Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [23-28 October]

We bring to you the latest edition Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding of the week. This week 19 Indian startups raised about $42 Mn in funding altogether in the Indian startup ecosystem. (The startup funding calculations are based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts)

eBay Inc, the global multinational ecommerce corporation acquired a 5.44% stake in Flipkart, in exchange for its eBay India business for $211 Mn (sold in April 2017) and $514 Mn cash investment (April 2017 as part of $1.4 Bn funding round) in the Indian ecommerce unicorn. Earlier this week, Flipkart was also said to be in acquisition talks with Swiggy, Urban Ladder, and UrbanClap.

Indian Startup Funding Of The Week

BigBasket: Bengaluru-based online grocery startup Bigbasket raised $5 Mn (INR 32.65 Cr) from Helion Ventures Partners. This comes at a time when rival Grofers India has pumped in $14.7 Mn (INR 96 Cr) from its Singapore-based parent company Grofers International.

Toppr: Mumbai-based personalised elearning solutions provider and online test preparation platform, Toppr raised $6.92 Mn (INR 45 Cr) in its Series B funding, led by its existing investors SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures, and FIL Capital Management. This capital will be used to expand the geographical footprint and accelerate user acquisition.

ParkEasy: Machine learning based parking discovery startup Park Easy, which operates Android app Peazy secured a pre-seed funding from Dutch Accelerator Rockstart. The amount is said to be around $117.4K (Euro 100K) and the deal has been done at a valuation of $1.8 Mn. With this deal, Park Easy will also shift its base to the Netherlands.

FYRE: Herbal energy shot maker FYRE raised $500K in a seed funding round from Venture Catalysts. The investment in FYRE is led by Venture Catalysts angels – Apurva Parekh (Director, Pidilite Industries),Anupam Mittal (Founder, Shaadi.com), Vikash Agarwal, Manish Agarwal (Founders,Nandan Group) RomilRatra (Cofounder, Bellona Hospitality), Kunal Kishore(Founder, Value 360 Communications) AkshayBardia (Director, AT Plus), Karim Jaffer (MD, Gossip Shoes) Vijay Lakhani, Anil Jain, Amit Agrawal, Anup Agrawal, Dipan Dalal and others. The startup funding will be used by the company to ramp up operations, expanding sales & marketing team and enhance its distribution network.

ShieldSquare: Bengaluru-based bot mitigation and management startup ShieldSquare raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding in a round led by Endiya Partners and RPG Ventures. Anthill Ventures and existing investors StartupxSeed, Venture Highway and a few angel investors also participated in the round. The startup will use the newly-secured financing to strengthen its bot mitigation technology platform. A portion of the funding will also go into expanding its market presence across the US and Europe.

Olly Credit: Delhi-based fintech startup that offers micro-credit cards Olly Credit raised an undisclosed amount of funding in Seed round of funding led by Incubate Fund. Former Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company CEO Sandesh Kirkire; Anand Kumar, Partner at Sand Hill Counsel and  Jaipur Rugs Director Yogesh Chaudhary also participated in this round of funding.

OfBusiness: Gurugram-based SME lending platform OfBusiness secured $3.8 Mn (INR 25 Cr) in debt funding from Kotak Mahindra Bank.The funding comes as an extension to the $7.6 Mn (INR 50 Cr) working capital limit that the startup recently procured from the bank. With the newly-raised debt funding from Kotak Mahindra, OfBusiness aims to further expand its reach across the country to encompass a larger number of asset-light MSMEs that are currently unbanked.

SpotDraft: Gurugram-based legaltech startup SpotDraft raised $550K (INR 3.5 Cr) in a Seed funding round led by VC firm Hunch Ventures. The other investors that participated in the round include Japan-based Spiral Ventures, 500 Startups, Singapore Angel Network and Citrus Payments founder Satyen Kothari. The platform has revealed plans to use this capital from Hunch Ventures and others for scaling the business and marketing the product locally. The capital will be further utilised to bolster the startup’s presence in the contract automation sector, which boasts a market potential of $80 Bn.

Skillenza: Bengaluru-based online platform, Skillenza (formerly known as Venturesity), which helps enterprises in hiring talent raised $722K in a Seed funding round led by Blume Ventures and Indian Angel Network. Aneesh Reddy from Capillary, Surojit Niyogi from HomeBit, Raghu from Taxi for Sure, Pallav Nadhani from Fusion Charts and Tracxn also participated in this round of funding. The newly raised funds will be used to disrupt skill building and talent engagement activities.

ZipLoan: Delhi-based SME lending platform, ZipLoan raised $3 Mn Series A funding from Matrix Partners India. The round also saw the participation of the fintech startup’s existing investors, including WaterBridge Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and former Capital18 MD, Sarbvir Singh. The company will utilise the newly-secured capital for geographical expansion in non-metro cities. The funds will also enable the SME lending platform to increase its loan book size.

Harness.io: This is the highest Indian startup funding of the week. BIG Labs invested in the $20 Mn Series A round of Harness.io, a Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform, along with Menlo Ventures. Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures is joining the board of Harness.

TagBox: Bengaluru-based cold chain monitoring solution provider TagBox raised an undisclosed amount of angel investment from Indian Angel network and the IAN Fund. The funding round was led by IAN members Naveen Gupta and Dinesh Goel. The startup plans to utilise the funds for product development, filing patents and global certifications for its entire tech stack and is currently focusing on cold chain solutions for pharma, F&V, dairy, meats, processed and frozen food, ecommerce and retail

CASHe: Mumbai-based app-only lending platform CASHe raised about $3.07 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in debt funding from IFMR Capital in its NBFC company, Bhanix Finance and Investment. The debt funding will be used by the fintech startup to ramp up its loan book.

