Twitter co-founder Biz Stone invests in Lookup

Mumbai: Bengaluru-based chat messaging start-up Hatchery Software Pvt. Ltd, which operates as Lookup.to, said on Wednesday that it has raised funding from Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone. The amount was not disclosed. “Today, I am overwhelmed and thrilled to welcome Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, as one of our Series A investors and advisors,” Deepak Ravindran, founder of Lookup, said in a company blog.

“Excited to join @deepakravindran in his next act, @lookup_ Such an amazing person and inspiring entrepreneur,” Stone tweeted on his official twitter handle @biz.

The firm, which was founded in November last year, is looking to close its first round (Series A) of funding. It raised $382,000 in seed funds in January. Its investors include Infosys Ltd’s Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Lookup is a message-based search engine that allows users to chat with local businesses and shops by providing details on availability of a product or any information, service or support. After a user sends in a query through a text in the app, the company calls up the merchant concerned and claims to answer the query in five minutes.

“We plan to integrate all the offline businesses into the online world and connect them to their customers,” said Ravindran, who has earlier founded three firms, Innoz Technologies being one of them. The firm works with over 10,000 verified merchants, it has over 200,000 users and has over three million messages exchanged per month.

“The model seems quite sustainable considering that more and more people are active on apps on their mobile. India is emerging as one of the mobile first country and any solutions which eases the life of people is quite scaleable,” said Anil Joshi, managing partner with Unicorn India Ventures.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.