Aisle.co, a Bangalore-based matchmaking startup, is announcing closure of a $180K Pre-Series A round from ah! Ventures and TermSheet.io. The round was led by Anand Vijay, a Bay Area-based angel investor on TermSheet.io.
Along with them, other angel investors, including Snapdeal’s Anand Chandrasekaran, ex-Flipkartian Mekin Maheshwari, Akshay Syal, Richard Kim, Jana Pokkalla and Manish Gautam.
The newly infused capital will be utilized by the company to hire new talent in order to build its team and to build effective partnerships.
Commenting on this financing round, Sonia Pradhan, TermSheet.io’s COO said,
TermSheet.io focusses on identifying interesting startups that attract the attention of product-focussed angels and firms looking for outliers. Aisle.co checks on all of these boxes. We love what Aisle is building. And that is why this is the second time we have facilitated a round for Aisle on our platform. We believe in introducing interesting investors to high-calibre founders like Able and both Mekin Maheshwari and Anand Chandrasekaran fit this profile.
Founded by Able Joseph, Bivin Benny and Razee Marikar in 2014, Aisle.co claims to offer a differentiated experience to its niche audience of handpicked urban, independent Indians. The company is already claiming 500 to 800 registrations per day, 50+ countries activated, over 25% of the registered base ‘connected’, and has successfully led to crafting hundreds of relationships.
Right from the point of registration on the site, the company maintains high levels of screening and filtering of its audience to maintain top notch quality of its offering. As a result, it has been gaining strong traction and following over the course of the last 2 years.
The company also claims that it is the only matchmaking brand that highly focuses on and takes into consideration the distinct needs of its Indian consumers and their cultural environment.
Able Joseph, founder and CEO of the company, said,
A balanced gender ratio coupled with a trustworthy brand which has gathered a comprehensive list of users who are of similar mind-sets when it comes to attractiveness and compatibility is exactly what urban India needs in the matchmaking space. Not everyone has got the formula right, and I feel we have managed to add most value in the online dating space for Indians.
Giving an investor’s’ perspective, Harshad Lahoti, Founder and CEO of ah! Ventures, said,
Online dating has seen very little innovation in the past couple of decades. Rarely do we see a dating app that is monetized from day one. When Aisle reached out to us, we instantly realized the potential in the product, the execution and the traction that it had gained. We’re excited to join Aisle in its journey of helping more of the 37 million single Indians from around the world, in successfully finding their partners. ah! Ventures is thrilled to be a part of Aisle’s next growth phase.
