Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [August 10- 15]

We bring to you the latest edition of Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!

Ahead of a proposed initial public offering (IPO), Indian foodtech unicorn is likely to receive a total investment of up to $200 Mn from US-based investment firm Tiger Global Management. Currently valued at $3 Bn, Zomato has also been in talks with existing investor Temasek Holdings, a Singapore-based investment company, alongside Alibaba Group Holding’s ANT Financial, to raise funds.

This development comes after Zomato’s cofounder and CEO Deepinder Goyal last year had announced that the company would raise $500-600 Mn by January 2020. However, with the disruption caused due to Covid-19, the road to profitability looks bleak. As per Inc42’s analysis of Zomato’s annual report, released last month, the company is likely to incur a 50% loss of revenue in the current fiscal year.

World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) committed to invest $10 Mn (INR 75 Cr) in Hyderabad-based early-stage venture capital firm Endiya Partners’ Fund II. Also, IFC committed an additional $10 Mn for direct co-investments alongside Endiya Fund II. With this partnership, IFC will be providing Endiya’s portfolio companies financial and strategic support, thereby increasing access to growth opportunities and sustainable scalability.

Overall, $59.416 Mn was invested across 25 Indian startups this week, and two acquisitions took place. (This funding report is based on startups that disclosed funding amounts and MCA filings).

Indian Startup Funding Of The Week

1. Medlife: $23.3 Mn
2. RateGain: $15 Mn
3. upGrad: $6.67 Mn
4. Verloop: $3.4 Mn
5. ZipLoan: $2 Mn
6. HungerBox: $1.56 Mn
7. Terra.do: $1.4 Mn
8. HomeLane: $1.4 Mn
9. Onco: $1.3 Mn
10. Capital Float: $801K
11. MaxWholesale: $591K
12. Vinculum: $506K
13. Klub: $400K
14. DocSumo: $220K
15. Purple Style Labs: $133K
16. LetsVenture: $86K
17. Instoried: $56K
18. SignCatch: $46K
19. Aker Foods: $21K
20. Clovia: $20K
21. Classplus: $20K
22. CUSMAT: Undisclosed
23. Winuall: Undisclosed
24. DaveAI: Undisclosed
25. Vieroots: Undisclosed

Medlife

Bengaluru-based online pharmacy company Medlife raised a total of INR 173 Cr ($23.3 Mn) in funding from various investors, including SC Credit Fund and Prasid Uno Family Trust. The fund is most likely to be used for its business expansion, given its recent diversification to online doctor consultations, wellness products and laboratory services. Founded in 2014 by Tushar Kumar and Prashant Singh, the company offers inventory-led epharmacy and helps doctors digitally manage and store patient records.

RateGain

Travel and hospitality SaaS startup RateGain is looking at raising $15 Mn from Avataar Venture Partners. According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the funds would help the company in its expansion plans. Founded in 2004, RateGain is a brainchild of Bhanu Chopra. With its cloud-based technology platform, the company helps hospitality and travel companies streamline operations and sales, thereby maximising revenue.

upGrad

Mumbai-based edtech startup upGrad raised a debt funding of INR 50 Cr ($6.67 Mn) from IIFL Income Opportunities Fund. The debt raised by upGrad comes after it had recently announced the reinstatement of full salaries for all its employees. Last month, it had announced to revoke all salary deductions from the second quarter of the financial year 2021, starting July. Founded in 2015, the cofounders include Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli and Ravijot Chugh. With over 30K paid users, the company focuses on providing higher education, as well as helps working professionals to develop proficiency in most in-demand technical skills.

Verloop

Y Combinator backed customer support automation platform Verloop raised INR 26 Cr ($3.4 Mn) through equity and preference shares from Alpha Wave Incubation, Praitithi Investment Trust, Parampara Early Stage Opportunities Fund and Mumbai-based angel investors Sangameswaran and Sankarnarayanan Sangmeswaran. The company will be using the fund to enhance its product and expand its solution to clients across the country.

