Friday, March 29

FUNDING

Startup Funding News: Get the latest news on startup funding, small business funding, investor management and many more about funding on Pixr8.

Mumbai Based GAIA Bespoke Raises Investment From Angel Investors
FUNDING

Mumbai Based GAIA Bespoke Raises Investment From Angel Investors

Mumbai based GAIA Bespoke, a one-stop destination for women’s tailor-made Western wear, raises a recent round of funding from Angel Investor Sanjib Jha, Lead Advisor at SIDBI/World Bank and former founding CEO of IntelleGrow. The brand will strengthen its operations followed by planned expansion to other cities. Founded by Gayatri Thampi, GAIA Bespoke a fashion startup helps solve day to day challenges of modern day woman to dress the way she wants with one simple solution Made to Measure Clothing! The online collection of 1000 plus templates of tops, dresses, jackets, trousers, skirts, gowns and much more along with a unique DIY designing tool helps customers self-design their garments as per their preference with a “Made to Fit” clothing option. GAIA Bespoke has their offline retail f...
London-Based Threads Raises $20 Million in Fresh Funding Round
FUNDING

London-Based Threads Raises $20 Million in Fresh Funding Round

London-based women’s wear company Threads has reportedly raised funds amounting to $20 million in a fresh funding round. The funding round was led by fashion and millennial-focused fund C Ventures. It also saw the participation of Highland Europe (which invests in Matches Fashion, among other related businesses). The funds so raised will be utilized by Threads for the expansion of its business across the board. Also, a part of the funds will be deployed in the hiring of more stylists and more engineers to build tech which would help the operation run smoother. Other creative staff will also be hired to boost up the operations. At present, 90 people work in the company. “Tech has moved quickly and we are starting to test and how we will integrate more AI,” founder and CEO Sophie Hill sa...
Foodtech Startup EazyDiner Raises Rs 41 Crore in Series B Funding
FUNDING

Foodtech Startup EazyDiner Raises Rs 41 Crore in Series B Funding

EazyDiner Pvt. Ltd, a restaurant reservation startup has secured an amount of Rs 41 crore in Series B funding round. The funding round was led by Denlow Investment Trust and early-stage investment firm Beenext. The funds raised in the latest funding round are planned to be used in the expansion of its existence as well as for strengthening its loyalty programme, EazyDiner Prime. It was an equity financing round and following this funding, the valuation of the company reached Rs 280 crore. The latest round closed about two weeks ago and this round has come almost nine months after the company raised capital in funding led by existing backers DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital. “India’s restaurant dining scene has been growing exponentially every year. EazyDiner is a play on Indi...
Swedish-startup Karma Raised $12 million in Series A Funding
FUNDING

Swedish-startup Karma Raised $12 million in Series A Funding

Swedish-startup Karma which is an app that connects restaurants, cafés and grocery stores with users eager to purchase unsold food at a lower price has secured $12 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Kinnevik, a Swedish investment firm. The round also saw the participation of investors like U.S. venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, appliance manufacturer Electrolux, and existing investor VC firm e.ventures. With this funding, the company plans to expand from 35 people based in Stockholm to over 100 across 5 markets by the end of next year and over 150 by mid of 2020. Following this funding round, the total funding amount of the company as of now has reached $18 million. Karma was founded by Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren, Ludvig Berling, Mattis Larsso...
Scooter Rental Startup Vogo Secured Series A Funding from Ola, Hero MotoCorp
FUNDING

Scooter Rental Startup Vogo Secured Series A Funding from Ola, Hero MotoCorp

Bengaluru-based automated scooter rental startup Vogo has reportedly secured an amount of around $7 million (Rs 48 crore) in a Series A funding round. The latest round was led by ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd (Ola’s parent company) and Pawan Munjal (Hero MotoCorp chairman). The other existing investors namely Matrix Partners India, Stellaris Ventures, and angel investors also participated in the funding round. The funds raised through this funding round will be utilized by the company for the purpose of expanding its operations further in the cities it already exists, which include Bengaluru and Hyderabad. “We are trying to solve the use case for daily commuters who can probably walk 100 to 150 meters to pick up our scooters. These are all gearless vehicles which ensure that a cross-sect...
WeWork’s Rival Ucommune Raises $43.5 Million in Series C Funding
FUNDING

WeWork’s Rival Ucommune Raises $43.5 Million in Series C Funding

One of Wework China’s rivals Ucommune, the company that was earlier called UrWork has secured $43.5 million in Series C funding round. This round was led by real estate-focused investment firms Prosperity Holdings and RK Properties. According to the reports, the post-money valuation of the company has reached $1.8 billion. The total amount of funds raised by the company from various investors as of now totals to around $450 million. "This new round of funding cements ucommune's position as the absolute leading co-working space provider in Asia," said Dr. Mao Daqing, ucommune founder and chairman. "Through this partnership with RK Properties and Prosperity Holdings, we seek to further upgrade our integrated coworking experience through tapping into the community synergy and the potentia...
AI Startup Observe.AI Raises $8 Million in Series A Funding
FUNDING

