Serial entrepreneur Mayank Bidawatka, whose last venture Koo was India’s equivalent of micro-blogging platform X (formerly Twitter), has raised around $4 million in seed funding for his latest venture Billion Hearts Software Technologies . The round was led by Blume Ventures with participation from General Catalyst and Athera Venture Partners, the company said in a statement.

The funding round immediately followed the approximately $250,000 seed round the company recently raised from high-profile angel investors such as Phanindra Sama, ex-redBus co-founder; Ankit Bhati, former co-founder of Ola; Raveen Sastry, former co-founder of Myntra; Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi Group, etc.

Top VCs and tech executives also backed Billion Hearts’ angel funding round, including Darshit Vora, Partner at Acherman Capital, Vibhore Sharma, Partner at Capital 2B, Nithin Chandra, Managing Director of products at Facebook, Bhaskar Raju, head of engineering at Rattle and Nizamabad TiE. Angels.

Speaking about the startup cycle, Bidawatka said in a LinkedIn post: “I have always believed that a strong board of directors is as important a pillar as the product, the walk and the team. When fundraising, we cared more about the color of the money than money itself. We care more about what a potential investor thinks about the company and product vision than the size of their fund.

“During the process, I respectfully said no to some funds, even though they were eager to invest, but did not have the confidence we were looking for. And through those conversations, we found the partners who were most excited about what we wanted to do,” he said.

According to the company, it is currently working on a “digital consumer product” relevant to a global market and audience. The first product is expected to launch in beta in a few months in a closed circle before opening it up to those who sign up for the beta.

Bidawatka said the product was “aimed at all smartphone users around the world.” The company has already set aside a 25% ESOP pool for its team “who started building this without knowing anything about how it would play out.”

“Billion Hearts aims to create digital products for a global user base. The first product is expected to launch in beta in a few months. Although the product is still stealthy, it addresses a broad use case that concerns all smartphone users around the world, of all age groups. It will use in-depth technology to solve the problem,” said Karthik Reddy, Partner, Blume Ventures.