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FreeCharge Co-founder Kunal Shah raises $30 Mn via Sequoia Capital

1Jun By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

FUNDING

FreeCharge Co-founder Kunal Shah raises $30 Mn via Sequoia Capital

Kunal Shah, Co-founder of Payment company Freecharge has successfully raised $30 million from a group of investors led by led by venture capital investor Sequoia Capital, as reported by the sources. Kunal is starting a new incubator that would be dedicated to helping startups in consumer space. One of the sources on request of anonymity said, The funding round has been closed and Kunal has raised over $30 Million to start his new venture that will be launched very soon. He has raised funds mostly from foreign investors. Sequoia has also invested in his new venture. Sequoia the leader in the investment round has been associated with Kunal for quite some time. In February 2017, Kunal joined marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital as an advisory role, which came to an end this Ja...

31May By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

CredRight Raises Rs 9 Crore Pre-Series A Funding

Hyderabad-based fintech startup CredRight raises 9 Crore from Accion Venture Lab, YourNest, an early stage venture capital fund along with other individual investors. Lending platform CredRight provides a loan to unserved and underserved micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The company partners with chit funds, which are similar to Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCAs) in the United States but use a reverse auction to distribute pooled funds across India to acquire customers and use previously untapped chit data, along with other data points, to underwrite a loan for a customer. "CredRight plans to further invest in technology, grow its team, and continue its expansion plans to reach even more unserved and underserved customers," said Neeraj Bansal, co-founder an...

WeWork India Eyeing to Raise $200 Mn from Goldman and Warburg

31May By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

FUNDING

WeWork India Eyeing to Raise $200 Mn from Goldman and Warburg

The Indian wing of Co-working mammoth WeWork lead by billionaire developer Jitu Virwani of Embassy Group is in talks with global leaders Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus to raise $200 million. This will land the local's unit to earn a unicorn status nearing valuation of $1 Billion. As per the sources, Goldman, Warburg eye $200 million stakes in WeWork India. WeWork in India is operated exclusively by Virwani and Embassy under a deal that materialised two years ago. Since, then the co-working pioneer has made significant leaps in the country with 12,000 desks in operation currently, which it plans to double by the end of this year. Additionally, India is the sole big market where New York-based WeWork-valued last at $20 Bn has successfully struck an exclusive deal to operate in India....

Agritech Startup Raises $14 Million From Gates Foundation & Others

31May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Agritech Startup Raises $14 Million From Gates Foundation & Others

Bengaluru based Agritech startup Stellapps raises $14 million funding led by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and IndusAge Partners, among others. Stellapps Technologies have one of the largest dairy IoT platforms in India and they will use the current funding for product development and operation expansion including for monitoring the quantity and quality of milk, storage facilities, creating wearable devices for tracking cattle health and infrastructure for housing the cattle. Ultimately, the focus is on reducing costs for the farmer by ensuring there are higher milk yields and consistent health of their cattle. The company is also backed by Flipkart founder Binny Bansal and Omnivore Ventures. The Indian government currently holds 40% of the dairy space. In 2017, the comp...

30May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Bengaluru based Payment Platform Raises $10 Million Funding From Amazon

Bengaluru based ToneTag, a contactless payment platform has raised $8-10 million from investors like Amazon Inc. and Mastercard etc. Founded in 2013, ToneTag enables contactless digital transactions on mobile phones, card swiping machines, automated teller machines and other payment-enabling devices. The payment platform enables existing POS devices to accept payments using sound. Tonetag was founded by Kumar Abhishek and Vivek Singh and currently have a 47-member team constantly working to bring innovation to its technology. ToneTag has filed 7 global patents for a variety of exciting use cases in the payments ecosystem and the offline retail space and has touched the lives of its over 50 million global consumers. The startup collaborated over 250,000 merchants to made thei...

Digital Insurance Platform Raises $1.5 million From Kalaari Capital & Others

29May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Digital Insurance Platform Raises $1.5 million From Kalaari Capital & Others

Gurugram based Digital insurance platform Toffee has raised $1.5 million (around Rs 10 crore) seed funding led by venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, impact investors Omidyar Network and Accion Venture Lab. Founded by Nishant Jain and Rohan Kumar, the digital-only platform launched its beta version in December 2017. Toffee’s tech platform can analyse, predict and customise insurance products for millennials across health, lifestyle and personal accidents. It claims that buying insurance takes less than 90 seconds and that it processes simple claims in under two hours using a completely digital interface. Rohan Kumar, CEO & Co-Founder, Toffee Insurance said, “We are really excited about the support we have received from Kalaari Capital, Omidyar Network and Accion Venture Lab. Th...

