Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [19 October-24 October]

Online real estate portal, which is reportedly valued at around $347 Mn (INR 2260 Cr.), Housing.com, is set to raise $35 Mn in a new round of funding to be led by Japan’s Softbank. The startup plans to use the funds in revenue generating areas like advertisement-based business and increase its base in other cities.

This week 12 startups raised $55 Mn in funding altogether. (The funding amount is based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts).

Let’s Have A Look At The Startups That Raised Funds This Week

Attune Technologies: Health tech startup Attune Technologies raised $10 Mn (INR 64 Cr) in Series B round of funding from Qualcomm Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. The company plans to use the raised capital in expanding its operations in India and accelerate its growth into international markets like Africa, West Asia and South-East Asia.

Opinio: B2B hyperlocal delivery startup, Opinio, secured $7 Mn in its Series A funding from logistics company, Delhivery, Sands Capital and Accel Partners. The company will use the funds for expanding to newer cities. Also, Delhivery’s Founder and CEO, Sahil Barua will join Opinio board.

Primaseller: A SaaS-based order fulfilment platform, Primaseller, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from existing investors, Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Manish Gupta, Singapore-based M&S Partners and a group of angels led by Ananda Kallugadde to expand its team, experiment with multiple growth levers and evaluate the best way to win the fast growing SME space in Indian retail. The company also roped in Raghunandan G, co-founder and CEO of TaxiForSure on its Board of Advisors.

Cube26: A gesture technology startup, Cube26, raised over $7.7 Mn (INR 50 Cr.) in seed round of funding led by Tiger Global and Flipkart. The startup will use 85% of the funding for technical upgradation and R&D, foray into new areas such as Iota, B2C products and more B2B tie-ups.

Citrus: Payment solutions company, Citrus, raised about $25 Mn (INR 162 Cr) led by Sequoia Capital and Ascent Capital, with participation from eContext Asia and Beenos Asia. The latest round valued the company at $90-$100 Mn.

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Letsventure: Marketplace for startup funding, LetsVenture, raised an undisclosed amount in its Series A round of funding led by Accel Partners and co-led by Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com. The round saw participation from HNIs like Nandan Nilekani, Rishad Premji, Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, Girish Mathrubootham, Amit Ranjan, Barun Mohanty, Rahul Mehta, Aseem Chauhan and others. Sharad Sharma, founder of iSPIRT and Sanat Rao, Partner (M&A) at iSPIRT joined the advisory board of LetsVenture.

SalezShark: SalezShark Inc, a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform provider, raised $2 Mn (INR 12.9 Cr) in funding from Saif Ahmad, co-founder and president of the US-based Xavient Information Systems.

Jiyo Natural: A startup that offers personalised nutritionally balanced, calorie monitored and chemical free food, Jiyo Natural, raised undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN). The round was led by Rajiv Mehta and Sumit Dhingra, who will also joined the board of the company to mentor and nurture the team and venture.

IChef: A gourmet meals startup, iChef.in, raised undisclosed amount of funding from Springboard Ventures, an investment company of media house Times Group’s holding company, Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL). The company is planning to expand its service in 10 cities in next 18 to 24 months.

Medd: A diagnostics booking app, Medd, raised $150K in a bridge round of funding from a group of angel investors. The round saw participation from doctors, senior management of pharma, ecommerce and investment banking. The company plans to use the funds to expand its network of service providers, increase its team, strengthen technology interface and initiate marketing and branding efforts.

Leaping Caravan: Foodtech startup, Leaping Caravan, raised $150K in funding from a group of angel investors. The startup will use the raised capital for business expansion, stringent marketing, technology enhancement, manpower acquisition and expanding operations.

Agentdesks: Mobile first CRM solution for real estate agents Agentdesks raised about $2.95 Mn in a seed round of funding from Sierra Ventures, Cota Capital and Vegas Tech Fund and few others. The startup will use the raised capital to strengthen its engineering team.

The US-based Digital currency startup, Abra, raised funding from Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata, along with American Express. This investment is part of the $14 Mn Series A round, announced by the company in September.

Also, Reboot Systems India, a refurbisher of desktop computers, laptops and smartphones, is in talks to raise $15 Mn to $25 Mn in early-stage funding. The funds will be used to enhance technology to refurbish smartphones including data wiping and data analysis, recruiting additional employees and adding Reboot stores over the next two years.

Acquisitions That Took Place This Week

Digital advertising network, Fork Media acquired Spid InfoMedia, Wi-Fi advertising network for an undisclosed amount. Fork Media will leverage Spid’s technology for advertisers and publishers by offering them one of the largest audience platforms, targeting on-the-go consumers.
Indian real estate aggregator startup, Square Yards, acquired Oryden Tech Labs, a creative and design studio, for an undisclosed amount. As a part of the deal, the entire team of Oryden Tech Labs will join Square Yards.
An online payment solutions company, Citrus Pay acquired Zwitch, a payment platform, for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Zwitch’s 10 member team will join Citrus Pay and will relocate to Mumbai.
Dentsu Aegis Network acquired Fountainhead Entertainment, India’s prominent event & activation agency, for an undisclosed amount. With this, Fountainhead’s strong expertise and presence will add scale and leadership to Dentsu Aegis Network’s growing presence within this vibrant market.

Other Developments Of The Week

Joining the race behind other bollywood stars, now Hrithik Roshan expressed his will to invest in startups. Hrithik would invest in startups from any domain that would make a difference to the world for better place.
A global software company Progress invited applications for second batch of Progress Incubator’s program in India. The program is open to all startups and university students across India with a business app idea that is in a prototype stage till October 25, 2015.
IBM Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) announced the winners for its SmartCamp Pune edition, which took place last week. The startups were judged by Srikanth Sundarajan, Dulles Krishnan, Aruna Schwartz and Anoop Mathur.

Facebook announced 12 winners for its Internet.org Innovation Challenge in India across four categories viz farmers, women, students and migrants. The challenge was started to recognise people those supported Facebook’s vision of a connected world.