Billion Hearts: Mayank Bidawatka's New Venture Secures Angel Funding

New Delhi, Sep 18 (PTI) Serial entrepreneur and ex co-founder of Koo Mayank Bidawatka's new venture Billion Hearts Software Technologies has secured angel funding from tech founders of startups like redBus, Ola, InMobi, Myntra, and others.

The first product is slated to be launched by the end of the year and will be rolled out as a 'beta' for those that sign up for it on its website, a release said.

Billion Hearts, incorporated last month, is focused on building simple digital consumer products for a global market, the release said.

Billion Hearts is based in Bengaluru and has a small team of engineers as of now.

"Mayank Bidawatka, a serial entrepreneur and ex Co-founder of Koo, recently announced his new venture Billion Hearts Software Technologies. The venture just closed a USD 250,000 angel round with well known consumer tech founders who built startups like redBus, Ola, InMobi and Myntra among others," it said.

The release further stated that Billion Hearts has been backed by entrepreneurs, VCs and top tech executives, that include Phanindra Sama, ex co-founder of redBus, Ankit Bhati, ex co-founder of Ola, Raveen Sastry, ex co-founder of Myntra, and Partner at Multiply Ventures, Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi Group, Mekin Maheshwari, Founder of Udhyam Learning Foundation, and ex President of Engineering, Flipkart, Narasimha Reddy, Co-founder of MoEngage.

Other backers include Puneet Chawla, ex Co-founder of Jaypore, Darshit Vora, Partner at Acherman Capital, Vibhore Sharma, Partner at Capital 2B, Rekuram Varadharaj, Co-founder of Healhi, Nithin Chandra, Director of Product Management at Facebook, Bhaskar Raju, Engineering Head at Rattle and Nizamabad TiE Angels.

Bidawatka's previous venture, Koo, which he founded, along with Aprameya Radhakrishna, had downed shutters in July this year amid the platform's failed attempts at partnerships and a harsh funding winter.

Koo was launched in 2000 and its popularity in India soared around 2021 following the Indian government's spat with X (then Twitter). Back then, amid growing calls for expanding the ecosystem of homegrown digital platforms, several Union ministers, politicians and government departments had signed up on Koo, which positioned itself as a rival and viable alternate to Twitter (now X).

Prolonged funding winter and failed acquisition talks, however, took a toll on the platform, which later struggled with dwindling user base and resorted to layoffs last year.

In a post on LinkedIn in July, co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka announced that the platform will be discontinuing its services to the public and that the little yellow bird (a reference to Koo's logo) is bidding a final goodbye.