Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [22 February – 27 February]

Ibibo Group raised $250 Mn from global internet & media company Naspers, and China’s leading internet firm Tencent. The investment will be used to expand Ibibo’s reach within the Indian hospitality sector, and on additional technology innovations.

This week 26 startups raised about $289 Mn in funding altogether (the funding amount is based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts).

Startup That Raised Funding This Week

EduBridge: Skill development and vocational training startup, EduBridge, raised $2.5 Mn (INR 17.1 Cr) in Series A round of funding led by Insitor Impact Asia Fund, and Acumen Fund. The raised capital will be used to strengthen their existing presence and to expand operations to Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar.

Freedom.desi: Retail solutions provider, Freedom Smart Labs Ltd., which has a wifi-based retail solution product called Freedom.desi, raised around $145K (INR 1 Cr.) in a seed round of funding from Kapil Goel. With the funds raised, the company will work to revive brick-and-mortar stores with the help of IoT solutions.

Juspay: Mobile payments startup, Juspay, raised about $5.8 Mn (INR 40 Cr.) in a series A round of funding led by venture capital firm Accel Partners. Others who participated in the round included Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande. The company will use the raised capital to build its product.

Pin Click: Real estate portal, Pin Click, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round of funding from participants, old seed funder investors, HNIs. The raised capital will be used to stabilise the existing property advisory business in Bangalore & Pune and scale in the same, develop the rental business vertical for both single family & multi family tenancy as well as product & technology development to build efficiencies on the sales process & customer engagement

Funcart: An online store for party supplies, Funcart, raised $70K in its first round of funding from a group of HNIs. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its business and team, along with creating a robust marketing network for the website.

Myra Medicines: On-demand pharmacy delivery startup, Myra, reportedly raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners in its Series A round of funding. Pranay Chulet, co-founder of Quikr, and Prashant Malik, co-founder of LimeRoad, also participated in this round.

SigTuple: Health tech startup, SigTuple, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, Accel Partners.Angel investors like Nirupa Bareja, Ashok Bareja, and Amazon’s Debanjan Mukherjee also participated in the round. The startup looks to revolutionise the global medical diagnostic space through data driven intelligence.

FeetApart: An employee engagement & wellness platform, FeetApart, raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Nielsen Singapore’s executive, Vishal Bali, and other angel investors. The fundraising process was facilitated by seedX.

AppilyEver: Wedding services provider app, AppilyEver, raised $400K (INR 2.7 Cr) in a seed round of funding from a group of angel investors, led by Varun Aggarwal, founder of Univariety. The newly raised capital will be utilised for product development and marketing.

Pocketin: A real-time restaurant deal startup, Pocketin, raised $150K in a seed round of funding from Hong Kong based Swastika Company Ltd. With the funding, the startup aims to consolidate the eating-out space.

Loanzen: Peer to peer lending marketplace startup, Loanzen, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Tracxn Labs, and angel investors, through Tracxn Syndicate. The round saw participation from Rajan Navani, Abhishek Gupta, Vinay Gupta, Praful Thachery, Ashish Taneja, Mahesh Parasuraman, and Suresh Bala, among others. The newly raised capital will be used to build engineering and data science team.

NoBroker: P2P rental marketplace, NoBroker, raised $10 Mn in Series B round of funding, led by BEENEXT & Digital Garage, along with other investors like BEENOS, Qualgro and Mamoru Taniya (of Asuka Holdings). Its existing investor SAIF Partners also participated in the round. With this round of funding, the company has raised a total funding to the tune of $13 Mn till date.

SayFix: A service-commerce startup in the home services segment, SayFix, raised about $160K (INR 1.1 Cr.) in an angel round of funding led by a group of investors and entrepreneurs. The raised capital will be used to develop and enhance the technology infrastructure behind SayFix, and invest in marketing activities to build the brand.

FirstEat: Food-tech startup, First Eat, raised $200K in seed funding from an undisclosed F&B entrepreneur in Gurgaon. The startup aims to solve the problem of ‘awareness, availability and affordability’ of necessary healthy meals, by offering healthy organic meal options.

