Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [30 January – 4 February]

Franklin Templeton Private Equity Strategy, an investment fund managed by Darby exited Bengaluru-based news and ebooks mobile app DailyHunt, owned by mobile internet gateway Verse Innovation. This development comes when the former had secured 3X returns, by selling its stake to Chinese content producer and aggregator, Bytedance for $19 Mn.

Next up, MakeMyTrip completed the merger of its Indian travel business with Naspers-owned Ibibo group, which was announced last October. Towards this end, the Ibibo Group parent has contributed around $82.8 Mn cash to MakeMyTrip.

Last week eight startups raised about $2 Mn in funding altogether and six acquisitions took place.

Startup Fundings Of The Week

Stockroom.io: Hyderabad-based Stockroom.io, a curated platform for developers raised an undisclosed amount of funding in Pre-Series A round from Satya D Sinha and Gyanendra Singh, the founders of MANCER Consulting. With the newly raised funds, the team further plans to focus on building a SaaS platform based on candidate recommendation system and predictive analytics. Earlier, in September 2015, Stockroom had raised $70K.

HUFT: Online and offline platform for luxury pet products, Heads Up For Tails (HUFT) secured $2 Mn in its Pre-Series A round from a clutch of HNIs. The company plans to deploy the latest funds towards developing its technology and expansion, across India and abroad, in both online and offline channels.

OhLook: Hyderabad-based style curation startup for men, OhLook has been selected for Facebook’s developer-focused programme “FbStart” which caters to the early-stage, mobile-focused startups. As part of the programme, the startup will be provided with services and credits worth $40,000. The services include mentorship from Facebook’s engineering teams and services from its partners like Amazon Web Services, Dropbox, Adobe, and MailChimp.

Finpin: Mumbai-based fintech startup finpin has also been selected for Facebook’s developer-focussed programme “FbStart” which caters to the early-stage, mobile-focused startups. As part of the programme, the startup will be provided with services and credits worth $40,000.

Clodura: Pune-based automated lead generation startup Clodura Systems raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ajay Dubey, an IIT Kanpur alumnus. The startup will use the funding for product development, sales, and marketing.

Yolo Health: Chandigarh Angels Network infused $235K in Mumbai-based healthcare startup Yolo Health. The raised funds will be used to develop Health ATMs, which will dispense generic drugs. The company will also invest the funds in research and marketing.

TradeShift: Wipro’s venture arm invested an undisclosed amount in business process platform company Tradeshift. The IT firm will partner with the startup to offer cloud-based supply chain solutions.

RegisterMyMarriage: Delhi-based marriage registration portal RegisterMyMarriage raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Mumbai Angels and angel investor Praveen Dubey in a seed round. The firm will use the funds to expand its registration services to wills, divorces, birth certificates, income certificates, etc

Acquisitions Of The Week

• Online dating app Woo acquired a Los Angeles-based dating portal that focuses on the South Asian community, DUS, the ‘desi dating app.’ With the acquisition, Woo aims to solidify its position in the international Indian dating sphere. Post the transaction, Woo’s team will customise DUS’ features and growth strategies to target the international Indian community.
• CureFit acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based chain of fitness centres, The Tribe. This move on CureFit’s part aims at increasing its offline base. Shwetambari Shetty, co-founder of The Tribe fitness centres, will join CureFit’s management team, post-acquisition.
• France-based payment services provider, Ingenico Group acquired online payments provider, TechProcess. The transaction is set to be closed soon. With the deal, Ingenico Group aims to expand its network in the country and further offer cross-border services as well.
• Noida-based Pocketin, a real-time restaurant deal startup was acqui-hired by online restaurant reservation portal, OneLoyalCard. Pocketin’s entire team along with its co-founders will join OneLoyalCard. With this acquisition, OneLoyalCard plans to expand to six cities by the end of this year.
• Mumbai-based on-demand cleaning services provider MyDidi acquired its contemporary TimeMyTask in an all-stock deal. MyDidi will absorb all the employees and the technology stack of TimeMyTask through this deal. The deal values the merged entity at around $10 Mn-$15 Mn.
• US-based gaming firm Razer acquired Nextbit, the startup that launched the “Cloud-first” Android device Robin last year in India which comes with 100GB of free Cloud storage. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but there was a decent equity portion attached to it.

Other Developments

• Startup accelerator, Cisco LaunchPad invited India-based tech startups focussed on B2B/B2B2C segments to apply for its second cohort. The selected startups will get a grant of $8,000 upon graduation and up to $500 per month to support their IT needs.
• In collaboration with Nestlé India, marketing and media technology event Ad:tech announced “The Next Big Thing” initiative. At the event to be held in New Delhi this March, 10th, marketing tech startups will be shortlisted and one will be selected as the winner of a fully funded pilot with Nestlé and the title “The Next Big Thing.”
• Avishkar, the incubator run by the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) seed-funded five early-stage startups with INR10 Lakhs each. This is the third batch of IIIT Foundation’s Avishkar Deep Tech Accelerator Program.
• Coworking space for startups Incuspaze was launched in Gurugram, recently. It is a 6000 sq. ft space, designed as an office-cum-incubation centre. The space began formal operations from January 28, 2017. Incuspaze basically focusses on startups in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, data science, and big data.  It aims to bring the best tech minds under one roof.
• Under the Indian government’s initiative to support innovation, NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission selected six institutions that promote startups in India, to provide them with funding support. Under the funding scheme, the incubators will be upgraded to provide state-of-the-art facilities to the incubated startups. The selected incubators will receive $1.4 Mn (INR 10 Cr) each over a span of two years.

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