Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [16-21 April 2018]

We bring to you the latest edition Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding of the week.

This week 17 startups raised around $86 Mn in funding altogether with CoverFox and True Balance raising the biggest funding rounds in the Indian startup ecosystem. (The startup funding calculations are based on the startups that disclosed funding amount.)

Mumbai-based online insurance brokerage platform CoverFox raised $22 Mn in a Series C funding round led by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group; Transamerica and other existing investors. The startup will use the Series C funding to expand insurance coverage into Tier-II and Tier-II cities and specifically address women’s needs. The technology team will also get a shot in the arm, driving new development and innovation, including turbocharging Coverdrive, an initiative launched in 2017.

Next on, Gurugram and Korea-based mobile balance management service startup True Balance raised $23 Mn in a bridge round of funding. The funding was led by a consortium of investors including Japan-based global messenger Line Ventures Corporation, Korean search engine Naver, Korean lender Shinhan Bank and TS Investment amongst others. The startup plans to use the funding towards talent acquisition and expanding benefits of need-based financial services.

Indian Startup Funding Of The Week

Affordplan: New Delhi-based fintech startup Affordplan raised $10 Mn in Series B round of funding led by Lok Capital. Omidyar Network, alongside existing investors Prime Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital, also participated in this round. The startup plans to use the funding to meet the growing demand for its platform and to advance the countrywide adoption of Affordplan in various hospitals.

Fyle: Bengaluru-based expense management startup Fyle raised $1.1 Mn in funding from existing investors, Pravega Ventures and Beenext. Girish Mathrubootham-led Freshworks also participated in this funding round. The startup will use the funding to expand its sales and marketing teams and also invest in R&D to serve customers even better.

Pando: Bengaluru-based startup digitising the logistics operations for majorly Fortune 500s and global blue-chips Pando raised $2 Mn in a Seed round of funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. Kashyap Deorah at Hypertrack, Girish Mathrubootham at Freshdesk, Nishant Rao at Sirion Labs (Ex-LinkedIn India MD) and P Balaji at Vodafone (Ex-Nokia, Sony Erickson India MD) also participated in the latest funding round. The startup will continue to focus on product and people, to ease and enable commerce through digital deliveries.

AgNext: Chandigarh-based agritech startup AgNext raised an undisclosed amount of  Series A funding through its Omnivore partners India Fund 2. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its product in the data analytics in agriculture space by creating a combination of both hardware and software. Also,it aims to open two international offices in Singapore and Canada in the next six months and will further emphasise on strengthening our R&D base at IIT Kharagpur and Kolkata.

ShopX: Bengaluru-based assisted ecommerce startup ShopX raised $2 Mn (INR 13 Cr) in funding from strategic investor Nandan Nilekani. The funding is part of existing investment plans and in 2018, “our focus remains on deep execution and we continue to build out the omnichannel/digital offline industry as the leader in this space.”

Chai Point: Bengaluru-based tea retailer Chai Point raised $20 Mn in Series C round of funding led by Paragon Partners. All existing investors – Eight Roads (Fidelity’s India PE arm), Saama Capital and DSG – also participated in this round, with some of them investing super pro rata. The startup plans to use a substantial portion towards deepening its sales, marketing and service operations for its automated hot beverage dispensing business – boxC.in – which is the next growth driver for the business.

Lynk: Chennai-based logistics startup Lynk raised $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in funding from the existing investor Ramco Group. The promoters – P.R. Venketrama Raja (Chairman – Ramco Systems) and his son Abinav Raja -the Co-founder of Lynk, also participated in the funding round.

Cogoport: Mumbai-based freight logistics startup Cogoport raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Accel Partners. The startup plans to use the series A funding to invest in developing new product and fuel business growth by expanding globally and increase its footprint in the domestic market.

CureFit: Bengaluru-based fitness startup CureFit raised $632.8K from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and Myntra-Jabong CEO Ananth Narayanan. Recently, it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy after raising $10 Mn in debt financing from HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. It is also reportedly in talks to raise $75 Mn to expand its fitness and food verticals and enter new businesses.

Sleepy Owl: Delhi-based cold brew coffee company, Sleepy Owl raised $500K (INR 35 Mn) in seed funding from DSG Consumer Partners (DSGCP). The startup will use the fresh funding to leverage its product development and manufacturing capabilities to expand its product portfolio and grow nationally.

MamaEarth: Delhi-based online baby care products startup MamaEarth raised $250K from Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty Kundra. The startup plans to deploy the fresh proceeds to enhance awareness of the brand, expand product categories as also scale up its offline footprint and distribution.

PregBuddy: Bengaluru-based healthcare startup for mothers PregBuddy raised an undisclosed amount in a Seed round of funding from Indian Angel Network. The round also witnessed participation from  Rajan Anandan, an IAN Member & MD Google India; Madhusudhan Kannan, Chief Business Officer of Uber India & Emerging Markets; Jayant Kadambi, Co-Founder & Chairman of YuMe and Puneet Gupta, COO (News Business) of Times Internet Limited among others. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its team in fields of technology, marketing, and business development and scale up the platform.

MBLOOD: Chennai-based blood donation startup MBLOOD raised $75.7K from SPPLJ Charitable Trust, Chennai to expand its services to a network of 1 Mn users by the end of the year 2018.

