Gurgaon based Instant Messaging App Yup! has raised a $500K seed funding round led by Arun Khanna, chairman of Olive Telecom, and Harsh Khanna, test lead at HTC, VC Circle reported.
Yup!, which competes another popular India-developed IM app Hike, was launched in June in this year. According to app founders, Yup! has already witnessed over 2 Lakh downloads since its launch. The app is currently available on Android Platform only, but the company plans to launch its iOS iteration soon.
Talking to VC Circle, Tushar Malhotra, co-founder of Yup! said,
The funding is being used to turn Yup! into a go-to destination to access all kinds of information that are of human interest, with a single click
What differentiates Yup! from other IM apps is its one-click interface. Yup! acts almost like an online pager machine, wherein all you require is a single click, to send your message across to other app users. The app houses some in-built templates which consist of important messages one may require to send urgently. It also contains several other features like opinion polls etc.
Those pre-defined messages are further designated into different categories. Yup! consists of categories like video, news, love & romance, shopping & deals, emergency contacts, horoscope, weather, etc. Founders claim that the app has been designed to work in low-Internet bandwidth and they are primarily focussed towards the first-time internet user.
Yup!’s obvious first competitor will be Hike, which is backed by Bhart-Softbank, a Joint Venture between Japan-based conglomerate SoftBank and Indian Telecom giant Airtel. Hike recently secured a $65 Million investment round led by Tiger Global.
Yup! is now targeting to raise $10 Million in a Series A round of funding. VC Circle reports that the firm has already appointed US-based accounting and advisory firm Grant Thornton to run the funding reserach. With its recent seed-funds, Yup! is aiming to release the app in 3 regional languages including Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil.
