Funding Galore: Indian Startup Fundings Of The Week [22 May – 27 May]

Delivery Hero is reportedly planning to make a major investment in Indian business Foodpanda India from the recently raised $435 Mn funding round led by South African Internet and media conglomerate Naspers.

Also, Amazon infused $15.5 Mn in its Indian B2B wholesale marketplace, Amazon Wholesale India Pvt Ltd. The funds were routed through Amazon Inc. and its Singapore-based subsidiary Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt. Ltd, as per recent filings made with the Registrar of Companies.

Additionally, Softbank has also purchased the founders’ Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s shares, landing at a total of 47.5% shareholding in Snapdeal. The merger is expected to take place through a share swap and SoftBank is likely to get upto two board seats in merged entity.

In another development, the investment arm of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Premji Invest has raised questions on the interests of minority stakeholders in Snapdeal. Premji Invest sent a letter to the Snapdeal board, seeking clarity on the plans going forward.

This week 12 startups raised about $215 Mn in funding altogether. (Calculations are based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts)

Startup Fundings Of The Week

ItzCash: US-headquartered Ebix Inc invested $123 Mn in ItzCash at a valuation of $150 Mn, against 80% stake in the company. With the newly raised funds, ItzCash aims to foray into areas such as credit, insurance, healthcare and investments to accelerate growth momentum going forward.

Yepme: Fashion retailer, Yepme secured $45 Mn in a financing round from undisclosed investors. The startup will deploy the raised funds to further the operations of its UK-based entity, Yepme UK Plc, that makes fashion products for international markets, including Europe, Middle East, and the US., along with brand enhancement and the launch of a new fashion range before Diwali.

Delhivery: Gurugram-based ecommerce logistics firm, Delhivery secured $30 Mn (INR 194 Cr) in funding from Chinese international conglomerate Fosun International. With this financing round, the company is currently valued at $650 Mn.

Aye Finance: Gurugram-based NBFC Aye Finance raised $8 Mn from Blue Orchard, a leading global impact investment manager. The funding was raised through NCDs (non-convertible debentures) with a maturity period of five years. The funds will be utilised to strengthen its funding position and to facilitate the inclusion of a larger number of MSMEs in the realm of mainstream economy.

Genext Students: Mumbai-based edtech startup, Genext Students raised $580K in Pre-Series A funding round from undisclosed investors. The startup aims to allocate the funds towards team building, strengthening its technology and expanding its services to new cities such as Bengaluru, Lucknow, Jaipur, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

The Print: Delhi-based media venture The Print raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata, Uday Kotak and Nandan Nilekani. Anchor investors – Biocon Ltd’s Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, tech-entrepreneur Rajiv C. Mody and Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, will hold close to 20% equity in the venture, while the rest belongs to founder Shekhar Gupta. The startup plans to hire a team of 50 people by July this year along with setting up office space in New Delhi.

Box8: Mumbai-based on-demand food delivery startup Box8 raised $1 Mn in venture debt funding from Trifecta Capital. With the recent funding, the startup intends to venture in its existing three markets, and enhance customer experience. The company is also planning to expand to new geographies.

Zipgrid: Mumbai and Ahmedabad-based real estate tech firm Zipgrid closed a $500 K Pre-Series A round with investment commitment from 1Crowd and JLL India. The startup plans to use the raised funds to upgrade its existing technology and operations. Also, a part of the funding will be used to launch a range of collective commerce solutions for its users.

Travelspice: Bengaluru-based travel tech startup Travelspice raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Eagle10 Ventures. The startup currently claims to work with 3 star to 5 star hotels in more than 212+ cities across India and 6 cities outside India.

WhatsLoan: Bengaluru-based fintech startup WhatsLoan raised an undisclosed amount of funding from South Indian music recording company, Lahiri Music’s family office. The move on Lahiri Music’s part comes as an attempt to diversify business across different industries. The startup plans to deploy the raised funds towards building its tech platform.

Magicpin: Gurugram-based hyperlocal discovery startup Magicpin raised $6.6 Mn in Series B round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Vy Capital. Earlier in February 2016, Lightspeed Venture Partners also invested $3 Mn in the startup in Series A round of funding.

Acquisitions Of The Week

• FlexiLoans acquired Mumbai-based supply chain finance startup, CreditPeriod for an undisclosed amount, in an attempt to strengthen its supply chain finance offering. Post acquisition, the latter co-founder Venkatesh Viswanathan, will join FlexiLoans.
• Hyderabad-based laundry services PKC Laundries acquired two companies – Spoorthi Krupa Laundry services and the Laundro Shine. The acquisition will give PKC an access to both the plants and an extended team increasing the total hires to 50.
• Hyderabad-based integrated facility management firm ICS acquired an undisclosed majority stake in home services startup Renowala. The combined entity will be headed by Devesh Sharma, director at ICS. Post acquisition, Renowala founder Joshua Kumar will continue with his overseas business expansion and strategy role and ICS will focus on operations and profitability.

Also, there are reports that Quikr is looking to acquire blue-collar jobs portal Babajob to consolidate its jobs vertical.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures raised $3 Mn from International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group. The fund will be utilised for investing in companies leveraging technologies such as applied artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and IoT across a range of sectors.
• Japanese conglomerate Softbank Corp. announced the first close of its ambitious Vision Fund (SVF) which aims to invest in tech companies globally. As of now, $93 Bn has been poured in, with an aim to raise the corpus to $100 Bn by the end of this year.
• Google selected six startups for its fourth edition of the Launchpad Accelerator Program, at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco. The list included – EdGE Networks, Fastfilmz, Indialends, RailYatri, RecipeBook and SigTuple.
• Tokyo-based venture capital firm, GREE Ventures announced the final close of its new fund AT-II Investment Limited Partnership Fund. The fund has a committed capital of $67 Mn.
• Karnataka government launched the Elevate Programme. With this, the state government is looking to reach out and aid around 1,000 startups from small cities and towns over the next two months.
• InnerWave Ventures, a community of early-stage angel investors, is planning to invest in 18-20 startups in the next three years. Its network consists of 32 angel investors at present.
• Bengaluru-based hybrid tech and fashion startup Arvind Internet Ltd. raised $10 Mn from its parent company Arvind Textiles in FY17.  By the end of Q12017, the startup witnessed a 15% growth in revenue at about $1.4 Bn (INR 9,236 Cr).
• Subscription-only business news website The Ken has parted ways with one of its angel investors Mahesh Murthy in a matter of four months. The news site raised an angel funding round of $400K in February this year from a consortium of investors.