Funding Galore: Indian Startup Fundings Of The Week [3 April – 8 April]

One of Snapdeal’s crucial investors, Softbank revoked a debt financing offer, as part of a supposed $150 Mn-$200 Mn funding round. Co-investors Kalaari and Nexus have questioned Softbank’s intentions regarding Snapdeal – as Softbank withdrew a term-sheet offering Snapdeal debt financing for a period of three years, suggesting the possible sale of the company.

SoftBank also proposed the sale of Snapdealto its nemesis, online marketplace Flipkart. As proposed, Snapdeal’s shareholders will get one share of Flipkart for every 10 they own in Snapdeal, while Snapdeal’s other backers, including Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, have asked for $100 Mn each from the proposed sale.

Additionally, Softbank  also proposed to sell Snapdeal subsidiary FreeCharge, as a separate entity, for as low as $150 Mn to $200 Mn. This is a 50% markdown compared to the $450 Mn that Snapdeal infused in the company in April 2015 during its acquisition. For now, Alibaba-backed Paytm is said to be the frontrunner for acquiring FreeCharge.

Next up, Ola, run by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, is reportedly in talks to raise two separate rounds of funding. One includes a $100 Mn round from RNT Capital Advisors and Falcon Edge Capital. Another is $200 Mn round from other existing and new investors, to fuel its war chest against global giant Uber.

This week 27 startups raised about $118 Mn in funding altogether. (Calculations are based on the startups that disclosed funding amount.)

Startup Fundings Of The Week

Fastfox: Delhi-based B2C home rental firm Fastfox (earlier known as Professional Brokers) raised $4.6 Mn (INR 30 Cr) from Lightspeed India Partners, Blume Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures and others in a Series A funding round. The raised funds will be used to improve its technology, service delivery model and team expansion across engineering, sales, and operations.

PharmEasy: Mumbai-based pharma company PharmEasy raised $16 Mn in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Orios Venture Partners. With the newly raised, round, the startup aims to expand its geographical presence in India and also seeks to penetrate further into its existing markets to bolster the category leadership position.

Wonderchef: Sanjeev Kapoor’s online store for kitchen products, Wonderchef received an undisclosed investment from French group Labruyere Eberlé. The freshly infused funds will be deployed towards setting up a manufacturing unit in India. It will also be used for opening the brand’s exclusive retail outlets in India.

Startup Buddy: Cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s startup investment fund YouWeCan Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in Gurugram-based Startup Buddy. With this move, Yuvraj will join the company’s Board. The startup aims to provide support to early-stage entrepreneurial ventures.

SmartCoin: Mumbai-based Unicorn India Ventures along with a clutch of angel investors, invested an undisclosed amount in Bengaluru-based microlending platform SmartCoin. The startup will use the raised funds to expand its product portfolio, reach out to newer customer segments, upgrade technology platform, and scale its operations.

Medwell Ventures: Bengaluru-based home health care services provider MedWell Ventures secured $21 Mn in its Series B round of funding, led by Mahindra Partners, Eight Roads Ventures, and F-Prime Capital Partners. The company will deploy the raised funds towards expansion in NCR, Chennai, and Eastern India and for team expansion as well.

DataWeave: Japanese adtech company, FreakOut Group, acquired a minority stake in the Bengaluru- and Singapore-based data analytics startup DataWeave for an undisclosed amount of funding. Blume Ventures, Herb Madan, WaterBridge Ventures and undisclosed VC firms based in India and Singapore were the other investors who participated in this round. The company will utilise the raised funds to expand its sales, marketing, and customer success initiatives, focussing on North America. The company will also invest in scaling its data products.

Fingerlix: Mumbai-based foodtech startup Fingerlix secured $3 Mn Series A funding from Zephyr Peacock. The startup will use the fresh capital to strengthen its growth trajectory and to further intensify its operations in Mumbai, expand into new geographies of Pune and Bengaluru.

RedDoorz: Online budget hotel brand and booking platform RedDoorz raised $1 Mn venture debt in an extended Series A round from InnoVen Capital, Asia Investment Fund of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Jungle Ventures.  Jungle Ventures had earlier invested in the company’s Pre-Series A round along with 500 Startups in 2015.

ElasticRun: Kalaari Capital and Norwest Venture Partners led a $7 Mn funding round in ElasticRun, a Pune-based stealth startup. The startup will utilise the funding to further build technology infrastructure, on-board talent, and expand operations.

Whatfix: Bengaluru-based  Whatfix raised $3.69 Mn (INR 24 Cr) in Series A funding led by Stellaris Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, and Powerhouse Ventures. Gokul Rajaram, Girish Mathrubootham (CEO of Freshdesk), Aneesh Reddy (co-founder of Capillary Technologies), and Vispi Daver also participated in the round. The company plans to use funds to strengthen its US presence and invest further in R&D and technology. Post this round, Stellaris Venture Partners’ Alok Goyal will join the Whatfix Board.

Perfios: Bengaluru-based fintech firm Perfios raised $6.1 Mn (INR 40 Cr) in Series A funding round from Bessemer Venture Partners. This is Bessemer’s first deal in a pure play fintech platform. The raised funds will be used for team strengthening, international expansion to the UAE and Southeast Asia and potential acquisitions.

