We bring to you the latest edition Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding of the week. This week 19 Indian startups raised about $41 Mn in funding altogether in the Indian startup ecosystem.
Besides a large number of startups securing funding, four major acquisitions also took place in the Indian startup ecosystem this week. (The startup funding calculations are based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts)
In one of the biggest deals of the week, cab aggregator Ola acquired Foodpanda India from Germany based Delivery Hero Group to venture into food delivery business once again. Ola has also committed $200 Mn in Foodpanda India. Sources have pegged the stock-based acquisition at under $50 Mn. This deal includes the transfer of Foodpanda India business to Ola in an acquisition deal in exchange for Ola stock.
While, in terms of startup funding, Sachin Tendulkar-backed virtual reality gaming and entertainment startup Smaaash raised $14.05 Mn (INR 90 Cr) funding from HNI clients of Avendus Wealth Management Pvt. Ltd, the wealth management arm of financial services firm Avendus Capital. The Mumbai-based startup aims to provide world class sports and immersive experiences to India’s fast-growing gaming population, and the newly raised financing will help in its growth plans.
Indian Startup Funding Of The Week
Skymet Weather Services: Noida-based agritech startup Skyment raised an undisclosed amount in Series C round of funding from the German government’s InsuResilience Investment Fund. With the newly raised funds, the startup aims to expand its Automated Weather Stations (AWS) network and secure new business in weather data, crop measurement, climate analytics, and disaster management, thereby extending its outreach to de-risk vulnerable Indian farmers from climate change.
Peel-Works: The consumer focussed SaaS and big data analytics startup raised an undisclosed amount in Series B funding led by Mumbai-based Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services. The round also saw the participation of existing investors Inventus Capital Partners and IDG Ventures India. The funding will enable Peel-Works to bolster its product and technology offerings, while also expanding its geographical reach and hiring more members for its team.
Refreshed Car Care: The Mumbai-based on-demand car servicing startup received financial backing from USA-based Spiffy, a car care services company. India is one of the fastest growing ecommerce markets and on-demand car servicing needs will massively increase in the future, hence Spiffy plans to collaborate with Refreshed in order to further leverage technology and link their products.
TapTap Meals Pvt. Ltd.: Delhi-based TapTap Meals, which operates the delivery app NOW, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the promoters of Hero Electric and other investors from Bengaluru. As a part of this agreement, the startup will continue to use Hero’s eco-friendly ebikes to deliver products and will further boost its unit economics.
The Bohri Kitchen: Mumbai-based specialised cuisine startup The Bohri Kitchen raised an undisclosed amount of seed capital from integrated incubation platform Venture Catalysts. The funding was led by Anuj Puri, Abhishek Agarwal, Nikunj Pachisia, Anirudh Damani and Vishal Brahmbhatt. The startup funding round also saw participation from food and beverages doyenne Riyaaz Amlani, as well as several leading HNIs such as Romil Ratra, Chef Rahul Akerkar and others. The raised fund will be used to upgrade our current infrastructure, which will involve moving into a bigger central kitchen and hiring skilled workers who can help my mother in standardising recipes.
Baby Destination: Delhi-based Baby Destination, a one-stop digital parenting community providing opportunities to learn and share parenting experiences and recommendations, raised an investment worth $313K (INR 2 Cr) from GEMs Partners (a micro-VC fund based in Delhi and led by Mr. Aditya Gupta) and Tariq Khan (angel investor from New York) in a fresh funding round. With the newly raised funds, the startup plans to focus on product development and consolidation in order to increase the scale of users, provide a personalised user experience.
Livspace: Bangalore-based online home decor startup Livspace received funding from Media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd (BCCL) in an ad-for-equity deal that is expected to be valued at $1.8 Mn (INR 11.05 Cr), reports VCCirle. An ad-for-equity deal means that the startup will use the national reach of publications, websites, e-papers and magazines of BCCL in order to further expand its footprint in the country.
9stacks: Delhi-based online gaming startup 9stacks raised Seed funding of $1.55 Mn (INR 10 Cr) from a clutch of investors that include Swati Gupta (founder, IndustryBuying), Purnima Khandelwal (founder, INI Farms), Maheshwer Peri (founder, Careers360) and Kartik Sheth (Chief executive, Wynk Music). The startup plans to use the investment to leverage more technology to improve its platform, hire new people in the product and design teams and prepare a marketing strategy to ramp up its consumer base in India.
