Another Indian NFT startup is in the works — backed by Binny Bansal, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Nailwal and others

• Lysto provides API and infrastructure to enable other platforms to distribute their own NFTs.
• The company is now backed by founders of Polygon, BookMyShow and other noted startups in the country.
• Lysto is one of many NFT and crypto platforms that have been gaining traction from VCs in India.

Homegrown non-fungible token platform Lysto announced a seed funding round worth $3 million today. The round included investments from venture firms BEENEXT, Better Capital, Cloud Capital and other investors.

Angel investors and entrepreneurs from the crypto community in India were also involved, including Polygon founders Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, Flipkart’s Binny Bansal, and CRED founder Kunal Shah, all of whom invested in their personal capacity.

Sadiq Ahamed, Founder & CEO of Lysto, said that he expects e-commerce firms, entertainment and gaming companies and more to launch their NFTs to raise funds in future, which is a sentiment that many experts have echoed in the past.

Lysto’s investors also include Nitish Mittersain, the founder of Indian gaming giant Nazara Games, ticketing platform BookMyShow’s founders Ashish Hemrajani and Parikshit Dhar, and Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal.

The company has offices in Bengaluru and Singapore and was founded earlier this year. It aims to bring NFTs to the public through platforms they are familiar with, and said that the funds will be used to expand its teams right now. “Lysto has an ambitious vision of democratising NFTs for every internet user in the world,” said Hero Choudhary, Managing Partner at BEENEXT.

Not the first Indian startup to look into NFTs

Lysto is not the first platform of its kind to be funded in India though. NFT, crypto and other blockchain firms have been gaining VC interest rapidly in India. The company builds APIs and infrastructure tools to enable NFT distribution in India, which is in a way similar to NFTically, a software-as-a-service (SAAS) company catering to platforms and users who want to build their own NFT platforms.

NFTically announced a seed funding round in July this year, extending the round to nearly $1 million in October. The company had partnered with Zee Studios in September to help the production house build its own NFT marketplace.

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