Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [9

The jigsaw of ecommerce marketplace continues to rule the funding charts. This time Snapdeal founded by Wharton Business School Alumnus is in talks with Alibaba for raising $1 Bn funding. The online marketplace is aiming at a valuation of at least $5 Bn with this raise.

This week, 16 Startups raised about $50 Mn in funding altogether (based on startups that disclosed their funding amounts) and 7 acquisitions took place.

A Quick Recap Of The Fundings Of The Week

Daily Rounds: Bangalore-based Daily Round, a mobile app for doctors, raised seed funding of INR 3 Cr ($500K) from venture capital firm Kae Capital, Teruhide Sato (founder of Beenos) and Indian startup accelerator firm GSF. The startup plans to launch its iOS application by next month and plans to reach 200,000 doctors by the year end.

Qyk: Bangalore-based professional services marketplace, Qyk, that aims at providing a solution to hire local service provider has raised undisclosed amount of angel funding from Zishaan Hayath, co-founder of Toppr and Powai Lake Ventures, Abhishek Goyal CEO and co-founder of Tracxn.com and ex-Accel partner and Sahil Barua, CEO and co-founder of Delhivery.

DiabetOmics: Medical diagnostics firm, DiabetOmics raised $4 Mn in Series C round of funding from venture capital firm Ventureast. The company will also receive additional $1 Mn in funding from entrepreneur K.I. Varaprasad Reddy. The funds will be utilized to advance product development, obtain regulatory approvals in EU, US and in emerging markets, set up manufacturing facility in India and begin commercialization.

Mapmygenome: Hyderabad-based Mapmygenome raised over INR 7 Cr. in Pre Series A round of funding led by Aarti Grover, Rajan Anandan, Arihant Patni and Satveer Singh Thakral. The funding will be used by the startup for scaling up in India and globally.

BiteClub: A managed food-tech startup raised INR 3 Cr in funding from Powai Lake Ventures and angels including Aneesh Reddy (Capillary Technologies), Ashish Kashyap (Goibibo Group) & Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners). Bite Club connects chefs directly with the consumers.

Crowdfire: A social media management app for Twitter and Instagram raised $2.5 Mn from Kalaari Capital in its Series A funding round. Crowdfire offers a wider range of features such as an Instagram scheduler and photo suggester.

LocalBanya: Online grocery startup localbanya grabbed funding from Shrem Strategies. With this, the startup has also expanded its operations in Pune after having a test run.

Moonfrog: Bangalore-based mobile game developer, Moonfrog Labs secured $15 Mn funding in Series A from Tiger Global and existing investor Sequoia Capital. The funds will be used for hiring and developing games in new genres, including action, strategy, and roleplaying.

Groupon: Groupon India raised $20 Mn in funding from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The move aims to make Groupon India, more autonomous from its parent company in the US.

Process 9: Gurgaon-based online language translation startup, Process Nine Technologies Pvt Ltd raised an undisclosed amount in funding led by IAN Ventures. The funds will be invested in further developing ‘IndicaWave’ and ‘IndicaMobile’ products, and to scale the delivery capacity of Process 9’s translation business.

Appedo: An application performance manager (APM) provider and predictive software analytics, raised $1 Mn in funding from undisclosed private equity sources. The funding will be used for further product development and for international expansion.

Orobind: Personal fitness coach app Orobind raised $200K angel funding from group of angels and Zishaan Hayath. The funding will be utilized in product enhancements, building the iOs app, strengthen team and marketing.

Routofy: Delhi-based Routofy Services Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates travel planning portal Routofy.com, raised undisclosed amount from Snapdeal’s co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. The funds will be used for expanding team and enhancing technology.

Paytm: Ratan Tata invested in Paytm for a small stake in the company. With this, he will also take on the role of an adviser Paytm.

Fitraq: Fitraq Services Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates gym & fitness centres discovery site Fitraq.com, raised $150,000 (Rs 94 lakh) in funding from Tarun Arora, MD of Northern Collection and Credit Bureau (NCCB), India. The funds will be used for marketing and expansion to other cities

ChargeBee: Chennai-based subscription billing startup, ChargeBee raised $5 Mn in Series B round of funding led by New York-headquartered investment fund, Tiger Global. The company will use the funds to set up satellite offices in the US, UK and Australia, and “double down” on its engineering team to develop additional value-add services for customers, such as advanced analytics.

