Business briefs 3

Founded in 2019 by Mohit Malara, Passwork is a mobile-based real-time marketplace for using co-working spaces and workspaces that allows users to book a place to work from near their homes. "Today, we are present across over 500 accessible locations and more than 20,000 workstations, and with this influx of capital, we plan to foray into newer markets and expand the demand network into other countries," Mohit Malara, CEO and founder of Passwork, said.

Otipy, a social commerce venture of farm-to-fork agritech start-up Crofarm, on Monday said it has raised USD 1 million from Inflection Point Ventures. The company, which has already scaled 4X growth in the past three months, expects the fresh funding to further boost its momentum in Unlock Phase 3.0 as well, a statement said. Otipy has more than 1,000 partner resellers (mainly women), catering to over one lakh consumers. It offers a product catalogue of on-demand fruits and vegetables from the farm.

"Our business is showing very high consumer stickiness. We have built a strong community with our partner resellers (mostly women) and have empowered them by providing an alternate source of income especially in these times when other sources have dried up," Varun Khurana, co-founder and CEO of Otipy, said. Otipy will leverage these funds to augment the existing technology infrastructure, further expand the reseller base in Delhi/NCR and go deeper with its farmer relationships, the statement said. Previously operational in Delhi and Gurgaon, the platform has recently launched its services in Noida, Ghaziabad and Greater Noida.

* * * * Lido Learning launches Rs 100-cr scholarship fund * Edutech company Lido Learning has launched a 'Young Leaders Scholarship Fund' worth about Rs 100 crore that will be given out over the next two years. Lido Learning, which offers small group tutoring to students in grade 4-9 in Maths, Science, English and coding, has seen massive month-on-month growth during the pandemic.

"Thanks to Lido's billionaire investors like Ronnie Screwvala (Founder UTV, UpGrad) and Vikram Singhania (Managing Director of JK Tyres), we have been able to launch our Young Leaders Scholarship Fund to ensure that India's best students do not have any break in their learning and development," Sahil Sheth, Lido Learning's founder, said. The mission is to democratise high quality education and this fund is another way to achieve that aim, he added. The fund will give out scholarships of Rs 20,000 to deserving students from Grade 4-10, and selected students will become part of Lido's Young Leaders Program. Students will be selected based on performance, participation and teacher feedback.

* * * Passwork raises angel investment * Passwork, a Mumbai-based marketplace for co-working spaces, has an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Gaurav Gandhi and Vivek Bhargava. Founded in 2019 by Mohit Malara, Passwork is a mobile-based real-time marketplace for using co-working spaces and workspaces that allows users to book a place to work from near their homes.

"Today, we are present across over 500 accessible locations and more than 20,000 workstations, and with this influx of capital, we plan to foray into newer markets and expand the demand network into other countries," Mohit Malara, CEO and founder of Passwork, said. He further said, "With many co-working spaces facing poor occupancy, we leverage our network of co-working brands to deploy a fully functional office for clusters formed based on analysis of corporate's employee demographics. We provide COVID-19-safe and security enabled spaces near homes".