Launched in 2015 by Gaurav Singh, the company claims to have processed over 2 Bn queries from customers across its clients, including Nykaa, Cleartrip, Decathlon, Pipa Bella, Portea, Apollo Munich Health Insurance and others. In addition to this, it claims to automate up to 60% of the customer-facing operations for companies in a month. Besides English, its chatbot supports various languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali and Hinglish.

ZipLoan

New Delhi based fintech startup ZipLoan recently raised INR 15 Cr ($2 Mn) in debt funding from Stride Ventures. Interestingly, this is Stride Ventures’ first foray into fintech lending and the amount will be dispersed across two trenches. In a press statement, the company said that its platform, which tests creditworthiness of a borrower, has so far helped it maintain its non-performing assets (NPA) at under 3%.

ZipLoan was founded by Kshitij Puri and Shalabh Singhal in 2015. The company offers working capital loans for kirana stores and micro industries. Till date, it has discussed INR 400 Cr loan across 10K borrowers. Currently, it is present in Delhi, Mumbai, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow and Dehradun.

HungerBox 

Bengaluru-based B2B foodtech startup recently raised INR 11.67 Cr ($1.56 Mn) in funding from existing investors, including Paytm parent company One97 Communications Limited, Sabre Partners Trust, Pratithi Investment Trust and Singapore-based angel investor Srihari Kumar. With this, HungerBox has raised $18 Mn in funding till date. In November 2019, HungerBox cofounder Sandipan Mitra had said that the company plans to raise a total of $25 Mn in Series D round of funding over the next six to eight months. At the time, he had said that the company looks to get publicly listed.

Terra.do

California-based online climate school Terra.do raised $1.4 Mn from Zerodha-backed Rainmatter Capital, BEENEXT and others. With this funding, Terra.do looks to tackle the climate change problem in the country and scale its business. Founded by Anshuman Bapna, Kamal Kapadia and Mayank Jain in 2020, the company runs online learning programmes, alongside a community that helps individuals across the globe transition their skills into working on tough climate change problems.

HomeLane

Bengaluru-based online home furnishing startup HomeLane raised INR 10.5 Cr ($1.4 Mn) from its existing investor JSW Ventures. In last year’s fundraising round, the company had received INR 3 Cr ($30 Mn) from investors like Evolvence India Fund (EIF), Pidilite Group and FJ Labs, alongside Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and JSW Ventures. At the time, HomeLane had said to use the funding to launch newer categories, scale its proprietary design-to-manufacturing platform to more designers, vendors and installers and expand to newer cities in India.

The company was cofounded by Rama Harinath, Srikanth Iyer and Vivek Parasuram in 2014. Currently operating in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi NCR, it offers its customers a personalised design service through their panel of interior designers who work with them to customise the house designs.

Onco

Bengaluru-based cancer care startup Onco raised INR 9.9 Cr ($1.3 Mn), both a mix of debt and preference funding from Alteria Capital India. Prior to this, it had also raised close to $7 Mn in funding from Accel, Chiratae Ventures and Dream Incubator. The funds were said to be utilised to build a team, scale its operations and expand customer outreach within India and abroad.

Onco was founded in 2016 by Rashie Jain and Dr Amit Jotwani. The company leverages its global network of oncologists from across the world to provide accurate and personalised scientific advice to cancer patients at every stage of their journey.

Capital Float

Bengaluru-based digital lending platform Capital Float recently raised INR 3 Cr ($400K) in debt funding from DNG Enterprises. According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the company has raised INR 6 Cr in the last four days. Also, in the past few months, the company had also raised equity funding from multiple investors, including Ribbit Capital, Amazon, SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital India. At the time, the company said that it will be using the funds to strengthen its capital base and expand its lending operations to SMEs and consumers. Launched in 2013 by Gaurav Hinduja and Sashank Rishyasringa, Capital Float lends to SMEs to help them scale up.

