The American social platform and AI-powered company that uses machine learning algorithms to connect professionals has officially launched in India.
Pritish Nair, who was previously at Prodigy Finance and GrabOn, has been appointed as India’s lead for the platform. The service, which at present is free to use, will soon have a tiered subscription model for its users.
According to the Economic Times, the platform is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Coatue Management, among others.
Lunchclub’s active user base in India has grown 20 times since it launched beta operations in mid-2020, co-founder and chief executive Vladimar Novakovski said.
“We saw kind of pretty-fast growth across the board, but I think India was actually even more so than some of the core US cities,” Novakovski added.
Lunchclub aims to have a user base of 100,000 members in India by the end of 2021. For that, it has partnered with shared workspace provider WeWork as well as educational institutes like the Indian School of Business and the Indian Institutes of Management.
Founded by Novakovski and Scott Wu in 2017, the social network raised $24.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed at a valuation of $100 million. It has raised a total of $30 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Coatue.