Latest News | Timothy Draper Invests in Indian Home Appliance Startup Up

New Delhi, Oct 11 (PTI) Smart home appliance startup Up on Tuesday said it has raised USD 8 lakh (Rs 6.58 crore) in a pre-seed funding round led by Tim Draper of Draper Associates, the American venture capital investor.

Other investors include co-founders of Ather Energy, Unacademy and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India, said a statement from Up (previously known as React Labs).

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Draper's prominent investments include Baidu, Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList, SolarCity, Ring, Twitter, DocuSign, Coinbase, Robinhood, Ancestry.com, Twitch, Cruise Automation, and Focus Media.

Up, the first company in India to use an emoji as part of its identity, has been founded by IIT Bombay graduates.

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It is building home appliances (which it calls as 'up liance') and its devices are designed in Bengaluru and made in India for young Indian homes.

Its first product DelishUpcomes with a smart cooking jar that controls all chopping, stirring and cooking functions claims to offer mess-free and hassle-free experience for users.

The touchscreen panel has hundreds of in-built recipes and it enables users to cook anything at whim through a guided recipe flow.

Up has been recently shortlisted for Qualcomm's 2022-23 accelerator programme through the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge (QDIC).

Up co-founder & CEO Mahek Mody said: "We are very excited to have Draper Associates and what they stand for on board."

Tarun Mehta, co-founder & CEO, Ather Energy, said India is giving rise to more hardware startups across sectors and industries and is great to see engineering talent and experience building innovative products and addressing new challenges.

"Smart connected technology for homes has been overdue and I am excited to join Up on their journey to building great products for Indian homes," he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)