AI Startup Observe.AI Raises $8 Million in Series A Funding

AI startup Observe.AI has reportedly raised $8 million in Series A funding round. This particular funding round was led by Nexus Venture Partners. The round also saw the participation of various investors including MGV, Liquid 2 Ventures, Hack VC and existing investors Emergent Ventures and Y Combinator. Being stuck on the phone with call centers is sometimes not bearable. The basic purpose of the company behind raising these funds is to develop an artificial intelligence system and make the experience more bearable. Swapnil Jain, founder and CEO of Observe.AI, said, “We are using the power of AI to make that voice conversation even more delightful by equipping the customer support agent with the tools needed while the call is going on. The agent no longer needs to place customers o...
Wakefit in Advanced Talks to Raise $6 Million from 3 Venture Capital Funds
FUNDING

Wakefit in Advanced Talks to Raise $6 Million from 3 Venture Capital Funds

Wakefit, an online company that sells mattresses is in advanced talks with three venture capital funds for the purpose of securing about Rs 40 crore ($6 million). The funding will be led by Sequoia Capital. If the funding is implemented, it will be Wakefit’s first external round of investment. The company was inaugurated in 2016 by Ankit Garg and Chaitanya Ramalingegowda. The large part of funds so raised is expected to be used towards the expansion of the product portfolio. Wakefit is planning to offer beds/cots, neck pillows and a limited range of nightwear, driven by research to induce sleep faster for the wearer. “Our mattress is currently in its 11th iteration, which we continuously change after feedback from customers. Since we started in 2016, we have sold over 1.25 lakh unit...
Bugworks Research Secures $9 million in Series A Funding
FUNDING

Bugworks Research Secures $9 million in Series A Funding

A Bengaluru and Delaware-based drug discovery company called Bugworks Research has reportedly raised $9 million (about Rs 62.2 crore) in a Series A round of funding. This particular round was led by the University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC). The latest funding round also saw participation from South Africa-based Acquipharma Holdings, 3one4 Capital and angels including Marcus Schabacker, the former chief strategic officer of Baxter Healthcare, and Shrikumar Suryanarayan, former head of research and development at Biocon. The funds so raised will be used by the company to deepen its clinical trials. “The company, in three years, has invented a novel class of antibiotics for superbugs. We have completed several animal tests. The plan is to enter human trials by 2020,” said Anand An...
Metro Bikes Raises $12.2 Million Funding From Sequoia India and Accel Partners
FUNDING

Metro Bikes Raises $12.2 Million Funding From Sequoia India and Accel Partners

Bengaluru based Scooter Sharing platform Metro Bikes, renamed now ‘Bounce’, has raised $12.2 million series A funding led by Sequoia India and Accel Partners. Raghunandan G, Founder of TaxiForSure, and other angel investors have also participated in this round. The funding will use to scale up its network of 2,000 scooters in Bengaluru to 30,000 in the next 10 months; make the delivery model robust through technology innovations, double its headcount and develop a pan India presence across major cities by 2020, a top executive told BusinessLine. Earlier, the bike sharing company raises $700,000 in March 2015 from Captain Prashant Priya, a serial entrepreneur and $1.5 million in October 2017 from LG Chandrasekar, co-founder, Sutures India. Bounce also operates a network of 500 s...
Try & Buy Fashions Raises $1 Mn From Venture Catalysts
FUNDING

Try & Buy Fashions Raises $1 Mn From Venture Catalysts

World's first real-life virtual trial room Try & Buy Fashions raises $1 million funding. The company is planning to bring online shopping as close to the offline experience as possible by allowing trying and buying of apparel through virtual stylists and virtual trial rooms. "VCats is a great platform that endeavours to back early- stage companies such as ours with the right mentorship and financial support. While we have already made our game strong in the industry through our tech, products and patent ring fencing along with 5 years of deep research in solving the problem of understanding the body shape of men and women, this Pre-Series A funding will further propel our growth," said Nikki, Innovation Head, Try & Buy. Try & Buy creates lifelike animated 3D models of user...
Lending Platform Prest Loans Raises $2.5 Million Funding
FUNDING

Lending Platform Prest Loans Raises $2.5 Million Funding

Delhi based lending platform Prest Loans raises $2.5 Mn (appr. Rs. 16.5 Crore) debt funding from multiple lenders including AU Small Finance Bank, INCRED, MAS Finance, Northern Arc Capital (earlier IFMR) and other who have been with the company from very early stage itself. The company has seen 10X growth in lending on YoY basis and is on aggressive expansion plan. Earlier the seed investors of the company infused $100K (Rs. 65 lakh) in equity to further strengthen the technology platform and meet the growing demand of credit. "The funding is an indication of confidence shown by lenders in our business. We got excellent support from various lenders within the first year of our operations and could raise debt largely due to strength of the business model, processes and technology b...