Exclusive: Deepak Dhar’s Repute raises seed round led by Rocket Internet's VC fund

Raising seed capital for second-time entrepreneurs at just the idea stage has become an easy affair as some fundraises in the past couple of years show. Many such founders including Kunal Shah, Ashish Kashyap, Jitendra Gupta and Pankaj Chaddah went on to raise capital without working products.

NestAway’s co-founder now joins the list by scoring funding for his new firm Repute. The blockchain-based data and identity management platform has raised Rs 13 crore in its seed round led by Global Founders Capital or GFC, a VC fund of Rocket Internet. 

For the uninitiated, GFC consists of three funds: GFC and two Rocket Internet Capital Partners (RICP) funds.

RICP made an investment of Rs 5.63 crore followed by 3one4 Capital with Rs 3 crore. While GFC Global and Saison Capital infused Rs 1.4 crore each, AL Trust and serial entrepreneur Jitendra Gupta also joined the round with an investment of Rs 1 crore and Rs 50 lakh respectively.

The company has made an allotment of 1,840 seed CCPS to raise the amount, regulatory filings show.

The Bengaluru-based startup has a 15-people team led by Deepak Dhar, co-founder and former CXO of NestAway and Sandesh Chidanand, former COO of Chai Point. It plans to provide an app to employers for identity verification of employees digitally. Unlike traditional solutions, the yet to be launched application would verify identity inside the app without involving offline methods. 

The duo had left NestAway and Chai Point from their respective roles in June 2019 to work on Repute which was launched four months later in October.

According to Fintrackr’s estimates, Repute has been valued at around Rs 101 crore (post-money). After the investment, co-founders Dhar and Chidanand remain the largest stakeholders controlling 45.33% and 22.66% stake respectively in the company while the ESOP committee owns 17.43% stake.

Following the investment round, Rocket Internet has acquired a 5.58% stake and 3one4 Capital owns 2.98%. Saison and GFC hold 1.39% each. Gupta and AL Trust control 2.99% stake collectively. 

When Repute’s core app is launched, it would directly compete with Springrole.