CupoNation: Deal aggregator website, CupoNation, secured $11.1 Mn (INR 76.3 Cr) in a Series B round of funding. The round was led by its existing investor Rocket Internet AG. Other investors included New Enterprise Associates (NEA), e.ventures, ru-Net, Deutsche Telekom Strategic Investments (DTSI), Silicon Valley Bank, and Columbia Lake Partners. The raised capital will be used to support its strong growth track.

Magicpin: Hyperlocal discovery platform, Magicpin, raised $3 Mn in Series A round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. The startup is aiming to triple transactions on its platform within the next six months and plans to expand to four new cities including Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.

Styledotme: A social networking fashion app, Styledotme, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from IAN. The investment has been made under the ‘Small Ticket Funding programme’, announced by IAN last year. The round was led by Ajay Gupta, who will also be mentoring the company. The startup will use the investment to build its technical team, to fine tune the app, and for adding new features.

Taskbob: Home utility service provider, Taskbob, secured $4.5 Mn (INR 28 Cr.) in its Series A round of funding led by IvyCap Ventures. It also saw participation from existing investors, Orios, and Mayfield. The funding will help Taskbob boost its growth and increase dominance in the hyperlocal services sector.

Newslaundry: A digital media platform, Newslaundry, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Omidyar Network, Mahesh Murthy, Vikram Lal, Abhijit Bhandari, and Shashank Bhagat.

BabyBerry: A mobile-based parenting app, BabyBerry, raised $1 Mn in an angel round of funding led by industrialist Nitin Bagamane. The startup plans to use the money for product development and marketing.

WebEngage: CRM solutions provider, Capillary Technologies Pvt Ltd, has partnered with on-site customer engagement suite WebEngage. As part of the partnership, it also picked up an undisclosed minority stake in WebEngage. The partnership was done to build an omni-channel for their overlapping customers.

Carveniche: Ed-tech startup, Carveniche Technologies Pvt Ltd, reportedly raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Calcutta Angels, Lead Angels, and a few HNIS. The funds will be used for product development, scaling up operations, marketing, and for strengthening its B2C operations.

Crayon: Big data startup, Crayon Data, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Japanese diversified conglomerate Mitsui & Co. The investment includes a business service agreement by which Mitsui will support the launch of Crayon’s products in Japan, and the expansion of its customer assets.

AaravUnmanned Systems: An unmanned aerial vehicle startup incubated at IIT Kanpur, AaravUnmanned Systems, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from StartupXseed Ventures, The Phoenix Fund, and other investors.

Bimadirect: Stockbroker Sudip Bandyopadhyay bought a 50 per cent stake in Bimadirect, an online insurance policy aggregator and seller. The deal values the company somewhere around $7-8 Mn (INR 47-54 Cr).

International Finance Corp plans to infuse $25 Mn (INR 170 Cr) in Lenskart. The proposed investment by IFC is part of the company’s ongoing fundraising plan in which its existing, and a few new, investors will participate.

Zoomcar is planning to expand more aggressively into tier-1 cities and is currently looking to raise around $40-$50 Mn from its existing as well as new investors. Its current backers include Mohandas Pai, Lady Barbara Judge, Nokia Growth Partners and Sequoia Capital.

Acquisitions Of The Week

• Product testing solutions startup, Smart Software Testing Solutions, acquired pCloudy, a smart mobile testing platform, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was done in a bid to facilitate both startups to create intelligent testing platforms for apps in mobile and IoT space.
• Cloud-based customer support software startup, Freshdesk, acquired Framebench for an undisclosed amount. Framebench is an online collaboration platform that enables teams to share, review and comment on videos, images, presentations and documents,. With this, Framebench’s communication and feedback tools can be used by Freshdesk to seamlessly interact with their product teams as well as customers.
• Fashion retailer, Voonik, acqui-hired Getsty, a curator of personalised fashion for men, to launch its men’s fashion app as a new division. With this acqui-hire, Voonik plans to leverage its existing customer base, its supplier network and its recommendation engine, to speed up its men’s offerings.
• Ethnic etailer Craftsvilla acquired PlaceofOrigin.in, an online gourmet food marketplace in an all equity deal. The acquisition is in line with Craftsvilla’s vision to build a one-stop destination for consumers to buy everything ethnic.

