[Funding alert] Equity management platform Rulezero closes seed round at $2.5M

Bengaluru-based RuleZero, a private equity management platform, has completed the raise of its seed round of $2.5 million. The extended round saw participation from US fintech fund The Treasury, employees of Valiant Capital, domestic early-stage funds – YourNest Venture Capital, Blume Founders Fund, and a few angel investors.

Founded in 2019 by Satish Mugulavalli and Srinivas Katta, Rulezero has developed the ‘hissa’ platform. The platform manages ownership data of the company, automates share issuance processes and ESOPs, provides mechanisms to track and certify cap tables and manage transactions.

Srinivas Katta, one of the Founders of RuleZero said,

“We are onboarding early-stage startups and unicorns at a rapid pace and are pleased to welcome the new investors to the company. Indian companies have raised over $20B in the first eight months of 2021 with 24 startups reaching unicorns status. This is a historical high for startup investments in India. We are well-positioned to ride this growth wave with the help of our investors.”

The current pace of fundraising requires a digital platform to manage ownership and ownership data, build and review deal documents and manage transactions. RuleZero is also partnering with other participants in the ecosystem to ensure that financing is efficient, compliant, quick, and cost-effective. The fresh funds will be used to expand the team, enhance the product offering and scale customer deployments.

Eli Broverman, Co-founder of Betterment and The Treasury, said,

“Srinivas and Satish are building RuleZero to accelerate the growth of India’s startups. They are reconceptualising the private investment industry using technology. It is a mission of enormous importance, and we are excited to back them on their journey.”

“The Indian private market for startups and SMEs is continuously growing, offering RuleZero a large market to serve. RuleZero, with its Hissa platform, will help organise and facilitate the growth of this ecosystem: a sign of a maturing ecosystem is greater transparency, which Hissa will certainly help provide. This will pave the path to create an ‘Exchange’ for private companies in India, thereby bringing in liquidity,” added Sunil Goyal, Managing Director of YourNest Venture Capital.