Up (previously React Labs), a consumer hardware startup, announced on Thursday that it has raised $500,000 (approximately Rs 4.1 crore) in pre-seed funding from Nithin Kamath-led Rainmatter.

Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, co-founders of Ather Energy; Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Stanford Angels, and Entrepreneurs India have also invested in Up.

Tim Draper was also an early participant in the company’s pre-seed funding round.

Draper was an early investor in Tesla, Angelist, Coinbase, Switch, Skype, and Hotmail.

The pre-seed round funds will be used to execute the go-to-market strategy for the company’s first product, delishUp. The device includes a touch screen with an unlimited number of guided recipes, as well as a jar that heats and cooks and provides controlled chopping, stirring, and other culinary functions.

The Bengaluru-based startup, founded by Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma, raised $1.3 million in its pre-seed round. Mody was the former Chief of Staff at Ather Energy, and Sharma was the Head of Engineering at Chaayos. Both are IIT Bombay graduates.

The Qualcomm Design in India Challenge has also included the startup in Qualcomm’s 2022-23 accelerator programme (QDIC). The startup is establishing technical collaboration with Qualcomm through QDIC.

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