Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [19-24 Aug]

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

In one of the most important development, Grofers received another $70 Mn tranche of its Series F funding from SoftBank. The tranche is a part of the grocery delivery app’s $200 Mn funding round raised mainly from the SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF). Earlier in March, SVF Growth had transferred its first tranche funding $37.49 Mn to Grofers.

Apart from this, in total this week, 16 startups raised $107.2 Mn funding and 3 startup acquisition took place in the Indian startup ecosystem. (This funding report is based on startups that disclosed funding amount.)

Indian Startup Funding Of The Week

vPhrase Analytics: Mumbai-based artificial intelligence startup vPhrase Analytics raised $2 Mn in a Series A funding round from Falcon Edge Capital and Bharat Innovation Fund. The funds will be used for global expansion, strengthen the vPhrase team and launch a new product for an insight-driven collaboration within the enterprise teams.

HungerBox: Bengaluru-based food catering startup Hungerbox raised INR 15.99 Cr ($2.2 Mn) in Series C funding round from Paytm parent company One 97 Communications and Sabre Partners Trust. Reportedly, HungerBox has been growing three times year-on-year, and it fits in with Paytm’s strategy of a deep integrated play across all categories.

AdmitKard: Noida-based edtech startup AdmitKard raised $1 Mn in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Australia-based edtech fund Growth DNA and other investors based out of Australia and India. Piyush Bhartiya, cofounder, AdmitKard said the company will use the funds to enhance its product and strengthen its AI-driven counseling algorithms and blockchain managed partner contracts. Bhartiya also said that the company plans to expand its presence across 100 cities in India.

Infra.Market: Mumbai-based infrastructure technology company Infra.Market raised $3.5 Mn seed funding round from Accel Partners. The funds will be used to expand the company’s product lines.

Instoried: Bengaluru-based deeptech startup Instoried raised $500K in a seed funding round from Venture Catalysts. The funds will be used to expand into multiple languages and reach a global audience.

Aviom: Delhi-based AVIOM India Housing Finance raised INR 60 Cr ($8.3 Mn) in its Series B funding round by Gojo & company, Inc JAPAN and Capital 4 Development Asia Fund Netherlands. Investment advisory firm Unitus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to the company.

Mishry: Gurugram-based product review startup Mishry raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Seed funding from foodtech entrepreneur Vir Sanghvi and fintech players, Rajiv Garodia and Kiran Shetty. The funds will be used towards adopting content, including expanding into video reviews, more products and hiring.

Shopkirana: Indore-based B2B supply chain startup ShopKirana raised $10 Mn in a Series B funding round. The investment came in from existing investors Info Edge, Incubate Fund, Akatsuki AET Fund, NPTK Emerging Asia Fund and Better Capital. The fresh funds will be used to expand its presence in major Tier 2 cities.

DoseFM: Mumbai-based audio streaming platform Dose FM raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, Abhishek Damodara, founder and CEO told Inc42. The funding came from an AngelList syndicate led by Utsav Somani and other angel investors such as Abhishek Madhavan of Loco and MPL. The funds will help the company focus on growth, after investing heavily in developing the tools for audio content creators, as well as the platform where this content is shared.

INDwealth: Gurugram-headquartered fintech startup INDwealth raised $15 Mn in a funding round from New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global. The investment comes nearly 10 months after INDWealth raised $30 Mn from Steadview Capital. The company said it would be using the fresh funds to execute and scale the INDwealth platform. It also plans to ramp up development on its technology platform including artificial intelligence, research and development and the advisory team as well as invest towards innovative customer acquisition and marketing campaigns.

SILA: Mumbai based enterprise service provider SILA raised INR 56 Cr ($7.7 Mn) of growth capital from leading venture and growth equity investment firm, Norwest Venture Partners. This round of investment will be used to exit SILA’s early investors and further establish its industry leadership position through strategic investments and acquisitions.

Global eSports: Online gaming company Global eSports raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a pre-seed round of funding from Venture Catalysts. This deal will help the company explore its potential and opportunities with guidance from venture capitalists and industry experts.