With this, the online food delivery marketplace, foodpanda, announced that it has raised $110 Mn in a new round of funding from Rocket Internet AG, as well as other existing and new investors. With the new funding, the company will invest into product and technology.

A startup incubator, Hive, raised $22 Mn from Jerry Yang and Paul Maritz. The startup focuses on companies that leverage serious data science technology.

Fashion etailer Jabong is also in plans to raise funding of around $150-$200 Mn.

Moving on to online insurance policy aggregator, PolicyBazaar, is also said to be raising INR 300 Cr from Premjiinvest, Steadview & existing investors valuing the company to INR 1200 Cr.

The online classifieds startup, Quikr, is set to raise INR 900 Cr. from steadview capital & existing investors to up-heave its marketing expenditure along with investment in the mobile platform which accounts for about 80% of its traffic.

New Delhi-based Kids tablet maker, Eddy, a venture of Metis Learning, is also in plans to raise $5-10 Mn funding in the next six months to expand its presence in the Indian market.

Acquisition Of The Week

Flipkart acquired, Sequoia Capital and Sandstone Capital backed, ad network AdIQuity for an undisclosed sum. AdIQuity allows app developers and mobile publishers to earn revenue from their mobile inventory.

The local language mobile app, Newshunt, acqui-hired analytics and mobile platform company, Vauntz for an undisclosed amount. The deal is aligned to Newshunt’s mission of providing news stories in local languages for which the team at Vauntz will be building the next generation platform for Newshunt.

Youtellme.com, an online price comparison and product discovery portal has acquired Mumbai-based coupons and deals portal Priceburp.com. With the deal, Priceburp’s operational team with the YouTellMe team to populate its merchant coupons and deals section.

Mumbai based ed-tech startup Embibe.com acquired 100Marks, student guidance platforms for JEE Main, Advanced and Medical, in a cash plus stock deal. Embibe is backed by Kalaari & LightBox.

Media conglomerate News Corp acquired the VCCircle Network, which includes VCCircle.com, Techcircle.in, VCCEdge, VCCircle Training, in addition to a premium-content driven conference business VCCircle Conferences. The deal is expected to close in March, however, the financial terms of the deal have been left undisclosed by the company.

Ebix, an international supplier of on-demand software and ecommerce services to the insurance, financial and healthcare industries, acquired Via Media Health, a health communication agency. Via Media Health will be integrated with its A.D.A.M. Health Information Exchange Division and will be known as A.D.A.M India.

Cloud solutions provider 8K Miles Software Services Ltd has acquired Mindprint Inc. a clinical research software startup focused on analytics and operational software for Clinical Research Organisations (CROs) and pharmaceutical firms for $400K.

Seems like ecommerce marketplaces have immense bait in their kitty. This time Snapdeal is in advanced talks for acquiring online recharge platform, FreeCharge for over $450 Mn. Also, the company was said to be in talks to acquire Bangalore-based ad tech provider, Komli Media for over $300 Mn. On the other side another ecommerce player, Shopclues, is at preliminary discussions to acquire the same ad-tech company, as per media reports.

Also, after Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook it’s the new giant Google that is in talks to acquire mobile ad network, InMobi, to counter its counterpart’s dominance in advertising on mobile devices. The deal amount is yet to be disclosed. However, Naveen Tewari denied any such development.

Other Important Developments

General Atlantic, a global private equity fund which invests $2 Bn worldwide every year, is planning to channel as much as $ 50 Mn into India. The Six sectors that have been identified as investment targets are Financial services, Retail, Healthcare, Data-driven business process outsourcing, Internet advertising and Mobile internet.

German software maker SAP seeks to invest in the startups in the next couple of months. With the planned investment, the company joins a string of global technology companies like Google, Microsoft and Cisco, which have a dedicated focus on Indian startups either through investments or by providing software expertise and other programmes.

GenNext Innovation Hub announced 11 startups from various sectors graduating from its first batch The startups were: CarIQ, LogiNext, Playport, Coitor, Piron, Axlerate, Health Vectors, Interview Mocha, Mocioun, Oztern, Light.