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Business Standard
01-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Zango raises $4.8 mn to scale AI-native compliance tools, expand teams
Regulatory compliance startup Zango has raised $4.8 million in a seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from South Park Commons — the company's first backer, where Zango was incubated — along with Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank; Alan Morgan, Senior Partner, Financial Services, at McKinsey (EMEA) and Chairman, Adfisco; Mark Ransford of Notion Capital; No Label Ventures; and Start Ventures. The funds raised will be used to expand teams in London and Bengaluru, and to build out additional product modules for an AI-native Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solution. Zango also plans to extend its services beyond banking into other financial services verticals, such as insurance and asset management. 'We don't sell a platform — we sell a solution,' said Ritesh Singhania, Co-founder of Zango. 'Our AI agents are paired with humans-in-the-loop to ensure 100 per cent accuracy. Peace of mind doesn't come from a tool; it comes from a result. That's why we win against consultants — because they don't just sell software, and neither do we.' Zango is actively used by established banks such as Novobanco, the fourth-largest bank in Portugal, and is gaining traction with leading neo banks in the EU and UK, including Monzo and Juni, said the company. Zango was co-founded by Ritesh Singhania and Shashank Agarwal, both second-time founders with deep experience in regulatory technology. Singhania previously founded ClearGlass, a pension compliance platform, and served as Head of Technology at Simplitium (acquired by NASDAQ). Agarwal co-founded Third Watch, an AI-powered fraud detection startup (acquired by Razorpay, valued at over $7.5 billion), and led trust and compliance engineering at PhonePe, which is gearing up for India's largest IPO. 'The global regulatory landscape is ripe for disruption,' said Anand Datta, Partner at Nexus Venture Partners. 'Ritesh and Shashank, with their first-hand, proven expertise, developed Zango's first-principles approach: uniquely marrying cutting-edge AI with human compliance expertise. Their AI-led solution is already augmenting compliance teams and increasing their efficiency at global financial institutions. We're incredibly excited to be part of their journey.'
Business Insider
30-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
AI startup Airial turns travel TikToks into bookable itineraries. Read its pitch deck that helped it land $3 million.
Airial has raised $3 million in seed funding to help vacationers distill social content into actionable travel plans. Montage Ventures led the round, which included participation from South Park Commons and Peak XV. In addition to deriving itineraries from TikToks, Instagram Reels, and travel blogs, users can make and refine plans by entering information about their interests, budgets, and schedules. "People don't want cookie-cutter trips," Airial cofounder and CTO Sanjeev Shenoy told Business Insider. "They want all of this heavily customized, and they want the rest of the pieces to be handled seamlessly." The roughly two-year-old company was cofounded by Shenoy and Archit Karandikar, both avid travelers who left their engineering jobs at Meta and Waymo, respectively, to build Airial. The San Francisco-based company, with offices in India, has nine employees. After launching a public beta last year, a mobile app will come in the third quarter, said Karandikar, Airial's CEO. Rather than producing a basic list of activities, Karandikar said Airial uses AI reasoning, which drills down into "the hundreds of little constraints and dependencies that come up" while planning a trip. This includes logistics like choosing the closest airports and hotels to desired sites and the best connections for buses and trains. Airial isn't the only startup looking to use AI to change the massive online travel agencies market. AI competitors include Mindtrip and Layla, while established players like Expedia are also forging partnerships with OpenAI and Google. Karandikar said Airial focuses on user growth and eventually plans to make money by sharing revenue on hotel bookings and flights. It's also exploring advertising, freemium AI features, and a creator program where influencers can sell their itineraries. Here's a look at the pitch deck that Airial Travel used to raise $3 million in seed funding. "Just imagine your trip, and Airial it!" "Retention is key to both margin and scale. The personal touch drives retention in travel." "We understand AI, Optimization, and Social Products."
Business Insider
09-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
VC's new favorite guessing game: Who is Arfur Rock, the 'Gossip Girl of Silicon Valley?'
