Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [8-13 July]

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

One of the biggest funding rounds in the Indian startup ecosystem was Bengaluru-based edtech unicorn BYJU’S raised $150 Mn from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). This round also includes the participation from edtech investment firm Owl Ventures, who has first time invested in an Indian startup.

BYJU’S will use this funding for international expansion and tailoring its product for a global audience.

In total, this week, 19 startups raised $403.05 Mn funding and 10 startup acquisitions took place in the Indian startup ecosystem. (This funding report is based on startups that disclosed funding amount.)

Indian Startup Funding For The Week

IndusOS: Mumbai-based mobile operating system and native applications platform Indus OS raised $5.75 Mn (INR 42 Cr). The investment has come in from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC) for a 20% stake in Indus OS. In this round, Ventureast is participating as well, investing a small undisclosed amount.

Stanza Living: New Delhi-based student housing startup Stanza Living received commitments worth $50 Mn in its ongoing growth equity round led by New York-based Falcon Edge Capital.  The funding round also saw the participation of Stanza Living’s existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, and Accel Partners. This is the first tranche of a larger ongoing equity financing round that the company is raising. The startup is also in talks with multiple equity investors to raise additional capital for the current round and is reportedly valued at $300 Mn in the current round.

O4S: Supply Chain SaaS startup O4S raised $2.1 Mn in Pre-Series A funding round led by Venture Highway to expand its operations in India. The three-year-old startup till date raised a total of $2.5 Mn including a seed investment of $400K in 2017. The new funding will be used to strengthen its workforce, accelerate client acquisition and build technology infrastructure across industries within India.

Pixxel: Bengaluru-based space-tech startup raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed money from growX ventures and other prominent angels. The startup is building a constellation of the world’s most advanced earth imaging satellites

UrbanClap: UrbanClap founders invested $12.6 Mn (INR 86.27 Cr) in their personal capacity into the company. The founders — Abhiraj Bhal, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan — have invested $4.2 Mn (INR 28.75 Cr) each into their five-year-old company.

Gnani.ai: Bengaluru-based automatic speech recognition startup Gnani.ai raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC). Samsung’s investment in Gnani’s ASR engine has the potential to power Samsung’s Bixby vernacular service in the future.

Silvan Innovation Labs: Bengaluru-based IoT solutions for homes and enterprises startup Silvan Innovation Labs raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC). With an installed base of over 6,000 homes and 12 live communities, Silvan’s products and IoT platform will add value to Samsung’s efforts to have all its products IoT ready by 2020.

Zoomcar: Bengaluru-based Zoomcar raised $11.35 Mn across multiple forms of equity infusion from its US-headquartered parent as well as debt funding from Trifecta Capital and others. The proceeds will be used towards technology development, customer acquisition, publishing and other general corporate purposes.

Rivigo: Gurugram-based logistics startup Rivigo raised $65 Mn in its ongoing series E round led by existing investors Warburg Pincus and SAIF Partners. The company said it will use the funds to further strengthen its technology and network coverage.

Moglix: B2B industrial goods marketplace Moglix raised $60 Mn (approximately INR 412 Cr) in its latest round led by Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital. Hong Kong-based Composite Capital joined the funding round as a new investor for MogliLabs, the company behind Moglix. The company said it is now valued between $200 Mn-$300 Mn. It will now be investing heavily in infrastructure, warehousing, logistics. We will be building fulfilment centres and warehouses, and establish operations at these locations

HealthAssure: Mumbai-based healthcare aggregator, HealthAssure raised $2.5 Mn in Series A funding led by Blume Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to further develop its platform, create sharper products focusing on insurance OPD products, build better data capabilities leveraging AI and ML and strengthen distribution. Prior to this round, HealthAssure raised $1 Mn from The HR Fund.

NiYO: Bengaluru-based neo-banking startup NiYO Solutions raised $35 Mn in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Horizons Ventures and Tencent. Existing investor JS Capital also participated in the funding round. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate the development and rollout of new product offerings. It will also use funds to amplify distribution and marketing. It is also looking to explore expansion into international markets, particularly in emerging economies which offer similar opportunities for digital disruption through a “Neo-bank” concept.

House Of Masaba: Mumbai-based fashion label House of Masaba raised $1 Mn in a funding round led by Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal. Purple Style Labs, Apoorva Patni of Patni Group, and Apurva Salarpuria of Salarpuria group also invested in the round. The fresh funds will be used to scale infrastructure, distribution network and hiring

Rebel Foods: Indonesian ride-hailing major Go-Jek invested $5 Mn in the ongoing Series D round of the Indian cloud kitchen company Rebel Foods. The ride-hailing company made this investment through its investment arm Go Ventures. Rebel Foods was last valued at $198.7 Mn (INR 1,416.33 Cr) on September 30, 2018.

Ecozen Solutions: Pune-based agritech startup Ecozen Solutions raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Hyderabad-based impact investment firm Caspian and Omnivore Partners. The funds will be used to scale its irrigation and cold chain business and help it set-up the market linkage platform.

Headfone: Bengaluru-based social audio platform Headfone raised $750K in seed funding led by Fosun RZ Capital, an affiliate of Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group. The funds will help the company focus on building the team, improving its recommendation engine, scaling the community across India and aggressively growing its user base.

Wigzo: Delhi-based B2B AI tech startup Wigzo raised $1 Mn in funding from Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund I.

IntelligenceNode Consulting: Mumbai-based SaaS startup IntelligenceNode Consulting raised $1 Mn in funding from Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund I.

