Women’s Cricket based platform Women’s CricZone (www.womenscriczone.com) has raised an undisclosed amount in its seed round from a clutch of Angel investors. The startup which operates under the company name Breaking Boundaries Pvt Ltd. received incubation support and capital from Pune based early stage venture accelerator Posiview Ventures. (posiview.in). The company had earlier raised a pre-Seed round from angel investor and leading criminal lawyer Adv Dr Chinmay Bhosale and Hyderabad based Reena Lahoti (Director at Amp & Ohm Pvt Ltd).
Women’s CricZone (WCZ) provides news, updates, articles and interviews from the world of women’s cricket and publishes a bi-annual magazine Women’s CricZone. Led by Pune based Hodek Ventures and Indian all-round cricketer Kedar Jadhav, the round also saw participation from individual angels Pravin Bhalerao, former Executive Director at IIFL Wealth, Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale’s Indraneel Chitale and Reena Lahoti.
Women’s cricket has come a long way since 1934 when Australia played England in the first Women’s Test Match. Today, the game is played at international level in 50+ countries across 5 continents as well has professional leagues of its own. Following a ground-breaking 2017 Women’s World Cup in England with a nail biting final in which Indian team was runners up, the game grew exponentially. As many as 180 million people watched the World Cup with 156 million from India.
Founded in 2018 by Yash Lahoti and based in Pune, Breaking Boundaries Pvt. Ltd. runs a digital media portal www.womenscriczone.com and a print-cum-digital magazine Women’s CricZone. Women’s CricZone is a media entity dedicated to coverage of women’s cricket. India cricketer and 2018 ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year Smriti Mandhana graced the cover and launched the first issue of the magazine which was released in Jaipur during the Women’s T20 Challenge in May 2019. The company aims to become a one stop destination for information on women’s cricket and has plans to get into related activities in the space.
“With this funding, we plan to expand our team as well as grow our product and services portfolio in a bid to achieve the goal and become the world’s premier portal for women’s cricket. We hope women’s cricket continues to grow at a rapid pace and we become an integral part in its journey,” said founder Yash Lahoti.
“We started Posiview Ventures to work with talented young entrepreneurs with and share the benefit of 15 years of investment banking and strategic advisory experience and global relationships. This is our third successful startup which has reached this level of getting external funding”, said CA Vinit Deo, CMD of Posiview Ventures.
Abhijit Khanvilkar, Director, Hodek Ventures which led the round said that as a second generation entrepreneur, he looked at sharing the knowledge and resources of his business group with new age entrepreneurs. “We liked Women’s CricZone due to Yash’s laser focus and passion for the subject as well as the fact that Women’s cricket as a game is on an upward trend of exponential growth both in the country and the globe. We have already seen the growth post the World Cup and the next decade will certainly see its rise”.
“Women’s cricket needs all the support it can get and WCZ is playing a vital role of popularising the sport, highlighting player’s achievements and increasing its popularity amongst the viewers. I look at this investment as a means of giving back to the sport that has been my life since childhood.” said Kedar Jadhav as his rationale for the investment.
WCZ has put together a team of professionals with Yash as the CEO leading strategy and business development functions, ex-Wisden India executive Ananya Upendran as the Managing Editor leading the Editorial group. Noted senior cricket journalist Sunandan Lele with 30 years in media is the Consulting Editor for the company. Ananya is a current domestic cricketer and has vast knowledge of the game and is currently making an impact both on the field for her state side as well as off the field at WCZ. Vinit Deo (CMD, Posiview Ventures), Abhishek Kulkarni (CMD, Million Group) and Kamal Rungta (CMD, RCS Advisors) are the other Advisors on the board.
Led by Chartered Accountants Prajakta Shetye-Deo, Vinit Deo and Kailash Mundada, Posiview Ventures is an early stage investment accelerator arm of the Investment banking firm Posiview Consulting. This is the third successful incubation of Posiview Ventures after raising seed stage capital for A Fragrance Story (www.afragrancestory.in) and Prop3D Technologies (vr.prop3d.in). Adv Dr Chinmay Bhosale is a leading criminal lawyer specializing in Economic offences; and is also an angel investor in several startups. He was an early backer of identity management startup Signzy which raised capital from K-Start and later Kalari Capital & Stellaris, & which also got a feature in Forbes 30-under-30. Indraneel Chitale is a third generation entrepreneur and leads new business initiatives of one of Western India’s oldest food brands Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale and is leading its foray into new products and markets. Pune based LegaLogic Consulting (www.legalogic.co.in), a full-service law firm, was the sole legal counsel for Women’s CricZone and advised on structuring, due diligence, negotiation and finalization of deal documentation. Katalyst Partners was the advisor to Hodek Ventures for the transaction
