Kalaari Capital’s Kstart Infuses $650K In Fintech Startup Perpule

Fintech platform Perpule has raised $650K in a Seed round led by Kstart Capital, a Seed fund and sister concern of Kalaari Capital. Investors Venture Highway and Raghunndan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure also participated in the round.

The company plans to deploy freshly infused funds to expand the current team, scale the product to more cities and retailers and to boost marketing efforts on consumer side.

Commenting on the investment, Samir Sood, founder, Venture Highway said, “The problem of queues has been present for a long time now and shoppers will welcome a solution that is scalable across sectors and segments. Perpule’s team seems to be on the right path and I can foresee their model adding value to its clients right from the start. There is enormous potential for their solution as more and more retailers are converting to the organised segment. The data generated by the system provides a great opportunity for analytics by deriving metrics which were unimaginable till now.”

Founded by Abhinav Pathak, Saketh BSV, and Yogesh Ghaturle in September 2016, Perpule is a self- checkout, queue management, omnichannel engagement and payments platform for offline retail stores. NIT Karnataka graduate Abhinav Pathak and IIT Madras alumnus Saketh BSV worked at Goldman Sachs prior to starting up. Whereas Yogesh Ghaturle is a final year graduate student at NIT Karnataka.

Available for users as a mobile application named Perpule Pay1, it enables shoppers to scan items they want to purchase and prepare their shopping cart. Users can then make the payment through the app itself and avoid long lines at the checkout counters. Furthermore, the app also provides users with information like ongoing offers, product  recommendations etc.

The founders started from a single retail outlet – HyperCITY in Delhi. The trio has extended the company’s services to three more cities – Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Noida.

“Our vision is to ensure that waiting in queues (in supermarkets) is a thing of the past. With improved systems, we are saving the customer’s time and thus improving the overall experience. We have started by enabling self- checkouts via our mobile app at various retail stores such as HyperCITY,” said Abhinav Pathak, CEO, Perpule.

Earlier in October 2016, Perpule was also a part of the BC-GSV Accelerator Summer 2016 Programme. In March 2017, Bengaluru-based omnichannel engagement and commerce platform Capillary Technologies had acquired a minority stake in the customer management startup, Exclusife.