Tech entrepreneurs and investors Amit Ranjan, Sharad Sharma and Sunil Kalra have teamed up with Googe India Managing Director Rajan Anandan to invest seed funding in MyPoolin, a mobile payments social network start-up.
Other angel investors like Jaspreet Bindra, Gautam Gandhi, Steve Sule and Gagan Dugal also participated in the deal.
The Gurgaon-based start-up helps consumers make plans and pool money together for events like movies, parties, group-gifting and trips using an app.
“Usually a user takes initiative of making plans for the group but gets stuck paying the bill and then badgering the rest to pay up,” said Ankit Singh, co-founder, MyPoolin. “Amongst the crowded payments ecosystem, we address a problem that hits close to home.” He declined to reveal the amount raised in this round.
An alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering, Singh founded the start-up in January along with IIT-Delhi graduate Rohit Taneja. Singh said their web application did transactions worth Rs 10 lakh in the first four months. MyPoolin which recently started its focus on Google’s Android platform will now expand to Apple’s mobile operating system iOS as well.
MyPoolin’s technology allows consumers to pay their share for an event using any mode of payment, making the whole process instantaneous. The organiser of a group then redeems the pooled money through a transfer to his or her bank account or through online retailers like Amazon, Jabong, PVR and MakeMyTrip.
Experts say that the mobile payments space is hotting up globally. Google is planning to launch new payment products including peer-to-peer service that allows users to send money to each other using smartphones. Mobile payment app Venmo owned by tech firm PayPal is already providing such service. Top investor Andreessen Horowitz has also backed Tilt, a firm that allows users to pool money securely and effectively online.