MaxWholesale

Gurugram based B2B ecommerce startup MaxWholesale raised additional INR 4.43 Cr ($591K) from Dubai-based private family office Al Falaj Commercial Investment Co and Vistra ITCL, a trustee for Indian Angel Network (IAN) Fund I, as noted in MCA filings accessed by Inc42. Previously the company had already raised close to $3 Mn in Series A funding round led by same investors. The company is utilising these funds to hire talent, develop technology, accelerate growth and expand the network of kirana stores.

Founded by Samarth Agarwal and Rohit Narang in April 2016, MaxWholesale claims to bridge the gap between neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores and the wholesalers or the FMCG companies. Also, its platform allows retailers to restock the inventory for their stores.

Vinculum

Noida-based enterprisetech startup Vinculum on August 10, raised INR 3.79 Cr ($506K) funding from Accel India Ventures, as per MCA filings. The company is yet to reveal the use cases of the fund. Launched in 2007, the company was started by Venkat Nott, Piyush Madan, Deepak Singlain. Vinculum, today, helps brands across various categories to create content and push it to multiple global sales channels and manage orders, inventory and fulfilment on a real-time basis. More than anything, it helps brands discover deep insights and identify online channels with velocity, competition products and price points, thereby helping brands to scale faster.

Klub

Sequoia Surge backed fintech startup Klub, as noted in MCA filings, has raised INR 3 Cr ($400K) in equity funding from Ken Capital Technologies. This development comes after the company had raised $2 Mn in a pre-seed round led by Sequoia Surge. The company had said that it will be using these funds to build Klub’s investment and data platform, along with building a team and acquiring partners on the platform.

Klub was founded by Anurakt Jain and Ishita Verma in August 2019. The company enables financing to high-affinity brands, and in the past, its investment has also come in from EMVC Fintech Fund, Better capital, Tracxn Labs and 9Unicorns among other investors.

DocSumo

Singapore and Mumbai-based DocSumo recently raised a seed fund of $220K from an early-stage venture capital firm Better Capital. The seed round saw participation from global accelerators TechStars and Barclays among others. The company, in a press statement, said that it will use the fund to strengthen its product, marketing and sales engine and expand into newer markets like the USA. Founded in 2019, the company was founded by Rushabh Sheth, along with Bikram Dahl. The company claimed to offer intelligent workflow automation for financial services companies to reduce office costs by up to 70% through document data capture, analytics and fraud detection.

Purple Style Labs

According to the MCA filing, accessed by Inc42, Mumbai-based fashiontech startup Purple Style Labs on August 10, has raised INR 1 Cr ($133K) through preference shares at a face value of INR 10 and premium INR 56,990. Prior to this, during the initial lockdown phase, the company had also raised INR 12.6 Cr from Lemon Innovision Ventures, Progressive Consultancy, Foray Universal Consultancy, Premier Financial Services, Vistra ITCL, Astarc Ventures, BN Fincorp among a few angel investors, including Flipkart’s Binny Bansal and Rishi Vasudev, House of Anita Dongre’s Mukesh Sawlani and GoQuest Media founder Vivek Lath.

Founded by Abhishek Agarwal in 2015, Purple Style labs incubates young designer brands and help them with sales, marketing and technical support.

LetsVenture

Bengaluru-based deal-making platform LetsVenture recently raised INR 65 Lakh ($86K) in debt funding from seed, early and growth-stage focused venture capital firm Accel India and angel investors Sashikanth Balachandar and Gagan Sashikanth, as per MCA filings. LetsVenture deal syndication platform will offer investors, including high net worth individuals (HNIs) and family offices to invest in growth-stage startups. Currently, in a stealth mode, the platform already has more than 500 investors.

LetsVenture was founded in 2013 by Shanti Mohan and Sanjay Jha. The company offers various investment options for investors, including LetsGrow, Angel AIF, LV Titans and MyStartupEquity among others. For instance, LetsGrow is one such platform for angel investors and industry experts to help early-stage startups identify the right metrics that they would need to target growth or capital of $1 Mn to $5 Mn.

