Indian Startup Funding Of The Week [Funding Galore 5-10 June]
By Meha Agarwal
We bring to you the new edition Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding of the week. This week 20 Indian startups raised $98 Mn in funding altogether and five startup acquisitions took place in the Indian startup ecosystem. (The startup funding calculations are based on the startups that disclosed their funding amounts).
Goomo and Riversand Technologies raised the highest amount of funding in the Indian startup ecosystem.
US-based venture capitalist Sequoia Capital raised $4 Bn funding, as per the latest SEC filings. The recently raised funds will be used for infusing capital into various funds. Apart from this, the filings also revealed that the second growth fund – Sequoia Capital Global Growth Fund II, L.P. has received about $2 Bn.
Growfitter: Mumbai-based health and fitness discovery platform Growfitter raised $600K in a Pre-Series A round of funding from San Francisco-based VC SQue Capital. With this round, Karan Chellani, Partner SQue Capital will join the Board of the company and Mukesh Makhija, the Managing Partner of Grace Capital Venture, will join Growfitter as an Advisor. The Indian startup will deploy the raised funds towards enhancing its technology infrastructure.
BHIVE: Bengaluru-based coworking space BHIVE Workspace raised $1.2 Mn in a fresh round of funding. This round of funding was led by Blume Ventures, along with investors including actor-director Ramesh Aravind, Meera Reddy (MD of SKCL), and other high-net-worth individuals. The recently raised funds will be used to fuel its pan-India and international expansion.
Goomo: Mumbai-based Goomo Holdings raised $50 Mn funding from PE firm Emerging India. With this move, Emerging India will pick up a majority stake in the Indian startup. Travel website Goomo.com was launched in March 2017. Goomo was formed by the merger of Orbit Corporate and Leisure Tours in November 2015.
Healthbuds: Kolkata-based healthtech startup Healthbuds raised an undisclosed startup funding. The round was led by angel investors Arun Patodia and Bharat Kedia. The Indian startup will use the funds to upgrade technology, make the platform more robust, and implement digital marketing strategies.
WayForward: Mental healthcare solutions provider wayForward raised close to $1 Mn in angel funding from a clutch of individual investors. Some of the investors who participated in the round include Harsh Mahajan, a radiologist; Farhan Naqvi, a technology investment banker with Deutsche Bank; and Sreepathy Viswanathan, senior vice president of M&A and partnerships at Hinduja Global Solutions Inc. The startup will use the funds to build its technology and the US sales team.
MaxMyWealth: London and India-based fintech platform MaxMyWealth raised an undisclosed amount of startup funding from the US-based Global Advisors (Jersey) Ltd and Horseferry. The raised funds will be used to build the team, enhance its offering and grow its customer base.
ZipLoan: Online lending platform ZipLoan, which is operated by Delhi-based Blue Jay Finlease Ltd. raised $650K (around INR 4.2 Cr) in its Pre-Series A funding round led by WaterBridge Ventures. The startup will use these funds to further develop its credit scoring capabilities, enhance automation in their sourcing/lending/monitoring processes, expand to new cities and strengthen their team.
Stockal: Bengaluru-based investment advisory provider Stockal raised $350K in second round of angel funding from Mohan Alexander, Vikrant Varshney of SucSEED Venture Partners and New York-based investment banker and portfolio manager Amit Sinha. The raised funds will be used to upgrade the product, penetrate the market further and expand its network of experts.
Guiddoo: Mumbai-based In-destination app brand Guiddoo raised funding of $300K in Pre-Series A round led by existing investors Pawan Borle and Nirmal Singh. New Investors including Manish Prasad, Vineet Varma, Nick Haulkoury, and Abhai S. Rao also participated in the round. Guiddoo will utilise the raised funds to support product and technology development through their newly opened Technology & Data Unit based in Pune as well as focus on building pan-India distribution for its tours & activities & holidays products.
Market Pulse: Mumbai-based fintech startup Market Pulse raises an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Lead Angels Network and Chatur Ideas platform. The company plans to use the funding to expand its product coverage to other financial markets and build a strong tech team.
eSahai: Hyderabad-based ambulance aggregator and medical taxi provider eSahai.in raised $250K in a seed funding round. The investment came from Dr. Ramesh Ayyala, professor of ophthalmology and director of glaucoma residency and fellowship programmes at Tulane University in the US, and Satya Muthyala, senior director of enterprise apps, sales, and supply chain at US video game publisher Activision. The Indian startup will use the raised funds to increase its medical taxi fleet and add more ambulances onto its platform in addition to spending on marketing and technology.
Loanmeet: Mumbai-based digital lending platform Loanmeet raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Chinese investors and entrepreneurs Cao Yibin and Huang Wei, and MadhuSudan, CEO of KrazyBee. plans to use the funds towards an aggressive expansion of its customer base.
Indian Startup Acquisitions Of The Week
Gurugram-based real estate property and broker review platform Roofpik acquired personalised product delivery platform Shoppist. The acquisition aims to strengthen Roofpik’s core team and bring personalised property recommendations to its users. Post the acquisition, Divij Goyal founder of Shoppist, will join the Roofpik Board as Chief Marketing Officer.
Alibaba Pictures, the entertainment unit of China’s ecommerce major Alibaba Group acquired a majority stake in Indian startup TicketNew for an undisclosed amount. Post-acquisition, Alibaba will have four representatives on TicketNew’s board and the firm’s promoters will have two of their representatives. TicketNew founder and CEO Ramkumar Nammalvar will continue to spearhead the business.
JustCode, a New York-based interviewing platform announced the acquisition of Indian startup Jobspire. Jobspireis a Bengaluru-based online job recruitment platform. The deal aims to extend JustCode’s operations in the country and to further strengthen its core products for employers. Post-acquisition Jobspire’s core products will be integrated with JustCode.
Other Developments Of The Week
The corporate venture fund of Wipro invested $24.5 Mn in nine startups between 2015 – 2017. The list of startups funded by the Wipro venture fund to date includes Vectra Networks, Emailage Corporation, Altizon Systems, Vicarious, Drivestream Inc, Avaamo, Intsights, Talena, and TradeShift.
US-based data storage and management company NetApp launched its first startup accelerator-NetApp Excellerator- in Bengaluru. It’s open for Indian startups in Internet of Things, cloud, Big Data and analytics, machine learning, virtualisation, data security, data management, and storage. The selected startups will get an equity-free grant of $15K under the four-month programme, without reserving any of their intellectual property.
Venture Catalysts extended its reach to global markets, beginning its journey from GCC countries, including Qatar. It further plans to expand to other countries in the region such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It has also partnered with 360-nautica. Post amalgamation, the new entity will be known as 360-VCats and will be based out of Doha.
Online fashion marketplace Myntra launched an accelerator programme. As a part of this programme Myntra has partnered with Chemistry and AKS. With the newly launched accelerator programme Myntra is looking to partner with about 10-15 local fashion brands.
IDG Ventures announced the launch of the 2017 Innovation Program (IDGVI) in partnership with Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. With this programme, IDG Ventures aims to support tech startups belonging to sectors such as consumer tech, software, healthtech, and fintech. The programme will fund startups from Seed stage to Series A, between $0.5 Mn to $5 Mn.
Stay tuned for next edition of Funding Galore: Indian Startup Funding, next week.