PaisaDukan: Mumbai-based fintech startup raised $650K through Angel Funding route. The startup plans to use the funding for marketplace platform and mobile app development.

Icanstay.com: New Delhi-based hotel aggregator icanstay.com raised a fresh round of funding of $197.84 (INR 1.30 Cr) from an angel investor Manoj Prasad, executive chairman at Singapore-based venture capital and management advisory firm MP Morgan Capital Partners Pte. Ltd. The startup plans to use the funding to beef up the technology and expand hotel network.

Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week

• ItzCash parent Ebix has acquired elearning company Smartclass, which is run by Smartclass Educational Services Private Limited. Under the terms of the agreement, Ebix will pay up to $8 Mn in cash for its stake in SmartClass. Post acquisition, Smartclass will be tightly integrated into Ebix’s Education and elearning initiatives in India. Ebix also plans to invest $100 Mn in the sector.
• Marico Ltd, a consumer product company operating in the beauty and wellness space will pick up a 22.5% stake in Mumbai-based Revofit (Revolutionary Fitness Private Limited). As per the agreement, Marico will acquire up to 22.5% equity shares of the post-acquisition paid-up share capital of Revofit. Following the capital infusion, Revofit intends to increase its footprint in the wellness space, expand its cloud kitchen infrastructure and launch a slew of digital applications in the fitness and wellness space.
• Texas-based Idera acquired Bengaluru-headquartered database management startup Webyog in an all-cash deal. The acquisition of Webyog will enable Idera to build more advanced solutions that support one of the most common open source databases in use: MySQL.
• Fashion ecommerce mogul Myntra acquired Witworks, a Bengaluru based technology startup, focussed on producing smart wearable devices and their underlying software. Post-acquisition Myntra has inducted the startup’s team into its Innovation Labs; further strengthening the company’s robust technology team and augmenting its product development capabilities.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Vidooly Media Tech along with Mindshare team in India won top honours in the Emerging Market Regions Category at the 9th edition of i-com, a Marketing Data Measurement Strategy event which was held last week in Spain. Other winners were  IBM, Omnicom Media Group, Nike, BMW, Facebook, Youtube, Havas Media Group – DBi and GroupM.
• Mumbai-based FundTonic, an angel network with over 700 angel investors and one of the leading co-working player, raised an undisclosed amount in a strategic round of funding from Yesss Capital, Germany and others. “We will closely work with FundTonic for expansion in Europe and for the next phase of growth, including investments in future rounds of funding,” added Yesss Capital founders.
• Ideaspring Capital partnered with Wipro Limited to provide B2B product startups with go-to- market opportunities and strengthen the evolving Indian startup ecosystem. As part of this partnership, Wipro and Ideaspring will work together to identify cutting edge product innovation technology startups in areas that are of interest to Wipro’s customers.
• RevStart announced the launch of its 12-week long RevItUp Incubation Programme. As part of the programme, RevStart will select five high potential startups working in edtech, AI, Consumer Internet, Sustainability, as well as for-profit social impact companies to assist them with developing their business and connect them to global mentors across industries and sectors. In addition, startups selected for the programme will receive $7559 (INR 5 lakh) to $37,799 (INR. 25 lakh) worth of cash and benefits, while RevStart will get an equity stake in the ventures.
• Gray Matters Capital announced the launch of ‘GMC Calibrator’ – a six-month Zero Equity Blended Accelerator Programme.The programme will focus on improving ‘User Engagement’ on mobile apps and digital platforms of enterprises in the ‘Learning to Earning’ space. It will look to select 8 participants in the first cohort of the GMC Calibrator and will keep the application window open until May 5, 2018.
• TR Capital raised its stake in Lenskart to 10% post-secondary share sale. It acquired shares from TPG Growth and Unilazer Alternative Ventures LLP through its TR Capital III.TR Capital has been an active shareholder of Lenskart since 2013 and  “continues to believe in its significant growth potential led by its strong management team.”
• Homegrown cab aggregator Ola is in talks with Bengaluru-based scooter rental startup Vogo Automotive to lead a $5-7 Mn round of funding in the startup. Reportedly, Ola will lead the round with venture capital firms Stellaris Ventures Partners and Matrix Partners.
• The newly launched social network platform by Orkut Büyükkökten, Hello Network Inc., is in talks to gain strategic partners in India. However, the founder pragmatically declined to reveal the names of the investors he is in discussions with.
• Ibibo Group secured a fund fusion of $9.83 Mn (INR 65 Cr) in March 2018 from its Singapore-based parent company Ibibo Group Holdings (Singapore) Pte. Ltd, according to recent filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Since the beginning of the year, the online travel platform has secured $24.35 Mn (INR 161 Cr) in funding.
• Agritech accelerator Gastrotope has partnered with the Andhra Pradesh government to create a Farm to Fork ecosystem in Visakhapatnam (Vizag). The two partners will now collaborate to provide the necessary infrastructure such as test fields for agriculture, incubation space and an acceleration programme. The programme aims to facilitate and nurture startups in the space of agritech and foodtech in Andhra Pradesh along with the other states in India.
• We have a new entrant in Indian gaming industry with Tencent planning to invest $100 Mn in fantasy gaming startup Dream11. Tencent has offered a term sheet for a transaction that could potentially value Dream11 at a pre-money valuation of $400-$450 Mn.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!