Venture Catalysts, an integrated incubator and early-stage investment firm, announced that it has led funding of $400,000 in a seed round for FreeStand, a B2B marketing platform that facilitates campaigns for leading Indian FMCG enterprises.
The funding round was led by Venture Catalysts and Nocking Point Advisors, along with participation from the IIM-Calcutta Innovation Park and SucSEED Indovation. Strategic angel investors like Guneet Singh (Head of Marketing and Creative Solutions at Google APAC) and Varun Singh Hooda also participated in the round.
Founded by Sneh Soni, Kavach Chandra, and Konark Sharma, FreeStand organises and avails hundreds of sampling channels for brands, ensuring product samples reach the right end-customer.
Talking about the partnership, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, MD & CEO of Venture Catalysts, said, “As per various industry sources, in India, an estimated 20,000 products are sampled annually. With each brand distributing an average of 300,000 samples across online and offline sales channels, this market is expected to grow to $1.5 billion–$3 billion by 2027, and this allows FreeStand’s innovative platform to emerge as a game-changer.”
Freedstand provides brands with a comprehensive array of sampling channels and a cutting-edge dashboard to measure campaign performance with unprecedented insights and efficiencies, according to a company statement.
Konark Sharma, co-founder and CEO of FreeStand, said, “With the help of this capital, we will be expanding our offering to include event and retail sampling channels. We will also be leveraging AI capabilities to enhance and further simplify our product experience for FMCG marketers.”
