Bengaluru-based community-driven social networking and socialisation-tech platform Oopar Club has raised Rs 5 Million in its maiden pre-seed funding round led by start-up community-builder PedalStart.  

Before this, the start-up had been self-funded since its establishment in 2022. Additionally, the pre-seed round saw investment from angel investor Ankitt Jain, co-founder of Paper Arizona. 

Oopar Club is building a first-of-its-kind community-based ecosystem that enables adults to make real friends, socialise and live life to the fullest, and maximise their personal growth – all at the same time, via one single platform.  

Through its technology, gamification, and community engagement initiatives, the platform focuses on young and middle-aged working professionals across tier 1 and tier 2 cities of India, providing an opportunity for users to interact with like-minded individuals and make friends. 

The company will utilise this capital infusion in upgrading its technology and flagship platform, talent acquisition for core team building, as well as increasing its user base and accelerating overall growth. 

The start-up is looking to ramp up its paid community memberships to at least 10x over the next year while expanding its offline operations across 20+ Indian cities, it added in the statement. 

Speaking on the fundraise, Sagar Agrawal, Pragya Srivastava, and Sourabh Akash, co-founders of Oopar Club said, “We at Oopar Club are laser-focused on enabling a superlative quality of social life in a bid to ensure that all of us can thrive personally and socially; and to that end, we curate our club members and design a plethora of activities and experiences for them every month to foster meaningful conversations and connections.” 

“This funding round not only offers a great validation to our steady execution so far but also provides a major boost to our tech, product, and community at large. Going ahead, we will be curating more and more offline experiences and activities, as we continue to strengthen our community and its shared goals. Also, we have multiple game-changing initiatives ready to be rolled out in the upcoming months, including a personalised communication engine for our club members, that we believe shall significantly enhance overall happiness and fulfillment for our community members,” they added. 

“At a time when the loneliness epidemic is looming and emerging as a major threat to the mental and emotional well-being of youngsters across India, Oopar Club has adopted a brilliant innovative approach to solving this critical societal issue and ensuring that every individual can have access to a happening and productive social life,” commented Manas Pal and Aditya Darolia, co-Founders of PedalStart. 

PedalStart recently unveiled the commencement of its Series-2 Internal Company Fund, securing $250,000 to support early-stage start-ups. In an interview with the news platform Entrackr, Pal stated his goal of building a community of approximately 1000 founders within a year to bolster the PedalStart community.