Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [18 July – 23 July]

Jewellery etailer, Caratlane, disclosed that Titan Company, a Tata Group organisation has purchased a 62% stake in CaratLane acquiring 1.91 crore shares (1,91,42,545 shares), valued at INR 357.24 crore. The announcement of acquiring a majority stake in the company was already made in May this year by Titan.

This week, 22 startups raised about $85 Mn in funding altogether. (The funding amount is based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts).

Startups That Got Funded This Week

Skrilo: mobile marketing & rewards platform Skrilo raised $1.5 Mn (about INR 10 Cr) in seed funding from angel investors including Anuj Srivastava and Arvind Tiku. The startup plans to use the raised capital for marketing its reward program to the consumers and building on its visionary product pipeline, which is centred on providing a compelling value proposition for the brands and businesses.

MyTaxiIndia: An inter-city cab rental platform MyTaxiIndia raised $1 Mn (INR 6.65 Cr) in a bridge round of funding from existing investor Nihon Kotsu. The startup will use the raised funds for expanding its services in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

Wiwigo: An inter-city taxi service provider Wiwigo raised $600K (INR 4 Cr) funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN) and two HNIs. IAN Investors, Priyank Shankar Garg and Harsh Chitale led the funding round. The startup will use the newly raised funds to expand its operations to over 100 cities by the end of this year.

Treebo Hotels: Budget accommodation hotel startup Treebo Hotels raised $16.7 Mn (INR 112 Cr) Series B funding led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII). The round also saw participation of existing investors SAIF Partners and Matrix Partners India. The latest infusion of funds takes the total capital raised by the company till date to $22.3 Mn (INR 150 Cr).

Dogsee Chew: Dog food etailer Dogsee Chew secured $297K (INR 2 Cr) in an angel round of funding. The investment was led by Renu Balyan, and Jyotsna Bapat. The raised funds will be used for expansion of product portfolio and exports.

Yellowdig: SRI Capital invested about $1.3 Mn combined in two SaaS startups. The Yellowdig platform helps establish knowledge communities, increase students’ knowledge of current affairs related to coursework.

Zuppler: SRI Capital invested undisclosed amount in Zuppler. It is a mobile and web-based food ordering platform. Headquartered in Conshohocken, PA., the company provides, white labeled technology with unlimited customisations to its clients.

Fingerlix: Shripad Nadkarni, former marketing head at Coca-Cola India is set to launch a food startup – Fingerlix. The new venture has been set up with an initial investment of $1.3 Mn from Maverix Platforms (Promoter of Fingerlix) and has also brought on board Santosh Desai and few other investors. The startup will sell ready-to-cook foods such as curries, batter and mixes in Mumbai, to begin with.

MyWish Marketplaces: MyWish Marketplaces, which operates retail loans marketplace Deal4Loans, raised $15 Mn (about INR 100 Cr) from Franklin Templeton International Services India. The startup will use the funds to develop intellectual property, build an investment platform and expand the small business loans category.

Applop: Applop Mobile Solutions, a SAAS provider that enables users to make their own mobile app, has raised a bridge round of funding from GHV Accelerator. The startup has received about $250K so far and plans to close this round at $500K.

Truckola: Tech focused logistics startup Truckola raised $595K (INR 4 Cr) from angel investors via LetsVenture. The round was led by Abhishek Agarwal. It also saw participation from investors like Krishnakumar Natarajan, Al Hamra Group; Sarath Sura, Shanti Mohan, Sarthak Agarwal, Nihit Agarwal and Suramya Gupta. The startup plans to use the funds to to optimise the transport ecosystem and make the business model operationally scalable.

iServe Financial: iServe Financial raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a group of investors including Nilesh Shah. The startup plans to use the funds to further improve its online platform’s reach and penetration to take on its rivals such as BankBazaar and PaisaBazaar.

Tax2Win: Income tax filing portal Tax2Win raised around $1 Mn (INR 6 Cr) from an undisclosed business house. The startup will use the funds for marketing, research & development, and improving existing technology.

Sagacito Technologies: Data science and analytics startup  Sagacito reportedly raised close to $10 Mn from Star India Pvt. Ltd. With the new round of funding the company plans to ramp up its team and drive its aggressive product development and geographic expansion plans.

