Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [12 Jan-17 Jan]

This week, tech giant Infosys announced a $250 Mn ‘Innovate in India Fund’ to invest in Indian startups. The new fund will be dedicated for investments in early stage startups innovating in next-generation solutions and technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, pervasive connectedness as well as collaboration and design technologies.

During the week 4 startups managed to raise more than INR 200 Cr.in funding. (This is based on startups that disclosed the funding amount.)

Let’s have a look at the who-funded-whom and the who-acquired-whom events that took place this week compiled in one place.

Nivaata Systems: Bangalore-based enterprise mobility solutions company Nivaata Systems Pvt Ltd operating under the brand Verayu, a location intelligence platform for enterprises raised an undisclosed amount of funding from GWB Group and Blume Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to invest in infrastructure, people, verticalized products and customer acquisition with an aim to expand further.

AppVirality: Delaware and Hyderabad-based mobile tech startup AppVirality raised $465k in seed funding from investors in the US and India including Rajan Anandan (Google India), Mike Galgon (aQuantive), Ravi Gururaj (Nasscom), Ashim Mehra (Baron Capital), Mohit Saxena (InMobi), India Internet Group, and TNN Capital. The company would use the funds raised for further product development and for expanding its team.

Rate Gain: Noida-based hospitality and travel technology startup Rate Gain raised around INR 200-300 Cr. in the first round led by US-based private equity firm TA Associates. The funds would be used for expanding overseas operations, developing products and acquiring firms that have built solutions for the travel and hospitality industries.

WishBerry: Crowdfunding platform WishBerry raised INR 4 Cr. funding from 44 investors including Shankar Mahadevan, Google India’s MD Rajan Anandan, Orbit Change Catalyst and Angel Investor Sharad Sharma, MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra and bollywood film director Vikramaditya Motwane. According to the Co-founder Anshulika Dubey, besides investing in Analytics, the funds would be used to expand technology and marketing team.

Digital broadcast network Qyuki is also close to raising a $10 Mn funding from a Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund focused around media in the next 3-4 weeks. The funds would be used to create more formats and content in order to attract individual artists.

Mobile ecommerce startup Paytm might get a funding of over $500Mn from Chinese ecommerce counterpart Alibaba and Singapore based Temasek Holdings for a 25-30% stake in equity.

A look at the acquisitions of this week :

New Delhi based online restaurant directory Zomato entered into an agreement of purchasing Seattle based-Urbanspoon for about $60 Mn. UrbanSpoon CEO Keela Robinson will leave as a result of the deal. Last summer, Urbanspoon claimed to have had over 30Mn monthly unique visitors on its platform.

Analytics startup Fractal Analytics acquired Singapore-based mobile Big-Data startup Mobius Innovations for an undisclosed amount of money. The integration will help Fractal advance its innovative analytics platform to help serve the needs of clients worldwide.

Apart from these, online cab booking service Ola is in final talks to acquire Gurgaon-based radio taxi service GCabs, ecommerce Giant Amazon was in talks to acquire a 75% stake in Blue Dart costing around $2 Bn and Twitter is also in talks to acquire Bangalore-based marketing technology platform Zipdial for about $30 – $40 Mn.

Besides these fundings and acquisitions, other important developments of the week:

Singapore-based private equity firm L Capital Asia, sponsored by the LVMH Group is planning to invest around $50 Mn each in selected niche Indian ecommerce players this year which work on a differentiated model. Earlier, L capital invested over $100 Mn in Genesis Luxury, PVR Cinemas and Fab India in the country.

Early stage Investor, India Quotient, announced the list of 25 startups selected for MobileIQ, a competition for early stage mobile startups. The winner will receive funding worth INR 50 Lakh.

Helion Venture Partners is planning to launch its fourth fund this year which is expected to be $200 – 250 Mn and will be focussed on the IT sector.

DeltaX, a cross-channel Indian digital advertising platform, also a part of the third phase of NASSCOM 10,000 startups, was selected for the 10th Edition of Blackbox Connect Winter 2015 programme. The programme sponsored by Google for Entrepreneurs is being held at Silicon Valley.

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