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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:
Satvacart: Gurgaon-based grocery delivery startup, Satvacart raised undisclosed round of seed funding
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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