Friday, April 19

Tag: funding

Mumbai Based Startup Truce Raises $370,000 From Inmobi and Snapdeal Founders
FUNDING

Mumbai Based Startup Truce Raises $370,000 From Inmobi and Snapdeal Founders

Mumbai based Startup Truce, which runs a fresh farm vegetables and fruits supply chain venture has raised 2.5 Crores ($370,000) angel funding from the founders of Inmobi and Snapdeal. Truce co-founder Saurabh Jain confirmed that the firm has raised funding but did not talk on about the details. The founders who invested are Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal, co-founders), Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com, founder), Amit Gupta (InMobi, co-founder), Utsav Somani and Neeraj Goenka of Mumbai Angels besides Farooq Adam Mukadam of Shopsense Retail Technologies were among the group of investors. Truce was launched last year by Kedar Gokhale and Jain. Gokhale, an alumnus of IIT Bombay. Truce procures fruits and vegetables from farmers across Maharashtra and sells them to mid-large sized restau...
Ratan Tata Invests in Teabox, An Online Start-up That Sells Premium Teas
FUNDING

Ratan Tata Invests in Teabox, An Online Start-up That Sells Premium Teas

Singapore: Ratan Tata, who stepped down as the chairman of the $100 billion Tata Group in 2012, is taking a stake in an online start-up that sells premium teas, the latest example of the Indian businessman becoming an active venture capitalist in his retirement. Tata is putting an undisclosed amount of money into Teabox, an Indian start-up based in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s the latest of about 25 personal investments that he has made in start-ups, helping spark an e-commerce boom in India along the way. His investments include stakes in three of India’s unicorns, or start-ups worth more than $1 billion, the ride-hailing app Ola, online retailer Snapdeal and a mobile payment venture called Paytm. He has also put money into Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp., the most hig...
Adult Products Based Portal IMbesharam, Has Raised Series A Funding
FUNDING

Adult Products Based Portal IMbesharam, Has Raised Series A Funding

An Adult products based portal IMbesharam, has raised Series A funding worth $4 million from US-based investors Pavel Vassiliev and Rafiq Hirani. The company was founded by Salim Rajan and Raj Armani in 2011 and claims to have 120 international brands (and 4,000 SKUs) across apparel, adult toys, jewelry, accessories, cosmetics and gift cards for both men and women. The company will launch a US store, 4 warehouses in India, hire employees in India and the US and launch a responsive website this year with the funding. It also plans to use $1 million for a marketing campaign, according to the report. IMBesharam explains why it chose the name on its website, “..We believe we all are Besharam, whether we like to accept it is another story… Because we want to educate people about sex, g...
Puneet Dalmia Invests in “Online Citizen Engagement Platform LocalCircles”
FUNDING

Puneet Dalmia Invests in “Online Citizen Engagement Platform LocalCircles”

After getting funded by leading industrialists, Anand Mahindra and Nadir Godrej, online citizen engagement platform LocalCircles said Dalmia Group Managing Director Puneet Dalmia has become an investor in the company. LocalCircles, which enables citizens to connect with national and local governance, will use the funds to expand its presence, strengthen technology and recruit more talent, LocalCircles Chief Strategy Officer K Yatish Rajawat said. He, however, declined to comment on details of the investment. "We have a user base of about one million users. We see this growing to about 30 million in the next 3-5 years. We will use the funds to double our presence to 200 cities," he added. Sachin Taparia, Chairman and CEO, LocalCircles said the company represents Social M...
Hindi Social Networking web portal “ShabdaNagari has raised $200000 Dollars in Angel Funding”
FUNDING

Hindi Social Networking web portal “ShabdaNagari has raised $200000 Dollars in Angel Funding”

New Delhi, Jan 22: Hindi social networking portal, ShabdaNagari, today said it has raised $2,00,000 funding from Kanpur angel fund and clutch of other investors. The portal was launched in January 2015, by IIT Mumbai alumni Amitesh Mishra along with Kaplnesh Gupta and Nikhil Tiwari. The funding will be use in its future expansion plans. The Website has more than 20 thousand registered users, 150 thousand unique visits, 6 lakh page visits and over 100 articles being published on the site everyday with 25 per cent repeat traffic, the company said in a statement. Kalpnesh Gupta, Co-founder, ShabdaNagari said “In the online space today, Hindi doesn’t feature in even top 10 languages despite being one of most popular languages. We have a goal of bridging this digital divide. The angel inve...
Ratan Tata Invests in Baby Care Platform FirstCry.com
FUNDING

Ratan Tata Invests in Baby Care Platform FirstCry.com

Top industrialist Ratan Tata has invested in baby care eCommerce platform FirstCry, continuing the slew of investments he has made in various startups globally. The Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Senior Advisor to IDG Ventures India, has invested an undisclosed amount in his personal capacity into Brainbees Solutions, which owns the FirstCry.com brand, the company said in a statement.   ALSO READ: Ratan Tata invests in India’s Largest Cashback & Coupons Site CashKaro.com   FirstCry is omni-channel player with presence across desktop, mobile and offline routes offering baby and maternity products in India. It started operations in 2010 and has over 2 million customers. It has over 150 FirstCry branded franchise offline stores across 100 cities in the...
Flipkart invests in parenting social network Tinystep
News

