over nine investments worth more than $1.5 million in promising start-ups such as vPhrase Analytics, Vahanalytics, Siftr and ConfirmTKT since the launch of its operations in 2015, VCats has already established its credentials as the fastest growing early-stage platform in the country. The company has several strategic partnerships with leading industry players such as Cox and Kings, HDFC, Plug and Play etc, giving its investee start-ups access to some of the biggest corporate companies in India and increasing their chances of success by enhancing business opportunities.

Suraj Vazirani, CEO, DSYH, said, “We are delighted to be chosen for investment by Venture Catalysts, which is one of the most innovative and fastest growing seed investment platforms in India. VCats has stayed true to its name by acting as a real catalyst for our early-stage growth and has been tremendously supportive in providing mentorship, quick evaluation and nimble decision-making. These funds will allow us to upgrade our technological infrastructure and customer support team to shore up our rapid business growth.”

The six member team at DSYH has strong domain expertise in the e-commerce and online marketplace space. As one of the earliest e-sellers in India, Co-founder & CEO Suraj Vazirani has been associated with the segment since the days of eBay – when Snapdeal was still a deals-based website – and is currently the President of the All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA). Hari Vaag, Co-founder & CTO, was a core team member at Travelguru.com, and has been the CTO with Maniacstore.com since 2012. Co-founder & COO Sumit Karanji, on the other hand, has been previously associated as a business management professional with Maruti Suzuki and Bajaj Allianz, and has also founded two start-ups in the automotive and healthcare sector respectively.

Gaurav Singhvi, Managing Partner, VCats Surat, also spoke about the investment into DSYH, saying, “DSYH is creating strong data analytics tools that can solve all the reconciliation woes of the Indian e-commerce seller. Since reconciliation can directly impact the profit margins of sellers on e-commerce platforms, providing such an innovative problem-solving solution will definitely add great value to the entire e-commerce ecosystem.”

Prior to securing investment from VCats, DSYH was being accelerated at Reliance Industries Limited’s       GenNext Hub and powered by Microsoft Accelerator India. Assisting startups to rapidly scale-up, GenNext aims to encourage promising ventures by helping them harness technology to drive their ideas and fuel their evolution from “Minimum Viable Product” to a Minimum Viable “Company” on a solid foundation of talent, technology and trust.

Currently looking to further its long-term vision of nurturing entrepreneurship in the country by establishing a physical presence in more cities across India, VCats is actively creating a robust network of investors, mentors and business partners to fuel the growth of the Indian start-up ecosystem.

The end-goal is to drive start-up growth through mentoring, investment enablement and auxiliary support in order toestablish India as the start-up capital of the world.

About VentureCatalysts (@vcatsIndia)

Venture Catalysts invests $100K – $250K in very early stage startups that has potential to create enduring value for over a long period of time.

In 6 months’ time, Venture Catalysts successfully added 9 companies to its kitty, andis looking to add more in coming months.Even though, we are open to all sectors, we prefer companies in IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Ad Tech, Virtual Reality, Education, E Commerce and Retail. The start-ups that we fund get most benefited from our mentoring, investor & industry network.

Venture Catalyst is a platform for founders. We provide the funding, space, community, and services you need to create a great company.

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