The India and US-based video conferencing platform Huddle01 has raised $2.8 million in a seed funding round from blockchain investment firm Hivemind. Other investors such as Temasek’s Web3 arm Superscrypt, M31 Capital, Protocol Labs, East Ventures, Longhash Ventures, Good News Ventures, and some angel investors also participated in the round. The startup was founded in 2020 by Ayush Ranjan and Susmit Lavania and claims to leverage blockchain technology to enable real-time communication. Huddle01 plans to use the funds to grow its ecosystem to support dApps and launch its network of nodes to facilitate communication. It will also roll out grant programs to empower developers to build apps on Huddle01’s infrastructure. So far, Huddle01 has raised $4.5 million in funding across multiple rounds from 19 investors. The startup claims to have clocked in more than 1 million minutes of meetings and to have over 100 projects built on top of its infrastructure (developer SDKs).
It seems like the blockchain and Web3 space is experiencing some funding activity recently. Polytrade raised $3.8 Mn in March 2023, while Glip raised $2.5 Mn in November 2022. Additionally, Yudiz Solutions, a blockchain, AI, and game development company, filed for an IPO on the NSE Emerge in March 2023. ‘Indian Tech Startup Funding Report, Q1 2023’, seed stage funding in Indian tech startups has decreased by 81% year-on-year in the quarter ended March 31, 2023, compared to the same quarter in the previous year. This indicates that there is a decline in the overall funding environment for startups in India.