SatoriXR wins Grameen Foundation’s Tech4Inclusion challenge; Clari acquires Wingman; UpGrad raises $225 mln

SatoriXR, a tech startup in Chennai that offers 3D and augmented reality technologies for engineering design and manufacturing, has won Grameen Foundation India’s first Tech4Inclusion challenge. And entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala’s UpGrad has doubled its private valuation in new funding round, ET reports. Notes: SatoriXR, a tech startup in Chennai that offers 3D and augmented reality technologies for engineering design and manufacturing, has won Grameen Foundation India’s first Tech4Inclusion challenge, the foundation said in a LinkedIn post yesterday. With a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grameen conceptualised the Technology for Growth and Inclusion Challenge and announced it in August last year. Competitors were invited to work in the Augmented Reality and Machine Learning space to design a mobile application for educating rural customers and banking agents. SatoriXR, founded by Mahesh Ramamurthy in 2018, built the prototype for a gamified AR learning application, to facilitate financial literacy and inclusion on its eponymous SatoriXR platform. The company will now be awarded the contract to build the full-scale application for Grameen, which will then be used by its banking correspondent partners. SatoriXR was picked from among three finalists. The other two were Deeploop Technologies and MuCrest Technologies. Clari, a Silicon Valley company that makes a revenue tracking software platform for businesses, has acquired India’s Wingman, a conversational AI provider for sales teams, the companies said in a press release yesterday. Clari didn’t reveal the terms of the deal, but the entire team of Wingman, including its three founders, is expected to join the US company, according to the press release. The acquisition of Wingman gives Clari’s revenue collaboration and governance platform the ability to analyse customer and employee conversations, extract valuable AI-based insights, and reliably predict all revenue outcomes. Wingman goes beyond the limits of similar conversation intelligence tools by helping revenue-critical teams act in the moment when it matters, the companies said in the release. Wingman, a Y Combinator portfolio company, was founded in 2018 by Shruti Kapoor, Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian and Srikar Yekollu. The company had raised $2.3 million in 2019 from investors including early-stage deep tech VC firm Speciale Invest. UpGrad Education, founded by Ronnie Screwvala, has raised $225 million in funding from investors including billionaire James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems and US testing and assessment provider Educational Testing Service, Economic Times reports. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds