Gia, a Halifax startup that provides AI-driven growth tools for consultants and boutique professional service firms, has raised $1.1 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed financing round.

The round was led by Panache Ventures, with participation from Success Venture Partners, OMERS Ventures, East Valley Ventures, and a group of Atlantic Canadian angel investors. All the investors had previously invested in LeadSift, the first company headed by Gia Co-Founder and CEO Tukan Das. Das and his partners exited LeadSift in 2021 by selling it to IDG.

The financing coincides with Gia’s public launch. The company has developed an artificial intelligence–based platform aimed at easing the business development and administrative burdens that often challenge independent consultants and small agencies.

“What Shopify did for e-commerce and Jobber did for home services, Gia is building for knowledge entrepreneurs,” said OMERS Ventures Partner Brian Kobus in a statement. (OMERS was and early investor in both Shopify and Jobber.) “Consultants deserve the same access to enterprise-level tooling that has historically been out of reach because of pricing and complicated onboarding.”

In an interview, Das said his former investors were interested in backing his new company because they remembered how he and LeadSift Co-Founder Sreejata Chatterjee rescued their startup when things looked bleak.

“One of the things I’ve heard is that we were written off and left for dead [at LeadSift], said Das. “To go from there and to turn it around and give a positive return to our teammates and investors, I think that said a lot to our investors – that earned us some street credibility.”

It also helped that Gia got immediate buy-in from customers during its soft launch. Das said the product is now being used by about 50 customers, and 30 percent of them were referred by existing customers. He added they so far have secured customers through “founder-led sales”, and about 40 percent of the deals are closed in one call.

“The global freelance consulting market is valued at $647 billion in 2025 and projected to more than triple to $2.1 trillion by 2033,” said Success Venture General Partner John Gleeson. (Now living in San Francisco, Gleeson studied at Dalhousie University and worked previously for the Halifax startup Affinio.) “Yet even the most successful freelancers struggle with the growth and admin tasks that come with building their business. Gia is building the backbone that supports them.”

With a pre-seed round in the bank, Das said his six-member team now aims to build on their “small but very engaged group of customers” and ensure Gia is helping them grow. They want to move beyond founder-led sales, and will begin marketing through intermediaries. And hope to add some enhancements to the product based on customer feedback.

In time, he hopes to add a lot more clients.

“The goal is to empower a million people to start their own professional services business,” said Das. “We are swinging for the fences.”