Funding Galore: Startup Fundings Of The Week [8Feb-14Feb]

This week Practo, one of the largest doctor search engine in Asia raised $30 Mn funding in fresh round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. The investment is been regarded as one of the largest investments into digital health globally till date. During the week in total 15 startups managed to raise massive funding of more than $100 Mn. (This is based on startups that disclosed their funding amount).

Let’s have a quick recap of who-funded-whom and who-acquired-whom events in this week.

20Dresses: Mumbai-based women focussed online styling and personalisation fashion startup 20Dresses has gathered $1 Mn funding in a seed round led by a group of angel investors including Srinivas Aluri, MD at Morgan Stanley, ex-Lehman Brothers executive Srinivas Modukury and BS Nagesh, founder of Trust for Retailers.20 Dresses  is an exclusive Members-Only site where users gets a personal stylist setting up a personal showroom with plans to use the raised fund for investing in technology, people and infrastructure.

Stayzilla: Stayzilla, an online hotel booking platform, has raised $20 Mn in Series B funding from Nexus and Matrix Partners.The company plans to use the fund in marketing and brand building. With currently present in  5000 towns Stayzilla plans to expand to 8000 towns by the end of this year.

Cimply Five: Cimply Five a startup founded in September 2014, received an undisclosed amount of fresh investments from Wipro veteran Suresh Senapaty and former Infosys Chief Financial Officer T V Mohandas Pai offers cloud-based solutions for compliance and finance professionals.

Mineral Tree Inc: Payment automation startup, MineralTree Inc raised $11.1 Mn in a Series B round of funding from First Data and existing investors including Fidelity Growth Partners & .406 Ventures. This round brings the company’s total funding to $22.7 Mn. The funds will be used to speed up product development and further expand its direct sales organisation targeting growing companies and financial accounting outsourcing (FAO) organisations. Boston-based MineralTree provides cloud-based payments solutions services to banks and their small and medium business customers.

Nimble Wireless: AngelPrime invested $500,000 in Nimble Wireless, which specializes in IoT and M2M technologies.The company has made this to shift its focus from technology services space to broaden its focus to hardware and Internet of Things(IoT).

Capital Float: Bangalore-based fin-tech startup Capital Float has raised $13 Mn in a Series A round of funding led by SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital and Aspada.This is third time Capital Float is raising funding in past one year totalling to $16 Mn. The startup plans to use the funds raised to expand into more cities, improve its tech platform, and launch new products.

FindYahan: Delhi based startup Findyahan.com grabbed angel funding led by Karan Bajwa (MD, Microsoft India) along with Parvesh Bareja (Director, HeliosPacks), Sunjay Kapur (MD, Sona Koyo Steering), and Amanpreet Bajaj (Ex Cofounder, Letsbuy.com) also participating in the round. FindYahan is a marketplace where you can find reliable and verified service providers in your area. The company plans to bridge the gap between service seekers and service providers.

Unikrn: Unikrn, a gaming & entertainment company founded by former Microsoft GM Rahul Sood announced that the startup has increased its seed funding from $2.5 Mn to $3 Mn due to increased demand from several strategic international investors.The startup plans to use the funds raise to continue forming its gaming & entertainment roots in Seattle, WA.

CarTrade.com: Mumbai-based online auto classifieds platform CarTrade.com raised an undisclosed amount from Chip Perry, former founding chief executive of Auto Trader, the largest online auto classifieds company in the US.Last year in October, CarTrade had raised $30 Mn from Warburg Pincus with its existing investors Canaan Partners and Tiger Global also participating in the round of funding.

Faaso’s: Pune-based tech focussed QSR chain Faaso’s grabbed $20 Mn in a fresh round of funding led by LightBox Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Of the total amount, $16 Mn is equity investment by Lightbox and Sequoia, and a $4 Mn debt.

myNoticePeriod: Bangalore-based online recruitment startup myNoticePeriod has raised INR 18 Cr. in Series A round of funding led by IDG Ventures India. This round came in just a few months after it had raised over INR 2 Cr in a seed round led by IDG Ventures India and individual Investors including Prashant Kirtane, CTO and co-founder of travelmob.com, Shamsunder Talreja, owner of JetSet Capital, and Ravi Gururaj of Frictionless Ventures among others.The startup plans to deploy the funds raised to expand it’s team and enhance the technology platform.

Townscript: Townscript grabbed angel funding led by a group of investors including Mohit Garg (Co-Founder, MindTickle),  Mahesh Parasuraman (Managing Director- Carlyle Group), Nipam Shah (Founder, NRS Advisors), Dheeraj Vasisht (Director – Ameretat Technologies), Sandeep Bhandarkar (CEO – Ameretat Technologies), and few others. The company provides an easy to use registration management tools that can address all key pain points in event registration & payments collection.

Taskbob: India Quotient this week announced Taskbob as the winner of its recently launched contest MobileIQ. The startup will receive INR 50 Lakh as the winning amount. Taskbob creates happy households by providing everyday repairs, temp cooks or drivers etc through its recently launched mobile app around Powai area in Mumbai.

Scandid: Pune-based startup Scandid at recently concluded Seedstars World(SSW) won prize of $5 Lakh by SSW. Scandid competed with 9 other startups from across the globe.

Acquisitions of the week:

This week, BigTree Entertainment Ltd, the company that owns online entertainment ticketing portal BookMyShow has acquired a majority stake in Bangalore-based social media analytics startup Eventifier in a deal valued at about $2 Mn in cash with the investors exiting. Its current investors including Kae Capital, Accel Partners and The Startup Centre will exit the company as a part of deal.

There were also reports, that Titan is planning to buy 15% stake in online jewellery retailer, CaratLane.com in a deal worth $30 Mn. The deal is likely to be signed in few weeks which will make CaratLane valuation at around INR 1,200 Cr.

Other important developments of the week include:

The US-based venture capital firm, Nexus Venture Partners is in talks with limited partners to raise up to $400 Mn for its next fund to gather $1 Bn in terms of total funds under management. Homegrown funds like Nexus raises larger funds to stay ahead.

Europe-based venture capital firm, Mangrove Capital Partners has announced to invest around $250 Mn corpus in India’s ecommerce, internet and telecom startups. The investment firm will look at investing in companies that offer disruptive models in the ecommerce and telecom space, for an investment period of 5-10 years.

Earlier, Mangrove had invested $5-10 Mn in StoreKing, which offers ecommerce platform to retail stores that double up as grocery stores in the tier-3 and lower towns in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Ahmedabad-based GVFL Limited, led by Mihir Joshi, President & CEO, GVFL  has launched INR 600 Cr. MSME Fund, known as Value Multiplier Fund. The Value Multiplier Fund has already received approval from SEBI as Category I (SME Fund) under AIF Regulations. The fund will invest in young companies with scalable business model, large target market, high entry barrier or first mover advantage, and supported by sound management team.

Google Capital is also planning to set up its growth capital arm in India with a pre-set target of earning maximum profit by investing in startups.

The Reserve Bank of India(RBI) has finally ready to allocate around INR 2,000 Cr. in 2015-16 to a startup focused fund.

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