29May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Ready to Cook Food Startup Raises $5 Million Series B Funding

Bengaluru based YCook, a ready-to-cook processed package food startup raises $5 million (about ₹33.7 crore) in a Series B funding. The current funding round saw participation from Binny Bansal led venture capital firm 021 Capital, Oikocredit. The existing investor Omnivore also participated in this round. The food company will use this funding to acquire certifications, improve facilities and marketing. The company launches a food product known as Ta-daa with the aim to revolutionize cooking and encourage more people to eat healthy, wholesome, home-cooked meals. The product sells across most of the retail stores like Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, and Nature's Basket and online ecommerce platform Amazon, Flipkart, Bigbasket etc.. Founded in 2013 by Janardhan Swahar, Vijay Reddy and ...

29May By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

IIT-Madras Launches a Startup to Assist other Startups in Early-Age Funding

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-Madras) has come up with a startup established with a motive to help other startups in early-stage to inflate their success through Machine Learning and Data Sciences tools and techniques. The institute has named the startup as YNOS Venture Engine CC Private Limited. The founder of the venture is Prof Thillai Rajan who belongs to the department of management studies and has been researching the Indian venture capital industry nearly for a decade. The professor has a stupendous awareness of funding issues at start-ups and therefore he decided to come forth with such a venture. The words of Prof Thillai Rajan in this regard were, “Information and decision making analytics are not easily accessible for early-stage entrepreneurs. Sell-side int...

29May By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

Mutual Funds Investment Platform Raises $1.6Mn Series A Funding

Mumbai, May 29, 2018: Orowealth, India’s first zero commission Direct Mutual Fund Platform has raised $1.6 mn in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Powerhouse Ventures with participation by Money Forward Inc., one of the largest publicly listed fin-tech companies in Japan; a prominent US VC Social Capital, under their Capital as a Service program; B Dash Ventures, one of the largest VCs in Japan; and other prominent angel investors including Anand Chandrasekaran, ex CPO Airtel and Dinesh Agarwal, Founder Indiamart. Existing investors M&S Partners and GSF also participated in this round. Post funding, Sri Peddu from Powerhouse Ventures will join the Board and Money Forward will take a Board observer role at Orowealth. This is the second round of funding for the ...

Online Insurance Startup Acko raises $12 Mn from Amazon

28May By Lavina TolaniNo Comments

FUNDING

Online Insurance Startup Acko raises $12 Mn from Amazon

Acko Technology, an online insurance startup raised $12 million in a fresh round led by e-commerce giant Amazon India as informed by the company on Sunday. The funding round witnessed participation from new investor Ashish Dhawan and existing investor Catamaran Ventures (Owned by Narayana Murthy). The new infusion has taken Acko's total equity funding to about $42 million with its valuation at about $100 million. The round led by Amazon marks company debut in the financial sector where it will now co-create products with the insurance tech startup - besides being its distributor. Acko-headquartered in Mumbai came to inception in 2016 as an independent entity post a restructuring at online insurance aggregator Coverfox, which witnessed its co-founded Varun Dua step down to kicks...

26May By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

Funding News of the Last Week (May 21st – 26th 2018)

This week witness a lot of funding rounds, 14 to be precise for a total amount of around $130 Million. HDM Global was the company which received most funding with $100 Mn, while Bonphul Air Product and Rocketium raised the least funds with $300K funding. Below is a recap of all the funding news that happened this week : LifeSight LifeSight, an artificial intelligence-powered location intelligence platform based in Singapore, recently raised $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by shareholders of Provident Capital Partners, an investment firm based in Indonesia. The funds raised will be used to grow its engineering and data science abilities at its Bengaluru development centre as well as expand operations in other Asian markets in the next couple of yea...

26May By Sheldan RungasamyNo Comments

FUNDING

AI-Powered Location Intelligence Startup Raises $2 Mn Funding

LifeSight, an artificial intelligence-powered location intelligence platform based in Singapore, recently raised $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by shareholders of Provident Capital Partners, an investment firm based in Indonesia. The funds raised will be used to grow its engineering and data science abilities at its Bengaluru development centre as well as expand operations in other Asian markets in the next couple of years, according to a statement released by the company. LifeSight, which is run by LifeSight Pte. Ltd, saw the day in September 2017 by Rohit Maheswaran and Tobin Thomas. Before founding LifeSight, Maheswaran was operating as Chief Product Officer at Ebizu, an ad-tech company, while co-founder Thomas was responsible of sales and operations at AskMe, the ...