Bolo Indya: Short Form video-based knowledge-sharing platform in local Indian languages, Bolo Indya raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A Investment through ah! Ventures angel platform. Bolo Indya plans to use the raised funds to expand to multiple languages, introduce new forms of short video creation, develop language communities and scale up the user base.

Resonance: Smart Enterprise Data platform, Resonance raised an undisclosed angel funding from IP Ventures. Resonance has signed up clients in the US and South-East Asia. It intends to use the funds raised in the hiring of more engineers and the expansion of its sales footprint in international markets.

Zendrive: Bengaluru-based data and analytics startup Zendrive raised $37 Mn in Series B round of funding, led by XL Innovate with participation by Hearst Ventures and existing investors, including ACME Capital, BMW iVentures, NYCA, SignalFire, and others. With this funding, Zendrive will continue to build out its mobile driving safety solution and grow its team across five continents to deepen its focus on the global insurance market.

Zenoti: A spa and salon software startup Zenoti Software raised $20 Mn from Steadview Capital in less than three months after closing a Series C round of funding. The funding would help it accelerate the pace of innovation and expand into both existing and new geographies. It will also look to continue hiring more talent to back its expansion plans.

Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week

• Bike taxi startup Rapido acqui-hired Mumbai-based analytics startup Vahanalytics. Rapido’s Captain app will use the Vahanalytics technology to detect rash driving behaviors and become a self-learning system in terms of selecting the safest riders.
• Nazara Technologies invested about INR 44 Cr ($6 Mn) to acquire a majority stake of 67% in Sportskeeda. With this acquisition, Nazara claims to reach a total of 100 Mn monthly active users through Sportskeeda’s network.
• Amazon is acquiring 49% stake in Kishore Biyani’s Future Coupons, the promoter entity of India’s second-largest retail chain Future Retail. Future Coupons owned 7.3% shares in the publicly-listed Future Retail, and through this transaction, Amazon has also managed to acquire around a 3.58% stake in Future Group. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Other Developments Of The Week

• Payments company PayU is reportedly in talks to acquire digital lending platform PaySense, in a cash and stock deal. According to a media report, this deal will peg PaySense’s valuation to $60-70 Mn.

• Pune-based reskilling startup InterviewBit Academy is close to raising $20 Mn (INR 142 Cr) investment by Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital India and Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EBD). InterviewBit Academy was shortlisted as part of the first cohort for Sequoia Capital India’s Surge accelerator programme in April this year.
• On August 16, the chief secretary of Nagaland, Temjen Toy launched the Nagaland startup portal has been developed to enable startups from the state to register online and apply for recognition under ‘Startup Nagaland’ by logging in to the portal. The newly launched portal is expected to provide the youth with incentives and programmes available under the state startup policy.
• Y Combinator inducted four Indian startups in its Summer 2019 batch of startups. The selected startups include an ecommerce platform Binks, vernacular news platform Lokal, on-demand fuel delivery startup MyPetrolPump and a WhatsApp API-based gig workers hiring app called Vahan.
• Delhi-headquartered insurance company Max Life Insurance announced the launch of Max Life Innovation Labs, an accelerator programme to harness Insurtech solutions. It will invite disruptive startups and out of the box thinkers to partner with them in creating futuristic tech-based solutions for Max Life.
• SoftBank is reportedly in talks with Snapdeal to invest another $100 Mn in the ecommerce unicorn. SoftBank will invest half or up to $60 Mn in this funding round and the remaining will be given by other smaller investors.
• Coliving startup ZoloStays is in advanced talks with new and existing investors to raise up to $100 Mn in its Series C round. The new round will be a mix of debt and equity.
• The US-based GE Healthcare announced the launch of an India-based startup collaboration programme, Edison[X]. The programme will work with startups in India to develop solutions on the Edison platform for some of the healthcare challenges existing today.
• JLL India collaborated with Invest India, Accelerating Growth of New India’s Innovations (AGNIi) and Startup India to launch JLL IDEAs — a real estate-focused accelerator programme. JLL IDEAs will promote startups working on cutting edge, disruptive technologies and solutions impacting developers, investors and occupier clients.

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