Springboard: San Francisco and Bengaluru-based edtech startup Springboard raised $9.5 Mn in Series A funding, led by Costanoa Ventures. Other investors who participated in the funding are Learn Capital, Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics and returning investors Blue Fog Capital, Rocketship.vc, and Moneta Ventures. With the funding, Springboard aims to expand its offering into new verticals and geographies, improve its learning platform, expand career services and alumni support, and hire teams across product, marketing, engineering, and student services.
KaHa: Singapore-based consumer IoT startup KaHa raised $4.5 Mn (INR 29 Cr) in a funding round led by Metals International, with the participation of Jungle Ventures, SPRING SEEDS Capital and existing investor YourNest. The raised capital will be used to drive expansion plans and invest in human resource, product development, infrastructure and R&D. Additionally, KaHa will also focus on further growing its leadership position by opening an innovation centre in Geneva.
EasyBuyHealth: The Mumbai-based healthcare startup raised a seed funding of $350K (INR 2.24 Cr) from HNIs and angel investors from the healthcare industry. The list of investors includes Mukesh Agarwal, owner of MGM Forgings and a serial angel investor in 5 innovative companies. With the newly raised funding, the startup aims to double its team size within the next 6 months & to develop a solid technical framework to build an all-encompassing healthcare platform that will emerge as the default destination for users to reach out for healthcare services ranging from preventive, operative, diagnostic to wellness.
Faircent: Gurugram-based P2P lending startup Faircent raised $3.9 Mn (INR 25 Cr) in a Series B round of funding. Investors participating in this latest funding round include Incofin Investment Management and Faircent’ts existing investors JM Financial, 3one4 Capital, M&S Partners Pte Ltd and Aarin Capital. The round also saw the participation of Muthoot Fincorp, Elevate Innovation Partners, Das Capital and Starharbor Asia Pte Ltd. Faircent will utilise the newly raised funds towards strengthening the platform’s technology and creating greater awareness about P2P lending significance as a new and highly rewarding asset class.
Univariety: The Education Counselling startup raised $1.9 Mn (INR 12 Cr) from online classifieds platform Info Edge, which runs job portal Naukri.com, real estate site 99acres and Jeevansaathi. With this, Info Edge has acquired a minority stake in the Hyderabad-based edtech startup. As part of its strategic investments, the acquisition would help Info Edge to diversify its presence into a new line of business within the internet services industry.
Wellthy: Mumbai-based Wellthy Therapeutics Pvt Ltd, which operates a mobile-based diabetes management platform, Wellthy, raised an undisclosed sum from GrowX Ventures, reports VCCircle. The startup further aims to utilise these funds for hiring more team members and expand its geographical footprint.
IGP.com: Mumbai-based gifting ecommerce startup raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A funding round that saw participation from several key investors, including Sarvesh Goel, Abhijeet Birewar, Amit Dhanki, Digant Bhansali, Abhishek Subramanya, Vikash & Manish Agarwal, Mitesh Shah, Navleen Khanna, Siddharth Bhajenkar, CK Jinan, Jayesh Shah, Dharmesh Dalal, Dipan Dalal, Anshul Dave, and Vikram Soni. The startup funding will be used by IGP.com to enhance its supply chain infrastructure and branding activities.
Faclon: Bengaluru-based Water management startup Faclon labs, raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Vish Sathappan and Sameer Sainani along with Neev Angel Advisors and LetsVenture.The startup aims to utlise the funding for commercialisation and further product development.
YourQuote: Delhi-based content and digital community platform YourQuote, secured $1 Mn (INR 6.9 Cr) in Seed funding. The funding round was led by IDG Ventures India, and also saw the participation of Atul Goel of the Essel City Group and Axilor. With the newly raised capital, the startup will work on increasing the range of content available on its platform by expanding its footprint across the country. The ultimate aim is to increase contributors and readers on the platform.