Instoried

As per MCA filings accessed by Inc42, Bengaluru based augmented writing platform Instoried has raised INR 42 Lakh ($56K) in equity funding from Artesian Venture Partners. Prior to this, the company had also raised $500K in seed funding from Venture Catalysts. At the time, the company had said that it will be utilising the fund to expand into multiple languages and reach a global audience.

Backed by Axilor Ventures, Avishkar Deeptech accelerator, IIIT-H foundation and Google Developers Launchpad, the company offers end-to-end solutions to content markets, where it helps them target a particular emotion based on its identification of the brand’s emotional quotient. The tool can also provide a tailor-made recommendation of words and phrases. It was founded by Sharmin Ali and Sustanshu Raj in 2018.

SignCatch

San Francisco and New Delhi based enterprisetech startup SignCatch recently raised INR 35 Lakh ($46K) from Edwise International’s founder Sushil Sukhwani, as noted on MCA filings, which was accessed by Inc42. The company was founded by serial entrepreneurs Sumit Duggal and Saurabh Dwivedi in 2014. SignCatch is a cloud-based omnichannel retail tech startup that creates digital transaction environments and experience to both offline and online retail stores. The company is now aggressively looking at expansion plans to enter other markets, particularly Southeast Asian markets.

Aker Foods

As per MCA filings accessed by Inc42, Aker Foods recently raised INR 16 Lakhs ($21K) from MAVM Angels Network and angel investors like Rishi Tandulwadkar, Mayank Jain and Mohammad Khusroo. Knitting the gap in the supply chain with its AI/ML proprietary platform, Aker Foods looks to deliver fresh fruits, vegetables and other supplies to restaurants and businesses by directly procuring from farmers and manufacturers. In the process, the company claims to keep a check on the inventory, manage wastage and reduce manpower requirements. The company was cofounded by Suraj Saste, Nihal Surve, Adarsh Kedari and Manoj Jadhav in February 2019.

Clovia

Delhi based lingerie startup Clovia raised INR 15 Lakh ($20K) from angel investor Babu Vinod Sivadasan in a Series B round, as per MCA filings accessed by Inc42. Last year, the company had raised funding from AT Capital, Ivy Cap Ventures and other investors. At the time, the company said that the funds would be utilised for enhancing its product and technology development, alongside scaling up its brand portfolio, expanding to newer geographies, increasing operational efficiencies and strengthening its team.

Started by husband and wife duo, Pankaj Vermani and Neha Kant, along with Suman Choudhary in 2013. Clovia is one of the popular D2C women-focused brands in the country for lingerie and sleepwear. It designs, manufacturers and sells premium fashion lingerie, innerwear, nightwear and shapewear among others.

Classplus

Sequoia Surge backed Classplus raised INR 15 Lakh ($20K) in equity funding from angel investor Anandakrishnan Chandrasekaran, as per MCA filings accessed by Inc42. Earlier this year, the company had raised $2.5 Mn in Pre-Series A round from Blume Ventures, alongsidealong side angel investors such as Cred’s founder Kunal Shah, general manager of Xiaomi Indonesia Alvin Tse, partner at Locu Ventures Eric Kwan among others.

At the time, the company had said that the fund would be utilised to enhance existing technology, and expand its team across engineering, product and business verticals. Launched in 2018 by Mukul Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal. Classplus enables coaching institutes, tuition centres and private tutors to take their traditional offline class management setups online with a mobile-friendly product.

CUSMAT

Hyderabad-based AR/VR edtech startup CUSMAT raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Venture Catalysts. The funding round also witnessed participation from Raveen Sastry of Multiple Ventures; Co-investors Better Capital’s Vaibhav Domkundwar; MapMyIndia’s Rakesh Verma and CIPL’s Pratap Atwal. With the recent funding, CUSMAT looks to capitalise on the opportunity. The company leverages AR/VR/MR and AI-based technology to skill, upskill, train and assess people in enterprises. Launched in 2016, it’s client belong to logistics, electronics, manufacturing, mining, steel, cement, pharmaceutical and healthcare among others.