WayCool: Chennai-basefresh produce distribution startup WayCool secured $2.7 Mn from early-stage venture capital firm Aspada Investments. The startup will use the funding for technological upgradations and to expand to Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

QorQL: Noida-based online healthcare startup QorQL secured an undisclosed amount of funding from ecommerce and payments platform Paytm. The startup claims to offer its services to over 60,000 consumers in Delhi NCR, Aligarh and is expanding to several Tier II markets across India.

CASHe: Aeries Financial Technologies Pvt. Ltd, that owns the app-only lending platform CASHe, raised $3.8 Mn (INR 25 Cr) Series A funding from an investor group led by Mathew Cyriac (Senior Managing Director at Blackstone Group). The startup will use the funding to increase CASHe’s scale of business.

Eruditus: Edtech startup Eruditus Executive Education secured $8.16 Mn (INR 53 Cr) in a Series B round led by Bertelsmann India Investments. The raised funds will be used to add new programmes, university partners and to expand geographical presence to China, Latin America, and Europe.

HealthCare atHome: Home-based medical services provider HealthCare atHOME (HCAH) secured $38.5 Mn (INR 250 Cr) from healthtech-focussed PE firm Quadria Capital. The startup plans to use the infused funds to fuel its pan India expansion plan.

Testbook: Mumbai-based edtech startup Testbook raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Matrix Partners India. The startup will use the funds for geographical expansion and product growth.

Credit Sudhaar: Mumbai-based fintech firm Credit Sudhaar raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Deepak Kulkarni and Sandeep Pangal. The company will use the raised funds to build a platform, to help them raise a $25 Mn funding round.

Cutting Chai: Mumbai-based wireless technology startup Cutting Chai Technologies was 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 & credits worth $40,000.

Konsult App: Delhi-based healthcare tele-consultation platform Konsult App raised $500K from a clutch of angel investors from the US, UK, Netherlands and Australia. The funding was raised in two tranches, led by Koen Bouwers, a Board Member at flying car company Terrafugia; Lomesh Agarwal of Magic Leap; Jeroen Mensen of Credit Suisse Investments and Pablo van den Bosch, a board member at Madaster foundation.

Tyre Express: Mumbai-based enterprise IoT solutions startup Tyre Express raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding from Rohitash Gupta, the CFO of a BSE-listed knowledge process outsourcing company. Earlier, in January 2017, the startup also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from New York-based HNIs, facilitated by IvyCamp Ventures.

Engazify: Pune-based bot and AI technology-driven startup Engazify raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding from a Silicon Valley based HNI angel investor, Vaibhav Domkundwar. Engazify runs a performance management bot which helps managers and HR make sense of their employee performance data and gather actionable insights and useful trends.

Nanosniff: IIT Bombay incubated startup Nanosniff Technologies raised $300K from 1Crowd. Nanosniff is a deep technology company working on high impact offerings in the MEMS domain with applications in healthcare and security markets.

GrowthEX: Gurugram-based online counselling platform GrowthEX raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a clutch of angel investors. It is a global company with paying users in countries like Singapore, Qatar, Brazil and Nigeria, apart from India. Raised funds will be used to scale up the number of experts and programs on the platform, enhance technology, and multifold increase the community engagement initiatives

Artivatic: Bengaluru-based enterprise AI startup Artivatic raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding round from Singapore-based angel investor Rahul Sood. The raised funding will be used for building proprietaries algorithms and technologies and sales growth.

Twenty Two Motors: Gurugram-based Twenty Two Motors Pvt Ltd raised $1.6 Mn in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Industries. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson also joined the investment round. With this move, Farhaan also joined the startup as a founding member.

Also, promoters of reward-based crowdfunding platform, DesiredWings.com, acquired Catapooolt.com, a crowdfunding company. Post-acquisition, both brands will prevail in the market focusing on different segments of the crowdfunding industry.

Other Developments

• Global tech giant Apple finally opened the proposed App Accelerator in Bengaluru. The accelerator was announced in May 2016 by Apple CEO Tim Cook during his India visit. The initiative is aimed at support engineering talent and accelerate growth in India’s iOS developer community.
• Former PIMCO Japan Managing Director and the CEO of Atomixmedia Inc Makoto Takano committed to invest about 4.62 Mn (INR 30 Cr) in the Indian startup ecosystem through GHV Accelerator.
• Global AI-based platform CogniCor became the first Indian startup to mark its entry in global fintech accelerator of St. Louis, SixThirty’s investment portfolio. The accelerator received 167 applications from 30 countries and selected a final batch of five startups.
• Personalised pregnancy management platform, Ango Health and online IT learning marketplace Unanth joined early stage VC fund advantEdge Partners for a six month startup incubator programme.

Technology accelerator TLabs invited applications from consumer startups for its 12th batch – Fall’17 Consumer Program. The programme will kick off on July 10, 2017 and will focus only on B2C startups with an MVP and traction.