[Funding Galore] From PhonePe To MPL’s Mayhem Studios — Indian Startups Raised $216 Mn This Week

Fundraising has dropped to 61% in the second week of April after Indian startups raised over half a billion dollars collectively in the opening week of April. Between April 10 and 15, Indian startups collectively raised a total of $216 Mn across 18 deals. 

Last week, Indian startups raised $564 Mn across 18 deals. However, this week’s total investment is a 111.7% jump from $102 Mn raised by the Indian startups across 14 deals between March 27 and April 1, 2023. 

Key Highlights From This Week’s Funding 

• • Bengaluru-based fintech decacorn PhonePe continued its fundraising spree. Earlier this week, it raised another $100 Mn from General Atlantic, taking the total funding raised by the startup to $750 Mn in 2023 
  • Fintech startup U GRO Capital raised INR 340 Cr ($41.3 Mn) from IFU and long-term shareholders, making it the second largest funding round of the week 
  • Bengaluru-based fantasy platform MPL’s new venture – Mayhem Studios raised $20 Mn in Series A, led by Sequoia Capital India in participation from Steadview Capital, Truecaller and others 
  • Like the past week, the fintech sector grabbed the maximum amount of funding this week too.The sector managed to raise $141 Mn across two deals 
  • In terms of deal count, enterpristech sector topped the list with six deals
  • B2B-focussed businesses continued witnessing greater investors’ interests this week  with 10 deals, raising $78 Mn investment 
  • Early-stage investment grew by 4%, at $10 Mn this week
  • This week, Mumbai Angels became the most active investor as it participated in two deals.

Startup Funding Deals Of This Week

From The Acquisition Desk

• B2B unicorn OfBusiness agreed to acquire 100% stake in Koeleman India, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based Koeleman Foods International
• Fintech startup Uni Cards has acquired OHMY Technologies (OMLP2P), a peer-to-peer lending platform 
• Alpha Wave-backed video editing platform VideoVerse acquired Reely.ai – the US-based, AI-enabled content generation platform. 

Other Major Developments

• Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures received commitments of INR 100 Cr or 15% of the corpus from the SIDBI-managed Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS)
• Venture Capital firm BoldCap announced the launch of its second fund with a corpus of $25 Mn to invest in early-stage SaaS startups
• Healthvista India, the parent company of healthtech startup Portea Medical, received SEBI approval for INR 1,000 Cr IPO
• Coworking giant WeWork India introduced a new initiative under which employees can surrender up to 25% of their vested stock options.
• JSW Group’s B2B ecommerce venture JSW One Platforms raised INR 205 Cr ($25 Mn) in a Series A funding round led by Mitsui & Co Ltd.