SUMMARY
- Billion Hearts raised $4M in seed funding led by Blume Ventures, General Catalyst, and Athera.
- The firm’s deep tech smartphone product targets global users, with the beta launch in upcoming months.
- Mayank Bidawatka, ex-Koo co-founder, builds on past ventures like redBus and Goodbox.
Billion Hearts Software Technologies, founded by Mayank Bidawatka, a former Koo co-founder, has raised about $4 million in a seed fundraising round headed by Blume Ventures.
Additionally, General Catalyst and Athera Venture Partners participated in the financing. Karthik Reddy, a partner at Blume Ventures, is leading the investment, which is also being led by Rutvik Doshi, a partner at Athera Venture Partners, and Neeraj Arora, a managing director at General Catalyst and former CBO of WhatsApp.
Mayank Bidawatka, Founder of Billion Hearts said, “I’m excited to announce that Billion Hearts is being backed by a set of folks I truly admire. I look forward to bringing happy products to users around the world with a commitment to building world-class products from India. While our product is still in stealth, I’d like to say that almost everyone with a smartphone will want this product, with no exception. Thousands of enthusiasts have already subscribed to our beta. We’ll soon announce something special for all those who sign up for early access.”
Blume Ventures partner Karthik Reddy stated, “Billion Hearts aims to create digital products for a global user base. The first product is slated for a beta launch in a few months. While the product is still in stealth, it deals with a wide use case that’s relevant for all smartphone users worldwide, across age groups. It will use deep tech to solve the problem. Mayank has built and scaled multiple large ventures successfully in the past and we’re excited to partner with him once again to see his vision for Billion Hearts come to life.”
“We back audacious entrepreneurs building global products with positive powerful impact. Mayank and the Billion Hearts team have insight and a distinctive approach toward building a solution that caters to a wide and unmet need of users globally. Mayank is a proven leader, who has built successful internet ventures in the past. He has a deep passion for creating global products from India. We’re excited to be by his side on this journey,” stated Neeraj Arora, Managing Director at General Catalyst.
Bidawatka founded Billion Hearts in August 2024. The company is now working on a digital consumer product that will be sold worldwide. The product, which is presently in stealth mode, claims to provide deep tech solutions for a smartphone use case. Thousands of individuals have already signed up for early access, and the beta launch is scheduled for the upcoming months.
Koo, which was created as a domestic substitute for Twitter (now X), shut down in July of this year following the failure of its acquisition negotiations with the media firm DailyHunt. Before Koo, Bidawatka was a co-founder of Media Ant in June 2012 and Goodbox in August 2015. Additionally, he was a member of the core founding team of redBus in 2007.
