New Delhi, May 26 (IANS) Y Combinator-backed AI matrimony platform Betterhalf.ai on Wednesday announced it has raised $3 million as part of its pre-series A funding.

Y Combinator is an American seed money startup accelerator. Betterhalf.ai was a participant in the Y Combinator W21 batch and the funding saw the participation of venture capital firms including S2 Capital, Quiet Capital and angel investors like Kunal Shah and Samvit Ramadurgam.

Prior to new funding, Betterhalf.ai raised a $2.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Tribe Capital, Nurture Ventures and Saurabh Garg, Nobroker Founder/CBO and Shailesh Rao, Former MD of Google India and former partner of TPG Capital.

The startup said in a statement that it plans to utilise the fund into boosting app engagement, building monetisation features and product discovery across organic channels.

"The closing of this round post Y Combinator Demo Day is a marker of the investors' confidence on readiness of 100 million urban Indians for a new-age matrimony app and allows us to take the company from $1 million run rate to $5 million run rate for our next Series A round," said Pawan Gupta, Co-founder of Betterhalf.ai.

Betterhalf.ai was founded in 2016 by Rahul Namdev, an MIT educated AI expert and Gupta.

Unlike the conventional matrimony apps, Betterhalf.ai focuses on behavioural matching criteria – compatibility matching with likes, dislikes, and interests.
Currently, the app facilitates over a million matches and a thousand marriages across a user base of 700,000 urban millennials.

With extensive business plans, the startup said it is witnessing $75,000 in monthly revenue and is growing at 30 per cent a month.

--IANS na/