Exclusive: Surge, Chiratae lead seed round in Rajat Gupta and Ashwin Swaminathan’s startup

Former vice president at Mobile Premier League Rajat Gupta and former investment professional at Chiratae Ashwin Swaminathan have turned entrepreneurs with their new venture: Alpha Digital Health Pvt Ltd. They are all set to launch a healthcare platform focused on men and women’s sexual and grooming problems, said two people aware of their plan.

While the company registered in August in a stealth mode and yet to disclose its brand name, it already raised Rs 23 crore in a seed round, shows regulatory filings.

Surge Ventures and Chiratae Ventures have co-led the round with an infusion of Rs 10.13 crore each, followed by Rick Gerson and Navroz D. Udwadia of Falcon Edge who are investing Rs 26 lakh each. Snapdeal’s co-founder Kunal Bahl and Rohit Kumar Bansal have collectively poured in Rs 21.4 lakh. Other angel investors also infused Rs 1.54 crore. 

Better Capital has invested Rs 70.4 lakhs while Lenskart CEO Peyush Bansal has picked up shares worth around Rs 5 lakhs in his personal capacity. Times Internet’s COO Puneet Gupt and MPL’s Sai Srinivas have also invested in it. 

As per the object clause filed by the newly formed entity it will “engage in the business of designing and developing software for the healthcare industry, establish and run telemedicine website/app platform.”

Entrackr’s queries sent to Gupta and Chiratae last week didn’t elicit any response. We will update the story in case they respond.

Post allotment, Alpha Digital’s co-founders Swaminathan and Gupta command a collective stake of 62.74% (31.37.01% each), whereas both Surge Ventures and Chiratae have acquired 11.98% stake each. While the company’s ESOP pool constitutes 10% stake, the remaining stake is owned by other investors including Bahl, Bansal and Better capital. 

As per Fintrackr’s calculations, the company has been valued at around Rs 85 crore (post-money). It’s worth noting that Alpha Digital Health is yet to be a part of the Surge cohort. Sources assert that the company would be likely to be a part of Surge next cohort. The fresh cohort will be announced by the end of November. 

Gupta joins the list of over 50 second-term entrepreneurs to raise funding in 2020. Some of the notable names include Lalit Mangal (Airmeet), Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter), Amit Lakhotia (Park+), Deepak Dhar (Repute), Nitin Gupta (Uni), Adarsh Kumar and Ryupesh Mishra (Pagarbook).