Winuall

Bengaluru-based edtech startup Winuall raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Livspace’s Ramakant Sharma and Amit Lokhotia, founder at Park+ and ex-VP Paytm Business, alongside other investors like Akash Gehani (cofounder, Instamojo), Abhinav Patwa (VP, Onsitego), and existing investors Ankit Bhati (Cofounder, Ola) and Nitin Gupta (Head of Engineering, Milkbasket).

Winuall was founded in 2018 by Ashwini Purohit, Abinav Prakash. The company leverages AI to help coaching and educational institutes with digital services, provide content and recommend performance improvement solutions.

DaveAI

Bengaluru-based enterprisetech startup DaveAI recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding in its pre-series from Mumbai Angels Network, GHV Accelerator, IIIT Technology Venture Partners and Crestere Technologies’s CEO Mohan Kumar. The company said that it will be using the fund to enter new markets and sustain its growth at a global scale.

Founded by Ananthakrishnan Gopal, Ashok Balasundaram & Sriram P H in 2016. DaveAI’s sales platform augments in-store sales, field sales and outbound contact centre sales executives with hyper-personalized actionable to influence a specific sales, and in turn revenue. With clients like Maruti Suzuki, Pidilite Industries, Landmark Group and others, the company has recorded 230% revenue growth amid the global slowdown.

Vieroots

Kochi-based health, fitness and wellness startup Vieroots recently received an undisclosed amount of funding from Bollywood actor Sunil Shetty. Founded by Sanjeev Nair in 2018, Vieroots leverages AI to identify 200+ high risk, comorbid health conditions and stores the data digitally, which are tested at partnered genetic labs. In addition to this, the company recently introduced Epigenetic Lifestyle Modifications (EPLIMO), a unique initiative to create highly personalised lifestyle modifications based on genetic profiling and metabolic assessment, thereby keeping patients healthy and young. The company is estimated to be valued at around INR 100 Cr.

Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week 

Gray Matters India

In a bid to boost its AI-based assessment products, Noida-based edtech firm ConveGenius acquired Hyderabad-based edtech startup Gray Matters India for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, ConveGenius looks to empower 100 Mn students at the bottom of the education funnel, and make assessment personalised in a scalable manner.

Going forward, the company plans to automate learning capabilities and offer transparent communication infrastructure for under-served students with enhanced and tailor-made solutions. Grey Matters India was founded in 2013 by Pradeep Sharma with the agenda to develop assessment as a tool that would help students realise their full learning potential. Prior to this acquisition, Gray Matters India’s annual revenue rate (ARR) was about $1 Mn. In the span of seven years, the company has gathered data points from 6 Mn children across 15 states in the country.

Maples Imaging Solution

Pune-based tech firm Maples Imaging Solution which specialises in content-based object retrieval technology, recently got acquired by AntWorks for an undisclosed amount, as mentioned in MCA filings. This acquisition is likely to enhance the growth of AntWorks and its stakeholders multifold and further boost its technology capabilities. Founded in June 2015 by Asheesh Mehra and Govind Sandhu. The company provides technology and business process solutions to clients across industries, including healthcare and financial services among other vertices.

Other Developments Of The Week 

IDEMIA

France-based augmented identity platform, IDEMIA recently launched an innovation and incubation programme called iCube. With this, the company looks to support and assist Indian startups that leverage its augmented identity, and help them in their product development, financial assistance and faster commercial roll-out, alongside providing access to its global client base and opportunity spread across 180 countries. The selected startups will be provided with office space in their incubation facility located in Noida, India. Furthermore, it has partnered with Lumis Partners Supply Chain labs and Freshworks to reach out to a wider range of startups and support them in their endeavour.

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