Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [7 March

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Flipkart secured a credit line of over $67 Mn (INR 450 Cr) from private sector lender HDFC Bank. Prior to this, Flipkart India and Flipkart Internet together had pledged assets worth INR 1,400 Cr to two commercial banks viz. Deutsche Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank. The company also infused over $50 Mn (INR 338 Cr) in Myntra. The move is made in a bid to boost Myntra’s position in the fashion segment. Myntra received the funds from Singapore-based FK Myntra Holdings Pvt. Ltd, a unit of Flipkart Ltd, in January 2016, as per the filed documents.

This week 20 startups raised about $25 Mn in funding altogether (the funding amount is based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts).

Startup Fundings Of The Week

Stylflip: Online portal for pre-owned fashion goods, StylFlip, raised an undisclosed amount in seed round funding from Raj Gala Shah and Zaheer Memon. The startup will use the funds to develop and market its platform.

Yana.ai: Artificial Intelligence startup, Yana, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Hong Kong-based investors, led by Puneet Gupta of Goldman Sachs. The raised capital will be used to expand its categories including recharges, food, travel, shopping and more.

Justride: Car rental services provider, JustRide, raised $400K in Pre-Series A round of funding from a group of angel investors including Dheeraj Jain, partner at Redcliffe Capital. The newly raised capital will be used to enhance its technology.

Smartvizx: Virtual reality solutions startup, Smartvizx, raised over $500K from the Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India (SA&E India). The newly raised capital will be used to expand R&D, launch a new centre in Bangalore and team expansion.

Indiamart: An online listing platform for small and medium businesses, IndiaMART, raised an undisclosed amount in Series C round of funding led by Bhavani Rana on behalf of Amadeus Capital. The round also saw participation from Westbridge Capital, the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, managed by Quona Capital and existing investor Intel Capital. The company will use the raised capital to scale up its online marketplace for businesses Tolexo.com and to finance SMEs.

Dunzo: Chat-based daily tasks management app, dunzo, raised $650K (around INR 4.4 Cr) in Pre-Series A round of funding led by Aspada Investment Advisors and Blume Ventures. Rajan Anandan and Sandipan Chattopadhyay also participated in this round.

vPhrase Analytics Solutions: An artificial intelligence platform, vPhrase, that helps companies convert data to insightful and actionable stories, raised Seed Funding from Venture Catalysts (VCats). The investment was led by Apoorv Ranjan Sharma and Daud Ali from Venture Catalysts, along with other prominent angels from the VCats networks including Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, Anirudh Damani, Vishal Maheshwari, Nitin Aggarwal, Mayank Shah, Jayesh Shah and Anand Ladsariya.

Finomena: Fintech startup Finomena raised an undisclosed amount of funding from venture capital fund Matrix Partners. Other investors, who participated in this round included Kaushal Aggarwal and Harshvardhan Chamria, along with other entrepreneurs and angels.

Cookaroo: Food delivery startup, Cookaroo, raised an undisclosed amount in angel round of funding from Vijay Krishna Yadav and Sachindra Murugesh. The funds will be utilised towards technology development and to scale up operations across Bangalore and Hyderabad.

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LoveCycles: A comprehensive women’s health tracker app, LoveCycles, raised about $741K (INR 5 Cr) from seed-stage investors Prime Venture Partners. The startup will use the newly raised capital to expand its accessibility in India by introducing regional language support.

Medidaili: Medical support service platform, Medidaili, raised $100K in an angel round of funding from a consortium of private investors. The startup will use the newly raised capital for product development, increasing brand presence and tying up with diagnostic centres pan India.

KartRocket: Ecommerce platform enabler, KartRocket, announced completion of its Series B round of funding with an additional $2 Mn from a Japanese investor. It had earlier raised $6 Mn in January this year, as part of this round. The funds will be used to grow and market the mobile marketplace of the offline-to-online business Kraftly.

Cloudacar: Social commute platform for ride-sharing, Cloudacar, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Amit Choudhary, Anuj Puri and Sumit Goyal. The startup plans to work with companies to offer personalised car-pooling facility for their employees.

Nukkad Shops: Local commerce platform, Nukkad Shops, raised $1 Mn (INR 6.7 Cr) in a funding round led by PurpleTalk Inc, a mobile solutions company.

MyGubbi: Online interior home decor and furnishing company, Mygubbi.com, raised $2.5 Mn in Seed Funding led by angel investors including Vipul Parekh, Ananda Kallugadde, and Rajesh K Murthy. The startup plans to head the growth path in order to secure a sizeable share of the home interiors market.

