This week was quite eventful in terms of funding activities. Few of the well-known firms raised a substantial amount of funds from different investors. So, here you can have a glimpse of the major funding activities that took place this week starting from 18th June 2018 to 23rd June 2018.
The recap of funding for the week is as follows:
1) Swiggy
Food Delivery Platform Swiggy sealed its much awaited $210 million funding with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s’ DST Global thereby finally making entry into the prestigious “Unicorn” club.
The total capital of the company crossed $466 million followed by this round. Swiggy will be using the freshly raised capital in revamping its supply chain network and expanding to new markets. With an expected market valuation of $1.2 billion, the startup is ready to beef a war with Zomato and new rivals like Ubereats and Ola-owned Foodpanda.
2) Wonderchef
Wonderchef, Renowned Chef Sanjeev Kapoor’s promoted appliance brand has raised Rs. 70 crore from a mid-market private equity firm, Amicus Capital Partners which valued the firm at Rs. 700 crores.
The funds will be invested in brand building and expanding capabilities in terms of manufacturing and warehousing. We will also diversify the portfolio with more products. The company has also clocked a revenue of Rs. 180 crore in fiscal 2017-18 and is expecting to take it along Rs. 600 crore in the coming five years.
3) JD.com
The biggest multinational tech company Google announced on Monday that it will invest an amount of $500 million in Chinese second largest e-commerce platform called JD.com.
“This partnership with Google opens up a broad range of possibilities to offer a superior retail experience to consumers throughout the world,” stated Jianwen Liao, JD.com’s chief strategy officer.
The basic purpose of both the technology firms is to work in association and develop a retail infrastructure that can improve the shopping experience and reduce friction in a number of markets.
4) IndiQube
IndiQube, a workspace solutions provider has raised USD 15 million in its Series A funding round led by WestBridge Capital.
The funding marks the first external round for the company where the funds shall be used for company expansion to cities like Mumbai and Chennai, increasing its workforce and brand creation.
Founder Rishi Das said, “We already have about 15,000 seats operational, which will be increased to 25,000 by the end of the fiscal. By then, we will also expand to Pune and Hyderabad. We are also looking at setting up presence in Mumbai and Chennai.”
5) Elucidata
A data science company called Elucidata Corporation announced that it raised a seed funding amounting to $1.7 million carried out by Hyperplane Venture Capital. Along with Hyperplane Venture, other angel investors were a part of the seed funding round as well.
Elucidata Corporation plans to utilize these funds in the expansion process and to transform drug discovery. It wants to grow its team and operations in New Delhi and also introduce some fresh discovery tools for the process of discovering drugs.
6) Cashify
Cashify, a Gurugram based online marketplace for used smartphones has partnered with Chinese recommerce firm AiHuiShou as a strategic investor and partner. However, the actual financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.
Mandeep Manocha, CEO at Cashify said, “With around 900K monthly transactions AiHuiShou’s operations involve recommerce at scale, having been profitable and on its way to an IPO. This partnership will enable massive scale for us, at a time when we are looking to enter newer categories such as electronic appliances, cameras and wearable devices.”
While the partnership will help Cashify leverage AiHuiShiu’s technology, it will also help to bring operational efficiencies in its business as the platform is eyeing to expand across international markets.
7) Purplle
The beauty products and services marketplace Purplle has reportedly raised fresh funds amounting to Rs 17.5 crores ($2.56 million) from a group of investors. The funding was secured in a number of tranches and was led by an unidentified London-based investment fund.
The valuation of the company after the funding round has reached roughly around Rs 240-245 crore ($35-36 million). The company has raised funds basically for the expansion of its business operations and to improve the customer base.
8) SMECorner
Digital Micro-Lending Platform SMECorner has raised around $7 million ( Rs. 47.5 crores) from NBFC Capital First Ltd and a clutch of investors including Accion Ventures. The capital raised is a mix of debt and equity with 25 crores in debt and Rs. 22.5 crore in equity.
The deal is aimed at sealing a partnership with Digikredit for loan orientation. SMECorner which helps SME’s to access loans from banks will be using the capital to scale its loan book by expanding to offline branches and honing its platform.
A part of the fund will also be used by in strengthening its credit-worth analysis tools including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool, that analyses data on paper and crunches cash flows immediately.