Funding and acquisitions in Indian startups this week [10 Jan – 15 Jan]

This week 53 Indian startups raised funding, of which 43 received a total of about $773.78 million. WayCool raised the highest funding of about $117 million followed by the new unicorn from the edtech space, LEAD which raised about $100 million.

Meanwhile, the funding of the 10 of the total funded startups remained undisclosed.

Below is the summary of the deals closed this week

Growth/late startup

WayCool: Agri-commerce startup WayCool Foods has raised $117 million in Series D round from new and existing investors such as LightRock, LightBox, FMO, Lightsmith, World Bank Group’s IFC, Redwood Equity Partners and Gawa Capital.

LEAD : Edtech startup LEAD (formerly Lead School) has raised $100 million in its Series E round led by WestBridge Capital with participation from GSV Ventures.

Novo: The small business banking platform Novo has raised $90 million in Series B funding a $700 million valuation led by Stripes. The round also saw continued participation from existing investors Valar Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Rainfall Ventures, and BoxGroup.

funding
Vedansh Pratap | Entrackr

Refyne: Salary-on-demand startup Refyne has raised $82 million in its Series B round led by Tiger Global and contributions from new and existing investors such as Digital Horizon, QED Investors, partners of DST Global, Jigsaw VC, XYZ Capital, and RTP Global.

Curefoods: Cloud kitchen company Curefoods has raised $62 million in a fresh round from Iron Pillar, Chiratae Ventures, Sixteenth Street Capital, Accel Partners and Binny Bansal participated in the round. 

TheMathCompany: TheMathCompany, a data analytics and data engineering firm, has raised $50 million in a new round of funding led by Brighton Park Capital. Arihant Patni has also participated in this round.

DMI Finance: DMI Finance Private Limited (DMI Finance) on Tuesday announced the closure of a $47 million equity investment round, which included new investor Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank Limited. (SuMi TRUST Bank).

Rupeek: Online platform for gold-backed loans Rupeek has raised $34 million in a round led by Lightbox. Existing investors including GGV and Bertelsmann also participated in the fresh round.

Kaleidofin: Kaleidofin, a neobanking platform, has raised $10 million in its Series B round led by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Oikocredit, Flourish Ventures, Omidyar Network, Blume Ventures and Bharat Fund have also participated in the funding round.

NirogStreet: NirogStreet, a platform that promotes Ayurveda, said that it has raised a pre-series B round of additional $1 million (around Rs 7 crore) to deploy in building business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) technology solutions for the Ayurveda community.

Early-stage startups 

EVage: Electric vehicle maker EVage has raised $28 million in its seed funding round led by US-based venture capital firm RedBlue Capital.

Rooter: Streaming and e-sports platform Rooter has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightbox, March Gaming, and Duane Park Ventures. 9Unicorns, ADvantage, Capital-A, and Goal Ventures also participated in the round along with existing investors, including IeAD Sports & Health Tech Partners. 

Recykal: Recykal, B2B platform for waste management and recycling marketplace, has raised $22 million from Morgan Stanley India. Circulate Capital, Vellayan Subbiah, and Arun Venkatachalam of the Murugappa Family have also participated in the round.

Lahori: Punjab-based beverage startup Lahori on Monday has raised $15 million funding from Belgium-based consumer-focused investor Verlinvest for an undisclosed minority stake. 

Zuddle: Event platform Zuddl has raised $13.5 million in a Series A round led by Alpha Wave Incubation followed by existing investors GrowX and Waveform Ventures.

Turnip: Turnip, a mobile-first gaming community platform, has raised $12.5 million in a Series A round co-led by Greenoaks and Elevation Capital. SEA Capital, Vibe Capital, and angels, including Andrew Chen (Partner, a16z and others have also participated.

Zluri: SaaS Management platform Zluri, has raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding led by MassMutual Ventures with participation from existing investors, Endiya Partners and Kalaari Capital.  

Dozee: Dozee, a health-tech startup that offers remote monitoring solutions, has raised Rs 71.3 crore or close to $10 million in a fresh round led by Gokul Rajaram.

Power Gummies: Power Gummies, a nutritional supplements brand, has raised $6 million in its Series A round led by 9Unicorns.

Lendingkart: Fintech startup Lendingkart raised $5.95 million (Rs 44 crore) in debt from BlueOrchard Finance Ltd. 

The ePlane Company: The ePlane Company, an electric aircraft startup, has raised $5 million in its pre-Series A round led by Speciale Invest and Micelio.  

Muvin: muvin, a youth focused neobank, has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by WaterBridge Ventures. Venture Debt fund Alteria Capital and Krishna Bhupal have also joined the round.

Freadom: Edtech startup Freadom has raised $2.5 million in a round led by Capital A. Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff, BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover, VMart Retail founder Lalit Agarwal, and Global PayU CFO Aakash Moondhara and others have also participated.

