Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [December 14-19]

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

Zomato has announced the closing of a $660 Mn round from 10 new investors such as Tiger Global, Kora Capital, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview, among others. Many of these rounds had already been announced as investors in the company in past months. Zomato has raised the round at a post-money valuation of $3.9 Bn.

Cofounder and CEO Deepinder Goyal announced that about $140 Mn came through a secondary transaction, which provided liquidity worth $30 Mn to our ex-employees.

As per rounds announced earlier, Zomato secured $50 Mn from Kora Management LP, $60 Mn from Luxor Capital Group and $40 Mn from Mirae Asset, along with $20 Mn each from Steadview Capital and Bow Wave Capital Management, and $5 Mn from Baillie Gifford & Co.

About $980.6 Mn was invested across 22 Indian startups this week, and two companies were acquired. Last week,  $78.1 Mn was invested across 17 deals. (This funding report is based on startups that disclosed funding amounts)

Top Indian Startup Funding Deals Of The Week

• Zomato: $660 Mn from Tiger Global, Kora Capital, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview

 

• Zenoti: $160 Mn in Series D from Advent International, Tiger Global Management and Steadview Partners

 

• LeadSquared: $32 Mn  in Series B from Gaja Capital, Stakeboat Capital and Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal

 

• Wakefit: $26 Mn in Series B from Verlinvest and Sequoia Capital India

 

• Delhivery: $25 Mn from Steadview

 

• PhonePe: $21 Mn from Flipkart

 

• Arya: $21 Mn in Series B from Quona Capital and existing investors LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore

 

• PagarBook: $15 Mn in Series A from Sequoia Capital, India Quotient

 

• Shiprocket: $7.5 Mn from March Capital and existing investor Tribe Capital in Series C

 

• M1xchange: $4.5 Mn from Beenext Asia and Mayfield

 

• Pickrr: $4 Mn from Guild Capital, Omidyar Network India

 

• Hashnode: $2.1 from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge

 

• LOGIQ: $1.8 Mn in seed round led by Leo Capital

 

• Sreyas Holistic Remedies: $1.3 Mn from BlackSoil

 

• Appboxo: $1.1 Mn in seed round from FF APAC Scout, 500 Startups Southeast Asia, Plug and Play, and Antler

 

• Countingwell: $1 Mn from Delhi Private School of UAE and Interstar

 

• Callify.ai: $560K from Malpani Ventures, Venture Catalysts, Calega Venture, The Chennai angel Network and Marvari Angel Network

 

• Cover it Up: $475K from angel investors Sanjay Wadhwa, Manish Mardia, Madan Lal Gundecha, Vimal Jain, and Nishank Sakaria

 

• BiteSpeed: $275K in seed round  from Whiteboard Capital, First Cheque, Upsparks, and First Principles, along with other angel investors

 

• Spice Money: Undisclosed amount from Bollywood actor and entrepreneur Sonu Sood

 

• Fleeca: Undisclosed amount from Bridgestone India

 

• Hudle: Undisclosed amount in Pre-Series A from Survam Partners, family office of Suman Kant Munjal and others

Acquisitions Of The Week

 

• Healthtech startup Wellversed has acquired Delhi NCR-based Sportfit to expand its portfolio of training programmes for health transformation and athletic transformations. The acquisition will help Wellversed augment the ‘Wellness Servicing’ team at Wellversed, increasing the team strength to around 100 employees. The company plans to enable over 100K paid transformations by the end of 2021.

 

• Melbourne-headquartered deeptech startup Truventor.ai has acquired Pune-based B2B cloud manufacturing platform Chizel. As part of the deal, Chizel founders and investors will get an undisclosed stake in Truventor, while Chizel founders will join the Truventor management team.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Bengaluru-based mental health startup Wysa is looking to raise funds from Google, the company’s filings with the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) confirm.  he filings, which contain Wysa parent Touchkin Eservices Private Limited’s articles of association (AOA), read, ‘“Series A1 Investor” shall mean Google International LLC.’

 

• The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has relaxed the norms to allow fintech startups and other entities to enter the mutual fund (MF) business. Until now, the regulator required entrants to have five years of experience in the financial services business and demonstrate three years of profitability, and to maintain a net worth of $6.8 Mn (INR 50 Cr).

 

• SEBI has recommended a slew of relaxations in norms in order to boost the listing of startups. This includes reducing the holding period for pre-issue capital and allowing discretionary allotment to all eligible investors.

 

• Bengaluru-headquartered venture capital firm PointOne Capital has announced the first close of its maiden fund of $6.8 Mn (INR 50 Cr). The fund aims to invest about $136K (INR 1 Cr) per startup.

 

• The Reserve Bank of India this week announced that cross-border payments is going to be the theme for its second cohort under the regulatory sandbox initiative. The central bank has also decided to keep MSME lending as the theme for its third cohort.

 

• Noida-based Indian online classifieds company Info Edge has expanded the corpus of Info Edge Venture Fund (IEVF) to INR 750 Cr. This follows a contribution of INR 375 Cr from MacRitchie Investments.