Flipkart invests in parenting social network Tinystep

Tinystep, a parenting social network, today said it has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Flipkart. The Bengaluru-based startup plans to use the funds to develop the product, enhance user experience and strengthen its team, Tinystep said in a statement. The funding will also be utilised to further accelerate the company's growth and user engagement, it added. Tinystep is a mobile app that helps parents connect with each other to communicate, guide and collaborate with each other on parenting with features like Q&A Forum, individual and group chats. "Silicon Valley has given us Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more awesome social products, Tinystep can be a tiny gift from India. Flipkart is helping us with the required guidance to continue our excelli...
Ratan Tata invests in India’s Largest Cashback & Coupons Site CashKaro.com
FUNDING

Ratan Tata invests in India’s Largest Cashback & Coupons Site CashKaro.com

CashKaro.com, India’s largest Cashback & Coupons Site has raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata, the Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons. Tata has made the investment in his personal capacity. The funding comes just two months after the Gurgaon-based startup raised Rs 25 crores in its Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital, one of India’s leading venture capital firms. CashKaro works on an affiliate model and was founded by entrepreneur couple Swati & Rohan Bhargava in mid-2013. CashKaro had earlier raised USD 750,000 in the year 2013 in angel funding from a group of investors based in London who belong to companies like Paypal, Investec, Goldman Sachs etc. Speaking on the investment, Swati & Rohan Bhargava, Co-founders, CashKaro.com said, “The funding from Mr. Ratan Tata m...
CarTrade.com raises Rs950 crore investment
FUNDING

CarTrade.com raises Rs950 crore investment

Mumbai: Cartrade.com, an online auto classifieds company also known as MXC solutions Pvt. Ltd  has raised Rs.950 crore funding led by Singapore-based investment firm Temasek and March Capital, with participation from existing investor Warburg Pincus. The company had raised $30 million in 2014 from a group of investors that included Tiger Global, Warburg and Canaan Partners. The company  was founded in 2009 by Vinay Sanghi. Earlier it had raised $30 million from Tiger Global, Warburg and Canaan Partners. The funding will use to expand its offerings for users and dealers. The company will be looking at a few more acquisitions to strengthen its position in the market. The company operated only on the space of used cars until in November 2015 it acquired Carwale to enter into the new cars s...
China’s Baidu in talks with Indian e-commerce start-ups for funding
BUSINESS, News

China’s Baidu in talks with Indian e-commerce start-ups for funding

Baidu Inc, a Chinese web services company, is in talks to invest in Indian e-commerce start-ups including Zomato, BookMyShow and BigBasket, a spokesman for China's top online search provider said on Wednesday. "The Indian market represents an enormous opportunity for us to connect more people with services, and we plan to put more resources there in the future," the spokesman told Reuters by email. Baidu declined to comment on possible investment amounts or time frames. India's technology start-up market is booming as more and more people shop online, in a country where about 20 percent of a population of 1.3 billion are connected to the Internet. The e-commerce market could grow in terms of the value of goods sold to $220 billion by 2025 from $11 billion in 2015, Bank of America Merr...
One More Unicorn in Indian E-commerce industry, ShopClues Raises Fresh Funds
News

One More Unicorn in Indian E-commerce industry, ShopClues Raises Fresh Funds

As per the Mint Report Shopclues an Indian E-commerce platform on Tuesday said it has raised a fresh round of funds led by sovereign wealth fund GIC Pvt. Ltd with participation from existing investors Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners, valuing the company at more than $1.1 billion. Though the amount has not been disclosed but sources said that it will be around $100-$150 million. “Today, we are the dominant player in low price-point and unstructured categories like lifestyle, home, kitchen, electronic and automotive accessories etc. Our focus on selection, value and trusted shopping for Indian middle class consumers has given us tremendous scale with a rapidly growing buyer and merchant network. We are confident that our capital efficiency and execution will make this ...
Hike raises undisclosed funding from founders Of Quora, WordPress & other Silicon Valley veterans
FUNDING

Hike raises undisclosed funding from founders Of Quora, WordPress & other Silicon Valley veterans

NEW DELHI: Indian messenger app, Hike, has raised undisclosed funding from a number of tech veterans, including Quora founder, Dropbox's Vice President Engineering Aditya Agarwal, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Ruchi Sanghvi, VP Dropbox. "It's great to have the world's top brains in tech share Hike's vision; and not just entrust us with their investment, but more importantly, also advise us on our product and strategy. Each of the them brings with him/her a core area of expertise, which we at Hike find immensely useful as we aggressively grow in India," Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, Hike Messenger, said in a statement. "India is close to our hearts and we understand the challenges faced by the billion plus people of India. It's quite clear that messaging is playing a key...