Arthan Finance: Micro, small and medium enterprise-focused fintech platform Arthan Finance has secured $2.5 million (around Rs 18 crore) in an equity investment round led by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.  

Traya: Haircare platform Traya Health raised $2.2 million in a pre-Series A round led by Fireside Ventures, with Kannan Sitaram, Partner at Fireside Ventures, joining the startup’s board.  

IppoPay: IppoPay, a neo-bank for offering all banking services under one umbrella, has raised $2.1 million in seed round from Coinbase Ventures, Better Capital, Blume Founders Fund, and a number of high-profile angel investors.

Praan: Praan, an AI-powered filter-less air purification systems provider, raised $1.56 million led by Social Impact Capital. The round also saw participation from Better Capital, Paradigm Shift Capital, Avaana Capital, Quality of Life Investments Texas (Angel Syndicate), and several angel investors. 

ToolJet: ToolJet, an open-source low-code software for building internal tools, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners. Ratio Ventures, Better Capital, Alan Rutledge and others have also joined the round.

Pepul: Pepul, a privacy-focused social network, raised $1.35 million in its seed round from Hourglass Venture Partners, Girish Mathrubootham, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Zeda.io: Zeda.io, a product management platform, has raised $1.2 million in its seed round from BEENEXT, Binny Bansal-backed 021 Capital and its existing backers Whiteboard Capital, FirstCheque.vc and Paradigm Shift Capital.

OneDios: OneDios, an aggregator platform for customer service requests, has raised $1.2 million in a funding round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN), LetsVenture, and HNIs such as Bhanu Chopra, Akash Bhansali, and the Haldiram Group.

Pepper Farms: Agritech startup Pepper Farms, has raised $1 million in its seed fund led by AxilorVentures and Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-founder of Aspiring Minds.

Grip Invest: Investment platform Grip Invest has raised $1 million in a funding round led by its top 200 users, making these users shareholders, the startup told YourStory in an interaction on Monday.

YantraLive: YantraLive, a business-to-business (B2B) platform for heavy equipment and parts, has raised $1 million (around Rs 7 crore) seed funding from GrowthStory and other angel investors including Bigbasket’s Vipul Parekh, among others.

TradeX: TradeX, a predictions market platform, has raised a seed round of $1 Million from TDV Partners, SoMa Capital and marquee investors such as Maninder Gulati, Anupam Mittal, Rajesh Shawney, Hitesh Chawla, Cem Garih, Justin Mateen, Fethi and few others.

Eduncle: Edtech startup Eduncle has raised a $1 million round led by Mumbai Angels Network, along with Ah! Ventures, KareKaBa Ventures and others.

ORAI: Conversational AI platform ORAI has raised Rs 6.5 crore or $879K in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures.

Glamplus: Glamplus, a SaaS enabled marketplace startup, has raised $700k in a pre-Series A round led by Blume Ventures and Ramakant Sharma (COO- Livspace). Existing backer IPV has also joined the round.

Lemme Be: Hyderabad-based period care brand Lemme Be has bagged Rs 5 crore or $674K in a seed funding round. The round saw the participation of UNI-M Ventures led by Gunnwant Vaid and Aniket Gore, Nikhil Vora, founder of Sixth Sense Ventures and Multiply ventures, among others.

ShipNext Solutions: ShipNext Solutions, an E2E online logistics platform, has raised Rs 4.5 crore or $608K in its Pre-Series A round led by Group Meeran. 

Crib: Co-living marketplace Crib has raised $400,000 (about Rs 2.9 crore) in its pre-seed funding round led by Pranay Gupta (co-founder, 91Springboard) through his AngelList syndicate 91Ventures. BlackSoil Capital, Faad Network along with other angel investors have also participated.

YNOS: IIT-M incubated business intelligence and analytics platform for India’s innovation and startup ecosystem YNOS Venture Engine has raised Rs 2.5 Crores ($350K) in seed funding.

Easy to Pitch: Easy to Pitch, a pitching startup to make founders pitch and investor-ready, has raised $135K in its pre-seed round led by Venture Catalysts. JPIN Venture Catalysts UK have also joined the round.

Undisclosed

Bliv.Club, Zorro, The Butternut Company, Mush, Stauss, POPT, Starcap Wellness  , Clear, PulsOps and Lincode Labs did not disclose their financial details. 

Acquisitions

B2B ecommerce and supply chain enablement platform Bizongo has acquihired Bengaluru-based Hexa, a cloud platform for college placements. 

Flipkart Group has acquired electronics recommerce company Yaantra for an undisclosed sum.

Logistics aggregator platform Shiprocket has acquired Rocketbox, a B2B logistics aggregator platform for an undisclosed amount.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and supply chain enablement platform Bizongo has acquihired Hexa, a Bengaluru-based edtech cloud platform for college placements.

Send Suggestions or Tips