Clinical supplies marketplace PinkBlue.in has raised a sum of Rs 1.5 Crore in its seed round, on startup investment platform TermSheet.io. The funding round was led by Dubai-based lawyer Hari Krishna’s syndicate and saw participation from Cookifi Founder Ajay Modani, Dr V Ravinder, Anirudh Rastogi, Abhishek Jain, Rakesh Gakhar, Rajeev Mudumba, Nagendra Prasad Bhanuprakash and ShashiKant Singh among others.
Founded by IIM-Kozhikode graduates Valliappan Kumarappan and Varun Singh, PinkBlue works on streamlining the supply chain ecosystem and also aims to bring in analytics and automation inside hospitals. By building an e-commerce platform where manufacturers can actively participate, the startup aims to remove pricing inconsistencies and reduce layers in the supply chain.
The founders plan to use the funds to ramp up technology development and have added a larger core team to scale up faster. “We will be ramping up our operational capabilities further to ensure world-class customer experience, and pace up our customer acquisition through more focused sales and marketing,” said Co-Founder Valliappan Kumarappan.
The team aims to hit an annual realized revenue run rate of $ 4 million (Rs 26.8 Cr approximately) in the next 6-12 months and will be working on both geographic and segment expansion during this time.
“I like the fact that PinkBlue is not an esoteric “concept” startup,” said Hari Krishna, the lead investor. “They are bringing a well thought out and much needed solution to a real world problem.”
While the company’s focus so far has been on the dental clinic segment, it will now be extending to the small and mid-sized hospital segment.
“PinkBlue is the first player in the dental materials supply market to organize and bring transparency in pricing, efficiency on delivery and the convenience of online ordering of multiple brands on one market place. It helped us to improve our inventory management, cut down on expenses and reduce the time spent on ordering supplies,” said Dr Ravinder, an early customer of the company who has now invested in it.
The startup, which currently works with around 1500 customers, raised funds on deal discovery platform TermSheet.io that focuses on seed rounds.
“PinkBlue struck as a very interesting startup in a space that was crying for innovation. It’s one of those areas that founders and investors tend to avoid because of the perceived challenges associated with taking on entrenched players,” said Sonia Pradhan, COO of TermSheet.
Source: The Economic Times
Image Courtesy: Economic Times