Important Acquisitions Of The Week

• Nazara Technologies acquired a majority stake in Halaplay. Nazara Games, along with Kae Capital had earlier invested an undisclosed investment in HalaPlay earlier.
• Education technology startup CollegeDekho announced the acquisition of Delhi based student’s guidance overseas business – Scholarship Facilitation Services Pvt. Ltd. (SFS) for an undisclosed amount. Through this acquisition, CollegeDekho is aiming to broaden its student’s counselling services to help a larger population of students go abroad.
• Nazara Technologies has picked up a majority stake with investment over INR 35 Cr in sports news website SportsKeeda. Nazara is looking at a strategic investment to consolidate its holdings in Absolute Sports.
• Nazara Technologies picked up majority stake and invested in Delhi-based quizzing platform SportsUnity. Nazara believes that Sports Unity has retained and engaged players in an impressive way on Qunami and will invest INR 7.09 Cr in equity shares of Sports Unity.
• Walmart Labs has acquihired two Bengaluru-based startups — FloCare and BigTrade. Post acquisition, both these startups will join the Walmart’s team. While, the healthtech startup FloCare will be integrated into customer technology part of Walmart’s online pharmacy, BigTrade, which is a B2B wholesale trading platform, will contribute to the supply chain part of Walmart’s business.
• Swiggy reportedly acquired subscription-based daily consumable goods delivery startup Supr Daily in 2018. However, there is no official confirmation about the acquisition at the time.
• Zomato acquired Feeding India, a non-profit working towards the aim of eradicating hunger, malnutrition and food wastage. With this acquisition, Feeding India will be completely integrated into Zomato’s foodtech platform. To promote transparency Zomato will soon be publishing quarterly financials on the website. The first Feeding Global – Financial Transparency Report is expected to be released by October this year.
• Milkbasket acquired PSR Supply chain. Founded in 2015, PSR Supply Chain is a popular local e-grocery store, and Milkbasket has integrated the startup’s customers and offering into its portfolio. PSR Supply Chain has ceased operations as of June.
• Aditya Birla fashion and retail ltd has acquired Delhi-based lifestyle brand Jaypore for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, Aavishkaar fund has marked full exit making 1.5x returns.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Hospitality startup OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal is in talks with the company’s investors Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners to buy back shares and increase his ownership of the startup he founded. Agarwal is looking to raise his stake to 30% from the current 10%, and could also buy up stake held by management and employees to take his share of the startup to 32-33%.
• National bank for agriculture and rural development (NABARD) felicitated five agritech startups for their promising use of technology in agriculture which included dairy startup Stellapps Technologies, biotech startup Sea6 Energy, aqua-farming startup Eruvaka Technologies, rural ecommerce platform InThree (BoonBox) and packaged foods startup Kottaram Agro foods (Soulfull). These five startups are among the 50 agritech startups that Nabard has funded through 16 Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) with an outlay of INR 272 Cr.
• In a tweet, cofounder and CEO of Unacademy, Gaurav Munjal, shared an internal communication with company employees. He informed them that the company is doing an ESOP buyback. Eligible Unacademy employees can sell upto 30% of their vested ESOPs.
• Private equity firm Tiger Global Management is said to be in talks with Chinese internet giant Tencent and Japan’s SoftBank to sell its 21% stake in the parent entity of online insurance startup Policybazaar and Paisabazaar with Chinese internet giant Tencent and Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund among the investors who are looking to pick up the stake. Tiger Global Management is reportedly seeking $300 Mn in the stake sale in the parent entity  Etechaces Marketing and Consulting at a valuation of $1.5 Bn.

• DailyHunt is in funding talks with PE firm Carlyle Group for an investment to the tune of $45 Mn (approximately INR 308 Cr). The deal would put DailyHunt’s valuation at about $650 Mn according to the reports.
• Giving a detailed analysis of the Indian startup ecosystem, this year’s economic survey included a list of startups which are predicted to soon touch the $1 Bn valuation also known as soonicorns. The survey’s soonicorns list included startups such as Rivigo, Billdesk, BookMyShow, BigBasket, Delhivery, ShareChat, UrbanClap, CarDekho, CarTrade, and CapitalFloat. It must be noted that Rivigo, Billdesk, BigBasket and Delhivery have already achieved unicorn status.
• In the eight months since they ventured out on their own, ex-Sequoia executives V.T. Bharadwaj, Abhay Pandey, Gautam Mago have shown resilience and successfully closed their maiden fund at $351 Mn. A91 Partners is focused on making mid-stage investments, in Series B and C deals ranging between $10 Mn and $30 Mn.
• Bengaluru-based credit card bill payment startup Cred is in talks with US-based venture capital fund General Catalyst to raise funds. A media report citing sources said that General Catalyst is likely to invest a small amount in Cred’s upcoming $120 Mn funding round.
• Mumbai-headquartered online ticketing platform BookMyShow may be the next entrant of India’s much-coveted unicorn club. A fresh round of funding reportedly worth around $100 Mn is likely to help BookMyShow increase its valuation from $800 Mn to over $1Bn.
• Chennai-based growth private equity firm TVS Capital Funds announced the second close of its third fund —TVS Shriram Growth Fund III at INR 1,100 Cr. The fund has targeted a corpus of INR 1,000 Cr with an INR 500 Cr green-shoe option of which INR 100 Cr has already been subscribed and INR 150 Cr remains in the pipeline. The final close of this fund is expected to happen in March 2020.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition of Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!

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