Now: Bike taxi and hyperlocal delivery app, NOW, raised $500K in angel round of funding from Ruchirans Jaipuria, Managing Director of Jaipuria Group and Anuj Sanghi, director of Supreme Motors. It aims to maximise utilisation of bike riders by overlapping work between bike taxi rides and delivery.

Wooplr: Fashion discovery app, Wooplr, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from co-founders of InMobi and Piyush Shah. Raghunandan G and Rajiv Mehta also participated in the round.

Reach: An app that enables users to access music, games and other mobile phone apps, has raised $500K in Pre-Series A round of funding led by Japanese venture capital firm Rebright Partners. Other investors who participated in the round included Sol Primero, Ankur Warikoo, Ankur Singla, Sudhir Anandarao, Durgesh Kaushik, Pritesh Gupta and Anunay Gupta.

NinjaCart: Online grocery delivery startup, NinjaCart, raised $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in a funding round led by Accel Partners. The round also saw participation from Qualcomm Ventures, Singapore-based M&S Partners, and ZopSmart. The startup plans to use the newly raised capital to hire talent, invest in supply chain infrastructure and technology.

Icertis: ERP solutions startup, Icertis, raised about $15 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in a Series-B round of funding led by Ignition Partners. Existing investors Greycroft Partners and Fidelity Growth Partners India also participated in this round.

Clipbyte.com, an ecommerce portal that provides comprehensive online services for media monitoring across broadcast, print, internet and social media, plans to raise around $2 Mn to fund its business needs.

Zonnett, a car maintenance platform, plans to raise about $5-10 Mn in Series A funding for its expansion in other cities and technology development.

Nykaa.com, an online retailer for fashion and beauty products is looking to raise $14.9 Mn (INR 100 Cr) to expand its private label offerings. It looks to turn profitable in the next 10-12 months.

And, financial services provider Capital First plans to raise $52.1 Cr (INR 350 Cr) by issuing debentures on private placement basis.

Acquisitions Of The Week

Online entertainment ticketing portal, BookMyShow, acquired Fantain Sports, a startup that offers fan relationship management products and solutions for sports teams worldwide for an undisclosed amount
Food-tech startup InnerChef acquired two startups in the food tech domain including EatonGo and Flavour Labs for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition of Flavour Labs, InnerChef will leverage the learnings of running mobile kitchens and the acquisition of EatOnGo will give it a foothold in the markets like Bangalore.

Roadrunnr and Tinyowl, are in early stage talks to merge in an all-stock deal. Both companies with common investors – Sequoia & Nexus, aim to come out as an integrated hyperlocal delivery service, to win more customers and expand their business.

Other Developments Of The Week

Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) is looking to acquire home and personal care companies in Africa, Indonesia and India, with a war chest of $447 Mn (INR 3,000 Cr).
Tech Mahindra Ltd is all set to create a ‘startup garage’, first corporate garage, for its in-house entrepreneurs. The company has as many as 15 businesses from among the over 1.05 lakh TechM employees.
Trivitron healthcare founder and Healthcare entrepreneur, GSK Velu, has set up two investment vehicles to invest in healthcare services, consumer- led companies and enterprise technology. The two funds have been segregated as a $100 Mn venture capital fund Stakeboat Capital and a family office with a corpus of $75 Mn.
Five fintech startups, in the areas of artificial intelligence, quality assurance, mobile, and biometric payments, were selected as the winners of HDFC Bank’s Digital Innovation Summit. The startups are Senseforth Technologies, Tagnpin, Safe to Pay, Bugclipper Technologies, and Tapits Technologies.
Tata Capital has signed a memorandum of understanding with startup incubator T-Hub. The MoU will facilitate trade and investment between Australia, New Zealand and the Indian subcontinent.
An AIF-Category II Private Equity fund, Paragon Partners, raised $50 Mn in commitments, marking the first close of their $200 Mn private equity fund. The fFund will focus on five key sectors like consumer discretionary, financial services, infrastructure services, industrials and healthcare services.
LetsIgnite announced ‘My Vote Today’ as the winner of its pitching session “The Art Of Start”. It had selected 16 startups who pitched and further 6 startups were shortlisted for competing in the final round.
An online education startup, UpGrad, tied up with the online deal making platform LetsVenture, to introduce an angel investing course. The course aims to be a platform for aspiring, amateur and mature angel investors. It wants to ‘bring science’ into angel investing.