UrDoorStep: On-demand delivery portal UrDoorStep raised a bridge round of funding of $447K (INR 3 Cr) led by CP Murali. The raised funds will be used for expansion plans in Bangalore.

underDOGS: A game development company underDOGS raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Intelli Reboot Digital. The alliance aims at acquiring a significant stake in underDOGS as well as to utilise its team strength to develop games together.

Bluestone: Online jewellery startup Bluestone raised about$30 Mn (INR 200 Cr) in Series D round of funding. IIFL, Accel Partners along with Kalaari Capital, RB Investments and IvyCap Ventures participated in this round. The newly raised funds will be utilised to grow the category and strengthen its leadership position.

RentoMojo: Online home appliances and furniture rental startup RentoMojo raised $5 Mn Series A funding from IDG Ventures and Accel Partners.

ImageProVision Technology: Image analysis startup ImageProVision raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investor Satish Jamdar. The startup plans to use the funds raised towards further strengthening their presence within the pharma sector and tapping into more clients.

NiYO Solutions: A payroll and benefits startup NiYO Solutions raised $1 Mn (INR 6.7 Cr) by venture capital firm, Prime Venture Partners. The startup will use the raised funds to expand its tech and sales team to 40 in the next six months.

SimplyMoveIn: Bangalore-based SimplyMoveIn, an online marketplace for curated rental properties raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Hong Kong-based investment firm Swastika Company Ltd. The funds will be used for hiring across verticals, marketing, augmenting the technology backbone and geographical expansion.

AbeRuk: Bangalore-based curated marketplace for used books AbeRuk raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Swastika Company Pvt Ltd. The funding will be used for scaling up operations, expanding seller base and augmenting the technology backbone.

With this, Global Fashion Group (GFG), the parent of fashion portal Jabong, has added $33 Mn to its latest fundraise to take the total amount secured from its existing investors to $364 Mn.

Besides, Freshdesk, an enterprise tech startup, is close to raising around $60 Mn in a fresh funding round which will value the company at $600 Mn. Craft beer maker B9 Beverages which markets the brand Bira 91, is close to raising $10 Mn from Hong Kong-based TR Capital to fund its expansion plans. Ecommerce startup Dreamworld Digital is in talks with three leading private equity players to raise $5-6 Mn. The company wants to use the funding to expand from apparels business to Bollywood locations tourism. Fashalot, an O2O location-based fashion and store discovery mobile platform, is in talks with venture capital firms to raise up to $5 Mn in Series A funding.

Acquisitions That Took Place This Week

• NowFloats – which helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) create an online presence acquired chat messaging startup Lookup for an undisclosed amount. 16 employees of the Lookup team will now be part of NowFloats with this acquisition.
• Cashify, a re-commerce company engaged in the selling of old gadgets online, acqui-hired MobiBing. Post acquisition, COO of MobiBing, Nadeem Bari will be shifting to Germany to pursue his own consultancy work while the rest of team will be joining Cashify’s Bangalore office.
• News and ebooks mobile app DailyHunt picked up a minority stake in OneIndia, the local news language portal. With this investment, Greynium will expand into several other genres and create short format video and audio content while Verse will leverage its distribution platform to offer multimedia content to its local language user base.
• Mumbai-based marketing analytics firm Hansa Customer Equity Pvt Ltd has acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based data science company D-Square Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Myntra is also close to acquiring a majority stake in HRX – the clothing line for men’s casual and fitness wear by Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan.

Other Developments Of The week

• GSF Accelerator is inviting applications for its fifth batch for the three-month programme. GSF will select five startups. The selected startups will spend two months in India to refine their products, followed by international trips to San Francisco and Tokyo.
• IndiaLends won a global fin-tech competition competing with 7 other global startups. It received $50K as 1st prize
• SV.CO, the digital makeover of Startup Village that was launched recently, plans to introduce a free online course for engineering students in order to build world class startups. The programme is supposed to be launched on August 15.
• In order to support the export startups, the government has set up an incubation cell at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). The initiative is named as ‘Knowledge for Innovation in Trade and Technology for Entrepreneurial Startups’ (KITTES). It is dedicated to startups who plan to expand their business in the international markets.