Mar 7, 2023

FUNDING DETAILS $15 million Series A INVESTORS Dragonfly Capital, Afore Capital, FJ Labs, Castle Island Ventures, Chaos Ventures, KohFounders, J Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Moonshot Research and EV3 HEADQUARTERS Chinatown CO-FOUNDERS Neil Chatterjee, Nick Veaux and James Smits Andrena created an affordable solution to close the digital divide. Now luxury apartment buildings want in. For many people who now work from home, few have the ability to choose an internet service provider and are often forced to settle for whichever one operates in their area. Some residents can’t even access high-speed internet affordably, a problem the city has been trying to solve for years . Now, Chinatown-based Andrena has raised a $15 million Series A fundraising round to expand its wireless networks that provide fast and less-expensive internet access to consumers in the area. “The digital divide is a very real problem in communities across the US, and Andrena's mission is to tackle that problem directly by providing affordable and convenient Internet," said Neil Chatterjee, Andrena’s co-founder and CEO. Andrena’s strategy involves using radio technology and a series of antennas to seamlessly serve urban areas. The result is a broad network at very little cost; it starts at $25 per month. As a result of the technology’s success, Chatterjee said, “we created a system that simultaneously caters to luxury apartments as well.” Tavros Capital uses Andrena’s service in The Dime , a building in Williamsburg. With the new funding, the company will expand service to hundreds of thousands more households. It currently serves New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Florida, and will use the new capital to expand in states including Tennessee, Texas, California, Georgia, Wisconsin and Ohio. itselectric’s curbside chargers replenish electric vehicles without burdening city budgets Founded in 2021, itselectric has a goal of installing more charging infrastructure for electric cars. The company, based in Crown Heights, has created curbside chargers that can be installed in two days at an affordable cost. No chargers are yet in public use, but the company said it will be announcing pilot programs in the coming months, including in New York. The New York City-area has seen enormous growth in both electric car ownership and the number of charging stations in recent years. There are about 1,500 public chargers in the city and its suburbs, which power over 150,000 cars in the metro region, according to data in a recent New York Times article . Still, in New York and around the country, there remains a gap in the volume of public chargers need to support wider ownership, according to the Department of Energy. “Cities are not ready for a future of EVs,” said Tiya Gordon, the company’s chief operating officer and co-founder  “While efforts are underway, there is limited interest from other charging providers to create publicly-accessible, curbside charging that considers the neighborhoods they are installing within.” BY contrast, itselectric has created a design that is low-profile and allows for revenue sharing between property owners and the company, thereby sparing municipalities the need to invest time and money in the infrastructure themselves. Instead, itselectric channels a property owner’s untapped electricity supply to fuel vehicles who want to charge while parked on the street, according to the company. Candidly Candidly gives employers tools for workers to manage their student loans Employees with both student debt and retirement savings goals have to decide how much of their salaries to put towards past debt, and how much to direct to the future. The idea of Candidly , founded in 2016 and based the Flatiron District, is to give employers the ability to manage their student loan payments from an employer portal, and for the employer to match each payment with retirement money. Candidly partners with financial services companies like Vanguard, UBS and Fiserv in order to reach more than 35 million workers. The company can now serve 20% of all American workers—whether they are full-time, part-time or on contract. Over the last year, the company reported that revenue had grown by a factor of 10, as a huge increase in payments flowed through the platform. The funding will go to allowing Candidly to keep honing its product, especially as federal student loan policy changes. This January, Congress passed the Secure Act 2.0, which allows employers to match employees’ student loan payments with tax-advantaged retirement contributions —a change that Candidly has responded to with new products in its suite. “Our Series B round of financing places us in a unique position of opportunity and responsibility, empowering the largest financial services companies in the world to engage and transform the financial wellness and retirement readiness of those who believe that education - past, present, and future - is part of their path to prosperity,” said Laurel Taylor, Candidly’s founder and CEO, in a statement.