Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [13 July – 18 July]

Budget hotel marketplace OYO rooms is in advanced stages of closing $100Mn in a new round to be led SoftBank Corp and its existing investors. The funds will be deployed for the company’s expansion.

On the other side, Smile Group’s fashion ecommerce venture FashionAndYou is in final stages of raising about $50 Mn (about INR 300 Cr) in a new round of funding to be led by US-based investment fund Morgan Creek Capital.

This week 15 startups that raised around $40 Mn in funding altogether. (Calculations are based on startups that disclosed their funding amount.)

Let’s have a look at the startups that got funded this week:

LivQuik: Mumbai-based mobile payment startup retail and F&B sector, raised $1.6 Mn from Snow Leopard Ventures. The funds will be used for team expansion and increasing merchant base.

Ketto: Mumbai based crowdfunding platform for social, personal and creative projects raised over $700k in funding led by Pradyumna Dalmia, deal champion of Calcutta Angels and Sudhir Rao, deal champion of The Chennai Angels.

Zenify: Rental management startup secured angel funding from Manthan systems’ founder, Atul Jalan and Gana Yantrika Systems to scale up its operations, improve technology and enhance analytics capabilities.

Roadrunnr: Bangalore-based B2B online platform and service provider for hyper local logistics services, Roadrunnr raised $11 Mn in Series A round of funding led by Sequoia Capital, and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.

Mobikon: Singapore-based mobile first marketing platform for the F&B industry raised $2.3Mn led by Jungle Ventures. The company plans to expand aggressively in India and SouthEast Asia.

InstaLively: Delhi-based startup that helps to broadcast videos in just a single click grabbed an undisclosed amount in angel funding led by Anupam Mittal, founder of People Group, Anand Chandrasekaran, Chief Product Officer at Snapdeal, Uday Shankar, CEO of Star TV and author Chetan Bhagat.

Wow Express: Mumbai-based logistics startup raised $500k in seed funding round led by Tamarind Family Private Trust. The startup plans to expand in about 12 cities by December this year and in about 50 locations by the end of 2016.

HackerRank: YCombinator backed platform used by programmers to hone their coding skills and by companies to streamline their recruiting process has secured $7.5 Mn as a strategic investment from Recruit Holding’s HR Technology Fund.

WickedRide: Bangalore-based luxury bike rental startup closed over $787K (INR 5 Cr.) of seed round funding led by an angel investor. WickedRide has served over 2500 rides since its inception.

Mysmartprice: Hyderabad-based, product discovery and price comparison platform raised $10 Mn in Series B round led by Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners to expand its hyperlocal shopping service to over 50 cities, enable one lakh offline retailer to reach online customers and reach a Gross merchandise value (GMV) of $1 Bn.

Satvacart: Gurgaon-based grocery delivery startup, Satvacart raised undisclosed round of seed funding from Palaash Ventures and others. The startup plans to scale its operations, customer acquisition and build its technology team.

BoxMySpace: Mumbai-based physical storage solution startup closed seed funding of $298K (INR 1.9 Cr.) led by Farooq Oomerbhoy, cofounder of Orios Venture Partners, Singapore Angel Network and Ritesh Veera. The startup plans to use the raised funds to expand its operations to other cities.

Ameyo: Gurgaon-based, Contact Center Software provider raised about $5 Mn (INR 30 Cr) in its Series A round of funding from PE firm, Forum Synergies PE Fund Managers through its IKMF-I fund.

LOTrucks: Bangalore-based truck aggregator startup raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Prakash B Iyer. The company will use the funds for developing the product and hiring.

Omnikart: Mumbai-based B2B megastore that provides end to end solution for all sort of industrial supplies, has raised $100k in seed funding from angel investors including Sumit Gandhi and Manish Gandhi; promoters of ABEC LTD. The funding will be utilised to fuel expansion plans and product distribution supply chain.

With this, Hyderabad-based startup Neuv plans to raise $472k (INR 3 Cr) to fund its social polling mobile application, Whatsay. The app allows users to create and share polls, along with following poll creators and sharing polls on other social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

The online grocer, LocalBanya, plans to raise $35-40 Mn by the end of this fiscal to expand in different markets, improve logistics and technology. Also, an online marketplace for art discovery and curation, ArtZolo.com, is in talks with angel investors and high net worth individuals to raise up to $200K in a bridge round of funding to build the technology team, market business, and expand offering in the US.

The Acquisitions That Took Place This Week Are:

• The local language news story mobile app, Newshunt acquired a product discovery and recommendation platform, Buyt.in for an undisclosed amount to integrate Buyt’s platform with NewsHunt for delivering product recommendations to its users, and help it improve its mobile advertising based monetization.
• Delhi-based loan distributor company Andromeda acquired Mumbai-based online loan provider Apnapaisa for an undisclosed amount in a stock cum cash deal. With Apnapaisa’s acquisition, Andromeda plans to increase trends of digitization and the tech-edge that apnapaisa brings would drive the growth of Andromeda.

Lets Have A Look At The Other Important Developments Of The Week:

• Yuvraj Singh’s investment company, YouWeCan Ventures became a limited partner in Media Fund. Media Fund is a diversified, investment advisory and private equity group. YouWeCan is one of the key investors in the fund as well.
• Target India, the Indian operations of the US-based retailer, launched its third round of four month intensive accelerator programme to find innovative technology solutions in retail with the help of five early stage startups.
• GSF brings Silicon Valley-based Vispi Daver as venture partner. Vispi has been successfully doing early stage investments in India and the US for the last 10 years and is also on the board of three portfolio companies in India.
• SoftBank Corp has announced a shutdown of its venture capital arm Softbank Capital and will now avoid investing in the early stage startups.
• French startup accelerator NUMA plans to launch its Bangalore branch in conjunction with Bangalore-based coworking center COBALT. The accelerator receives 650 startup applications per accelerator batch, and hosts 1500 events every year.
• Microsoft announced the launch of BizSpark Plus program to boost the Indian startup ecosystem. The program will give access to Microsoft software development tools and connecting them with key industry players, including investors.
• The venture capital firm with over $4B under management, SAIF Partners announced the appointment of Alok Goel as Managing Director. He will be looking over early stage investments at SAIF.
• The Mahindra Group plans to allow its intrapreneurs to invest in startups being incubated within the organisation. The move comes as the group strengthens its intrapreneurship programmes to attract talent that is increasingly gravitating toward startups from large companies.
• With this, Patni Computer Systems’ Co-founder Gajendra Patni’s sons plan to raise their second venture capital fund worth $100 Mn under Nirvana Venture Advisors.

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