Rocket Internet reportedly approached Future Group to sell its online home and design website FabFurnish.com. The incubator has also informally floated the idea of off-loading its fashion online retailer Jabong to the Future Group, as it looks to reduce losses.

Shopclues is scouting for payments, analytics and ad-tech companies to acquire, in order to strengthen its seller network to trump over its rivals.

Other Developments Of The Week

• The Public Investment Board (PIB) has approved India Post’s $116.7 Mn (INR 800 Cr.) proposal for setting up a payments bank. The recommendations of PIB will now be placed before the Cabinet for final approval.
• 500 Startups announced a $25 Mn India-specific fund, 500 Kulfi, focused on India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. 500 Kulfi will focus on early stage companies with product-market fit and demonstrated traction. Although the fund is sector-agnostic, it will focus on startups dealing in FinTech, EdTech, Health & Wellness, Data Analytics, Content, and SaaS/SMB.
• Ajay Piramal entered into venture capital (VC) space by establishing a new VC fund called ‘Montane Ventures’. The venture fund has been registered as an Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), and will be focused on early-stage funding requirements of startups operating in pharmaceuticals, finance and private equity (PE) segments.
• Business incubator Axilor Ventures isinviting applications for the third batch of its accelerator programme. It will select 12 startupsfor its 100-day programme, beginning in March 2016.
• Arcatron Mobility won the title of SURGE’s best startup. The startup was chosen from a list of 40 startups that pitched during the event. The final three startups which pitched were Locus, Arcatron Mobility, and SME Corner.
• L&T Infotech plans to seek board approval to invest in technology startups, which will help the company to boost its digital offerings. Seed investments will typically range from $100K to $1 Mn (INR 68.64 lakh to INR 6.86 Cr) depending on the startup.

• Cloud infrastructure provider that provisions virtual servers for software developers, DigitalOcean, plans to make investment of about $5 Mn to build local facility and operation in India in 2016.
• Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) announced a new $350 Mn fund for investing in IoT companies in the US, Europe, India and China. The IoT fund will look for entrepreneurs and support companies around connected enterprise, consumer solutions, connected car and digital health, and those focused on big data and analytics.
• PayPal announced the graduation of the second batch of startups incubated at its Start Tank Incubation Center in Chennai. The graduated companies are Konotor and PiQube. At the time of their graduation, PiQube raised $500K in funding from private investment company HR Fund, while Konotor recently got acquired by software firm Freshdesk.
• Affiliate network, vCommission, launched an accelerator and R&D Centre in Mohali. The centre will focus on conducting research and study for innovative ideas, along with developing software, to enhance the quality of services pertaining to the affiliate marketing industry.
• Indian Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu announced a $7.3 Mn (INR 50 Cr.) innovation fund for startups and small firms, working on technologies, that could benefit the Indian Railways.
• ah! Ventures partnered with 2016 European Angel & P2P Summit to co-produce it as its Asian Summit Partner. The summit will be held on March 9 and 10, 2016 in Prague. It envisions to bring together Europe’s leading angel investors, peer to peer platforms, and innovative early stage companies.
• Founder Institute announced graduation of first batch of its Delhi chapter. The founders and startups are Kaustubh Prasad, TruMoney; Bhawna Singh, Happese; Manoj Pal, Pravda Communications; Anuroop Sirothia, InfinityKards; Vikas Agarwal, MuviHub; and Ambuj Sharma, Mechanicbaba.
• Google for Entrepreneurs has partnered with TechHub to help hundreds of tech companies to scale up their businesses. The partnership will benefit startups from India, who will have access to programmes and assistance from Google.