Bharati Robotics: This is another important funding in the Indian startup ecosystem. Pune-based cleaning and material handling equipment maker Bharati Robotics raised an undisclosed amount of funding from its existing investors – Society For Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE, IITB Incubator), and other angel investors. The raised fund will be used to expand the manufacturing capacity and technology applicability and cater to demand from both local and global customers, according to the company statement.

Original4Sure: Original4Sure, which offers anti-counterfeiting and original product identification solutions secured $400K from a clutch of investors led by Venture Highway, Startup Buddy and Nirav Chokshi. The funds, to be used for tech and business development, were raised through the platforms Mumbai Angels and Let’s Venture.

Medsmart: Bengaluru-based healthtech startup Medsmart raised $1 Mn from Excel Business Solutions. The investment is a structured deal involving an equity and technology partnership, where Excel will develop and maintain the Medsmart’s real-time intelligence data engine

PlayX:  Gurugram-based esports startup PlayX has secured undisclosed amount as angel funding led by Lead Angels Network – an alumni-focused pan India angel network. The startup will use the funds to develop its technology, build the team and create gaming focused marketing campaigns.

PropStory: Gurugram-based real estate content portal PropStory raised an undisclosed amount in an angel funding round. The investors included Abhishek Bhatewara, a member of angel investor platform Mumbai Angels; Vivek Shah, head of investment banking at Chinese securities and brokerage major Haitong Securities; Suraj Saharan, co-founder of logistics startup Delhivery; Paras Arora, co-founder of Tea Halt, a tea-based restaurant chain; and a few other angels participated in the round. PropStory will use the funds to recruit full-time content writers, for business development, product development, and to introduce new services.

Cashfree: Payments platform Cashfree raised $120K in seed funding from Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator. Cashfree was one among 130 startups selected by the accelerator for its 2017 summer batch, which ended in August this year. According to the founders, the funds will be utilised for product development, hiring more individuals to sales and engineering platforms, strengthening bank partnerships, as well as for marketing engagements.

Also, Doctor Insta, a Gurugram-based online consultation startup which offers a video medicine platform, revealed its plans to raise $4 Mn in funding to further expand its operations in the country.

Further, Bengaluru-based media publication The TechPanda got acquired by Espacio Incubator. Through the acquisition, Espacio aims to help the tech blog grow and give a greater voice to the Indian tech and startup scene. Also, finally, after more than a year of speculation, OYO confirmed that it is no longer involved in talks with ZO Rooms for a potential acquisition.

Other Developments Of The Week

• The Economic Times has launched the 2017 edition of The Power Of Ideas. Presented by Facebook, the initiative has been launched in partnership with Department of Science & Technology (DST) and the Centre for Incubation and entrepreneurship (CIIE).
• Alteria Capital, a venture debt fund founded by former InnoVen Capital senior executives Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali received the nod of market regulator SEBI to launch a $154.4 Mn (INR 1,000 Cr) fund for startups.
• Andhra Angels announced to invest over $15.38 Mn (INR100 Cr) in startups over the next few years. he VC group is expected to take shape over the next six months and plans to enrol nearly 50 investors in the initial phase. Also, the Board of Trustees of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Inc has approved the formation of TiE Amaravati Chapter.
• AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal launched Bansal Innovation Group (BIG) Labs with a fund corpus of $50 Mn. BIG Labs is found with the goal of building new companies into high-growth startups that could potentially be the tech industry’s next billion-dollar companies.
• Bengaluru-based early-stage venture capital firm and accelerator Axilor shortlisted 20 startups for the Winter 2017 accelerator programme. For every shortlisted startup, the 100-day accelerator programme is supported by Axilor’s $38.87K (INR 25 Lakhs) fund through Axilor’s Scale-up programme.
• New Delhi-based VC firm Omnivore Partners is expected to close the remaining half of the $90 Mn fund by the end of January 2018. With this fund, the VC firm aims to invest in 20 agritech and rural innovation-specific startups by next year.
• Espark-Viridian, a startup accelerator for early and growth-seeking startups in-association with Headstart Network Foundation, announced the winners of its – SmartUp 2017 a Pan India Business Plan Competition, held from 13th-14th October. The three startups which are selected as the final three prize winners included Pune based Marketyard Agrisolutions, Bengaluru based Machstatz, and Jaipur based ClinMD.
• A number of state-run oil firms joined hands to launch a $49.3 Mn innovation fund to support more than 30 energy startups over a period of three years. Led by the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, the initiative is part of the Startup Sangam scheme. The initiative is in line with the government’s Startup India programme.
• MyOperator launched “Startup Program” for early stage startups. It aims to accelerate cloud telephony & automation among the startup ecosystem. To have access to the program the startup must be under two years of operations. And the early stage startups should have infused funds up to $1M.
• Dalberg Advisors partnered with the Government of Andhra Pradesh (AP), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to organize an AgTech Pitch Competition #SmartFarming4AP. The Pitch Competition is to seek out innovators developing solutions, which could solve the challenges faced by the small and marginal farmers. The winners will get an opportunity to sign an MoU with the Government of AP to roll out their solution in the State.

Stay tuned for the next edition of the Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!