Instagram co-founder, other Big Tech execs invest in Indian matchmaking platform Betterhalf

Homegrown matrimony app Betterhalf (earlier known a Betterhalf.ai) has raised $8.5 million in a Series A round led by FinSight Ventures (which had earlier invested in dating app Bumble), Instagram Co-founder Mike Krieger, Dropbox Co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, and other marquee investors. 

Other funds and angels participating in the round included Rebel Fund, Nurture Ventures, Leonis Investissement, Derek Callow (ex-CMO of Bumble) Scott Belsky (Founder of Behance), Brendan O'Driscoll (ex-Product Head of Spotify), Manik Gupta (ex-CPO of Uber), Punit Soni (ex-CPO of Flipkart), and Ravish Naresh (Co-founder & CEO of Khatabook). 

Founded in 2017, Betterhalf has built a full-stack, tech-enabled wedding services platform that has facilitated over 2 lakh connections and 10,000+ marriages. The AI-led matchmaking platform primarily targets urban users in Tier 1 cities. It claims to have grown its revenues 2x in six months, and has hit $2.5 million in annualized revenue rate. “The growth is further fuelled by a ~3x surge in the overall number of users in nine months. Betterhalf has achieved more than 1 million users monthly active,” it stated.

Commenting on the latest funding, Pawan Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Betterhalf said, “It is through our continued growth momentum across our offering that Betterhalf’s achieved its impressive growth in the market. Our razor focus in becoming the super app of matrimony and full stack tech-enabled wedding services will drive our next set of growth.”

“With positive cash flow and a super entrepreneurial-styled team, we are poised to give an incredible super app experience,” he added.

Prior to this, in May 2021, Betterhalf had raised $3 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Y Combinator, S2 Capital, Quiet Capital, and angel investors like Kunal Shah (CRED Founder). The company claims to have grown through COVID-19, which “produced higher engagement on our app, with an average session time of more than 10 minutes per user per day,” according to its website. 

Alexey Garyunov, General Partner at FinSight Ventures, said, “Betterhalf knows how to leverage technology to its ability in breaking the large problem, and build robust solutions for scale. The LTV [life-time value] of Betterhalf is extremely high, something that we have not seen in the Western world in this space.”

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