CivilCops, a startup that builds civic-tech products for smart cities has recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Alfa Ventures. CivilCops is a social intelligence organization empowering citizens and facilitating governments to be more accessible, efficient and effective in public service delivery. The investment has come from Alfa Ventures led by Mr. Dhianu Das, an active angel investor and a prominent business leader. The company has been working with Government agencies in India and Dubai, UAE. It is currently incubated under NASSCOM 10000 Startups program in Gurgaon. It was the part of the 2017 cohort of the StartupBootCamp Smart City Accelerator Dubai.

CivilCops is bridging the data and knowledge gap between citizens and governments by establishing seamless communication medium for citizen collaboration and a platform for the governments to increase service responsiveness, take public-data led decisions and shaping service delivery according to the needs and wants of the citizens. This startup is set at the intersection of two of the most promising industries – Gov-Tech and Civic-Tech. Gov-tech is a US $400 billion industry worldwide, with huge upside. On the other hand, Civic-Tech is a burgeoning market, with little trace in the Indian startup ecosystem. In the US, over US$ 431 million have been invested in Civic-Tech since 2011. This gives an estimate of how big the industry can get in a country like India.

Talking about the funding, Ashish Sharma and Vaibhav Gogia, Founders, CivilCops said, “Public services account for a large proportion of Government’s budget but the increased spending has often not been matched by improvements in outcomes. We aimed to change this situation by building a product to help the authorities with a technology architecture to improve efficiency and at the same time, engage the residents in the decision making process. Hence, creating a new kind of city service approach.”

 Dhianu Das, Founder, Alfa Ventures commented, “I tend to invest both my money and trust in the companies and people with idiosyncratic business ideas and the passion to change the world. CivilCops comes across as a very promising venture as it provides a very unique solution for the government authorities to improve governance and public service delivery by putting the citizens needs at the centre of decision making.”

Dhianu Das has been an investor with start-ups and businesses involved in inventing and developing problem-solving products. His mission is to empower these entrepreneurs and start-ups with investment, mentoring and capacity building to enable fast business development. His successful investment portfolio already includes startups like GoMechanic, ClearDekho, Cleansecar and more. He is extremely supportive of CivilCops and shall me mentoring them going forward. CivilCops has succeeded in creating an initial traction in India and UAE, and going forward plans to get more government authorities in India to adopt the product.  The team is also planning to test waters in the European market which is very promising in this space. Thereafter, they will be taking it to other countries as well in the near future.