Pulse, a social networking mobile application which aims to connect students based on mutual interests, has raised $500,000 in its pre-Series A round of funding from SAIF Partners.
With the new cash infuhir, it is now planning to add more people to its team, especially developers. The company is also planning to expand operation to Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, and Manipal among others.
The application was launched in October this year, and claims to have acquired over 12,000 users, most of whom are from Delhi. It targets people above 14 years of age using a primarily visual format for communication -photographs, videos and stickers.
Prakhar Khanduja, co-founder of Pulse, said,
Text doesn’t play a huge role, except through the customised stickers we have. We have this double-shot feature where you can take a picture from your front camera and your back camera. For instance, on a friend’s birthday , you can take a picture of the friend cutting his birthday cake and your expression at the time.
Users can create an account on Pulse by linking the Android app to their Facebook. They will have the option of keeping a post private to show it only to their “friends”, posting to a particular university group or locality, or making a post or video stream public across channels.
Previously, the startup had raised $200,000 in seed funding round a few months back from a group of Indian investors – including Rajan Anandan, Rajesh Sawhney, Anupam Mittal, Uday Shankar, Anand Chandrasekaran, and Amit Ranjan.
Currently, it is present in 60 colleges in Delhi and a few other communities – including one in Bangalore. The startup is planning to expand to at least 300 more universities in the following one-and-a-half months.