Indus OS: Mobile operating system and native applications platform Indus OS raised $4 Mn (INR 27 Cr) Pre Series B funding from existing investors Omidyar Network, Ventureast and JSW Ventures. The newly-secured financing will enable Indus OS to accelerate brand partnerships, user acquisition and product development. By working with more smartphone brands, Indus OS intends to acquire 100 Mn users over the next 3 years.
Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week
- Gurugram-headquartered media and entertainment conglomerate Times Internet acquired mobile spiritual content provider House of God for an undisclosed amount. Incubated at Delhi-based EROS Labs, a division of Eros Entertainment, House of God had curated up to 30,000 hours of content spanning six religions and many spiritual leaders. Times Internet will use this content to further attract spiritually inclined population across the country.
- Hyderabad-based Internet of Things firm and devices maker Smartron India Pvt. Ltd acquired a majority stake in home automation startup MiQasa Inc. The deal value has been reported to be $1 Mn (INR 6.9 Cr) for a 60% stake in MiQasa. Smartron will spend another $1 Mn to help MiQasa with logistics, brand promotion, sales and distribution and customer care.
- Quikr India bought two subsidiaries of mortgage lender HDFC focusing on real estate brokerage and online property, namely HDFC Realty Ltd and HDFC Developers Ltd for a total of $54.8 Mn (INR 350 Cr). With this, Quickr can integrate its offerings with HDFC’s RED platform, which an online real estate classifieds platform with 7,000 project listings and a traffic generation of over 80,000 unique visitors per month.
Other Developments From The Indian Startup Ecosystem
- Online retail giant Amazon is planning to invest in the fintech space and is currently in talks with Bengaluru-based digital lending startup Capital Float, for financing it, reports ET. Amazon may invest $5-10 Mn as an extension of the recent round raised by Capital Float.
- Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) agreed to provide grants and investments to two promising startups, managed by IITM-K at Maker Village. The two startups are EyeROV Technologies and Resnova Technologies. As part of the new initiative, BPCL will facilitate the development of an underwater drone created by EyeROV Technologies and a cattle milking machine that Resnova Technologies is building to enable early detection of dairy cattle diseases.
- The Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust (Shirdi) of the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, which is worth $312.3 Mn (INR 2,000 Cr), announced that it is will invest in entrepreneurial talent and business ideas, provided the ideas help the temple trust find solutions to challenges it faces and helps with the quick delivery of services to devotees. The trust was looking at solid entrepreneurial ideas which can help resolve issues related to crisis management, crowd management, disaster management and food, reports HT.
- The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) chapter of Hyderabad on Monday announced two student-run startups from Telangana as the winners of the inaugural edition of the TiE GRAD Business Plan Competition. The winning teams, WCB from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad and Law School 101 from Nalsar University, Hyderabad aim to develop the next generation of robots to clean the facade of tall buildings avoiding risk to human life and make law education accessible to everyone, respectively. Both the winners were awarded a cash prize of $4K (INR 2.5 Lakh) each.
- The Madeira Startup Retreat, Portugal announced the names of the 10 shortlisted startups that will be a part of the eight-week programme specially designed for Tourism and Travel startups by the Nova School of Business and Economics and Turismo de Portugal. Taxido, an Indian online travel partner and destination recommendation engine was among the selected startups. The mentorship programme is scheduled to start from January 15, 2018.
- The 22nd Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF) announced the finalists of the Yes Bank – Wharton India Startup challenge. The top 10 finalists that will compete for a price of $20,000. The finalists are Anaxee Digital Runners, Saral Design, RubanBridge, SpotDraft, SoundRex, Eduvanz Financing, Gamezop, Confirm Ticket Online Solutions, Perpule, PlexusMD, Scapic, NIRAMAI Health, Muddy Puddle Foods, Innovision, Signzy Technology, Ware Now Services, Capzest, Luharia Technologies, Bulbul Apps and Maximl Labs.
- E-cell IIT Bombay has launched the fourth edition of its on-the-spot startup funding event named The Ten Minute Million, which will be held on 27th and 28th January 2018 during the annual corporate E-summit of IIT Bombay. The Ten Minute Million is an event, in which involves 10 shortlisted startups pitch for 10 minutes in front of an investor panel and get on-the-spot funding commitment of $25K (INR 16 Lakh).
Stay tuned for the next week’s edition of Indian Startup Funding Of The Week!