The week went pretty interesting for the Indian Startup ecosystem, with biggest news of the week remain to be Ratan Tata investing in Snapdeal. A lot of funding activity took place during this week, have a quick look into it.
Holisol Logistics – Delhi based Holisol logistics, a back-end logistic provider to ecommerce players raised $1.5 Mn in its first venture capital funding led by oil and gas professional Sundeep Bhandari.
Hike – It raised $65 Mn in a new round of funding led by Tiger Global, with BSB also participating in the round. The new funds will be infused in product development and marketing, apart from hiring and grow its team from the current number of 100 people.
Snapdeal – Industrial veteran, Ratan Tata invested undisclosed amount in Snapdeal from his personal capacity. Snapdeal had raised about $435.7 Mn in funding and about $233 Mn this year alone from investors including Premji Invest, Temasek and eBay Inc. It is s growing at 600% rates year-on-year and has recently reached $1 billion in sales (gross merchandise value).
Theatro – A US and Bangalore based voice controlled wearable communications device maker for hourly workers in the retail, hospitality and manufacturing market segments, raised $5 Mn investment in Series A round led by Khosla Ventures. The funds will be used to help Theatro aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts as well as broaden and accelerate product innovation.
iTiffin – Bangalore based iTiffin, Inc, which runs online tiffin service venture iTiffin.in, raised $1 Mn from a large Indian family office in a seed round. The funding will be used for increasing operational efficiencies, set up 10 retail centres, upgrade its interface and add new features and venture into the mid-night snack segment.
Manthan Software Services Pvt Ltd – It raised undisclosed amount in funding from its existing investors Fidelity Growth Partners India and Norwest Venture Partners. Manthan is a provider of Business Intelligence and Big Data analytics solutions for enterprises.
PriceBag – It secured $2 Mn in funding from a group of unnamed high net-worth individuals (HNIs). Pricebag is a product reviews and price comparison portal. The raised funds will be used for product development and marketing.
Apart from funding, a few acquisitions also took place this week including, Mumbai based ZoomIn, an online photo service connecting people and their moments of magic, in a bid to strengthen its global roll out acquiring San Francisco based Photojojo.
Bangalore based Altiux Innovations Pvt Ltd, a provider of product engineering and innovation services acquired P-Device Systems Pvt Ltd, maker of machine-to-machine (M2M) and converged cloud platforms for companies operating in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, for an undisclosed amount.