At a recent dinner for tech investors in San Francisco, venture capitalists discussed the usual industry gossip on deals before turning to a more nagging question: Who is behind the Arfur Rock X account? "The guessing game was certainly going on," said Dylan Itzikowitz, a principal at South Park Commons who attended the dinner. "There are a lot of rumors about who he is." Cloaked in anonymity, Rock is on a mission to bring more transparency to tech, as long it's good news. Rock launched last year as a more serious, techie version of the popular Wall Street Litquidity account to serve up a steady diet of friendly leaks of unannounced funding rounds, confidential revenue numbers, and other insidery details. Much of what Rock posts is the bread-and-butter scoops found in any tech publication, such as details on AI for call centers startup Cresta's Series D funding round or revenue numbers from voice AI platform ElevenLabs. "They are like the Gossip Girl of Silicon Valley," said CC Gong, a principal at Menlo Ventures. "This has come up so many times with other VCs. Lots of people have theories." Identifying only as an "anon GP at your favorite multistage-VC," Rock's account is named after Arthur Rock, the iconic early Silicon Valley investor behind Intel, Xerox, and Apple. The feed is decidedly niche, with just over 23,000 followers, though it has steadily been gaining fans. "I mainly read it because it's an amazing account for nerding out about venture," said Jeff Weinstein, a partner at FJ Labs. "It's pretty cool to see granular data like this shared publicly." "In an industry that runs on gossip, it's a breath of fresh air to have someone irreverent enough to be willing to anonymously air the laundry," said Will McKelvey, an investor at Lehrer Hippeau. "That said, it's only clean laundry." For Rock, the effort to unmask his identity "is the least interesting question people ask me." "If you pull apart the rose to see how it works, you ruin the rose," Rock wrote in an email responding to questions from Business Insider. Most VCs BI spoke with demurred when asked who they think Rock is, but some offered broad theories. "My best guess is an associate/VP level at a Bay Area growth firm," said Weinstein. Jenny Fielding, cofounder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures, suspects Rock is a junior associate at a large fund. "If you're at a big firm, you're swapping deals with all the other associates at all the other firms," Fielding said. "They're the first eyes on all this stuff, so I don't think it's a super senior person." Filling a void when startups are restricted The Securities and Exchange Commission prohibits startups from publicizing when they are raising capital. Please help BI improve our Business, Tech, and Innovation coverage by sharing a bit about your role — it will help us tailor content that matters most to people like you. What is your job title? (1 of 2) Entry level position Project manager Management Senior management Executive management Student Self-employed Retired Other Continue By providing this information, you agree that Business Insider may use this data to improve your site experience and for targeted advertising. By continuing you agree that you accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . "The SEC's primary concern is protecting unsophisticated or inexperienced investors from being swept up in the hype of an investment opportunity they don't fully understand or that lacks sufficient disclosure," said Steve Brotman, managing partner at Alpha Partners. As a result, details about funding rounds are restricted to trusted circles, and founders might miss out on potential investors, Brotman said. "What Arfur Rock is doing is essentially hacking the system," he said. "It enables fundraising information to leak anonymously." Rock says the account's information comes from founders, investors, employees, limited partners, and anonymous tipsters, and anything posted is already a "known secret" in Silicon Valley. "Everything I share has been passed around the right dinners, parties, group chats, etc," Rock said, adding that they would never violate a non-disclosure agreement. "I take this seriously. They're sacrosanct. If I'm under one, it is followed." Although Rock posts nonpublic information, it is uniformly positive. "You'll notice I don't post layoffs," Rock wrote. "I don't talk about firm departures. I don't talk about company scandals. I don't do down rounds. I don't share poor fund performances. I don't dunk on people. People constantly ask for or send me this kind of gossip. I want to spotlight some of what I consider the best among the current wave of companies — not criticize founders, investors, or my friends from behind a keyboard." Is anonymity a feature or a bug? Leaks are leaks, no matter how nice they may be, and some question whether Rock is providing as much of a public service as claimed. Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, recently asked on X:"Do the companies consent to the leaks?" (Rock replied that people "are often surprised how much of what I share is green‑lit by the insiders themselves.") Menlo Ventures' Gong said Rock's posts can sometimes upend startups' carefully laid publicity strategy. "I'm all for transparency that helps founders," Gong said. "The downside is when the account leaks info before the founder is ready to announce, they don't get the press coverage they were hoping for." Rock sometimes deletes posts without explanation, making it hard to track whether the posts are always accurate. Their mission of transparency is very much a one-way street, which Jay Kolbe, cofounder and senior managing partner of strategic communications firm Impact Partners, finds concerning. "The downside of Arfur Rock isn't that it's opening a new channel for information, it's that we don't know the motives of those who are behind it," he said. "No matter how well-intended they may be, it lacks the necessary guardrails of proven channels and real reporting." Jesse Middleton, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, says he finds Rock's account "fascinating" but takes the information with a grain of salt. "There's no clarity on who's running the account (and no, I don't know), how reliable the data is, or whether there's any inherent bias," Middleton said. Rock sees anonymity as a feature, not a bug, and seems to relish being a topic of conversation and intrigue. "I think the ecosystem wins on balance when more insiders can share alpha and ideas freely, untethered from their public identities," they said. "The anonymity strips away any sense of bias and, frankly, the mystery keeps it interesting."
