Equity management platform RuleZero raises $2.5M in funding led by The Treasury, YourNest, others

Bengaluru-based private equity management platform RuleZero today announced it has raised $2.5 million (approx Rs 18.5 crore) in its extended seed funding round to expand the team, enhance the product offering, and scale customer deployments.

The funding round was led by US-based fintech fund The Treasury, employees of Valiant Capital, YourNest Venture Capital, Blume Founders Fund, and a few angel investors.

The equity management platform had previously raised Rs 10 crore in its first tranche of a seed funding round in May 2021, led by Reddy Futures, Zerodha's Rainmatter Capital, IndusLaw, and Kris Gopalakrishnan (from Axilor Ventures). Following the current round, the startup's total seed round amount stands at around $3.7 million.

Founded in 2019 by industry experienced Satish Mugulavalli and Srinivas Katta, the founders witnessed the growing pains of private companies and entrepreneurs where mistakes in ownership data led to unnecessary risks and costs. 

To solve this problem, the founders launched RuleZero to empower ecosystem players --- from entrepreneurs to legal professionals, and investors. Rulezero, through its "hissa" platform, manages ownership data of the company, automates share issuance processes, ESOPs, and providing mechanisms to track and certify cap tables and manage transactions.

“We are onboarding early-stage startups and unicorns at a rapid pace and are pleased to welcome the new investors to the company," Srinivas Katta, one of the Founders of RuleZero said. "Indian companies have raised over $20B in the first eight months of 2021 with 24 startups reaching unicorns status. This is a historical high for startup investments in India. We are well-positioned to ride this growth wave with the help of our investors," he adds.

The startup in a statement said that the current pace of fundraising requires a digital platform to manage ownership and ownership data, build and review deal documents and manage transactions.

Additionally, RuleZero is partnering with other firms in the ecosystem to ensure that financing is efficient, compliant, quick and cost-effective. 

Eli Broverman, Co-founder of Betterment and The Treasury, said: “Srinivas and Satish are building RuleZero to accelerate the growth of India’s startups. They are reconceptualizing the private investment industry using technology. It is a mission of enormous importance and we are excited to back them on their journey.”

“The Indian private market for startups and SMEs is continuously growing, offering RuleZero a large market to serve," Sunil Goyal, Managing Director of YourNest Venture Capital, said.

"RuleZero, with its Hissa platform, will help organize and facilitate the growth of this ecosystem: a sign of a maturing ecosystem is greater transparency, which Hissa will certainly help provide. This will pave the path to create an ‘Exchange’ for private companies in India, thereby bringing in liquidity," he added.

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