Consumer Internet Industry

1) PolicyBazaar founded by Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal: The online insurance policy aggregator PolicyBazaar raising $77 million equity funding in a round from global asset management firm, Wellington Management. The round also saw participation from IDG Ventures India and PE firm True North. A group of existing backers, including Tiger Global Management, Singapore government-run Temasek and PremjiInvest, also joined in. The funding will get capitalized in technology, customer service, and towards geographical expansion.

2) MyGubby founded by Sunil Rao, Ravi Rao and Umesh Sangurmath: Bengaluru-based home decor and furnishings startup MyGubbi secured $2.5 million Pre-Series A funding in a round from the family office of Firoze Irani. The round also saw participation from existing investors, including Bigbasket co-founder Vipul Parekh, NeoBytes founder Ananda Kallugadde and InfosysBSE President Rajesh K Murthy. The funding will be used on accelerating the startup’s growth and expansion.

3) Gapoon founded by Ankita Asai, Apoorva Mishra and Ankit Bindal: Bengaluru-based home services startup Gapoon raised $250K in a Pre-Series A round of funding from Vida Ventures and other independent and seasoned investors including Snehal Mantri, Anshu Bahadur, Partner at Cognizant and angel investors from their previous round Pankaj Kapoor, Director at one of the leading investment banks and Chandrasekhar BV a veteran in the telecom industry.

4) Lenden Club founded by Bhavin Patel and Dipesh Karki: Mumbai-based peer-to-peer lending platform Lenden Club raised $500K in equity investment from three major investors Venture Catalyst, Anirudh Damani, and an Indian venture capital fund. The startup funding will be used to consume the funds mainly for strengthening its technology platform and expanding its scope of operations.

E-commerce Industry

5) Meesho founded by Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey: Bengaluru based social e-commerce startup Meesho raised $3.1 million in a round of funding from SAIF Partners. Existing investors YCombinator and Venture Highway also participated in the round. The startup plans to deploy the funding to hire for its tech and business operation teams.

6) BigBasket founded by VS Sudhakar, Abhinay Choudhari and Hari Menon: Bengaluru-based online grocer BigBasket raised $839K from its existing investor Trifecta venture debt fund. BigBasket has to date raised about $305.8 million spread across six rounds.

Technology Industry

7) ThirdWatch founded by Shashank Agarwal and Adarsh Jain: New Delhi-based artificial Intelligence startup ThirdWatch raised an undisclosed angel funding from Indian Angel Network and IAN Fund from lead investor Rahul Agarwalla. The round also had participation from Keshav Sanghi, former MD of Goldman Sachs India & founder of VentureWorks India along with Batlivala & Karani Securities.

8) ParallelDots founded by Ankit Narayan Singh: Gurugram-based AI and deep learning solutions provider ParallelDots raised $1.4 million in an additional funding round from Multipoint Capital, a U.S. based investment firm. The freshly raised funding will be deployed to add to its technology team, support its expanding global footprint, and general operational expenses.

9) GridRaster founded by Rishi Ranjan, Dijam Panigrahi and Venkat Ramana Dass: California and Bengaluru-based GridRaster Inc. raised $2 million in Seed funding from Exfinity Ventures. Lumia Capital, Pipeline Capital, NexStar Partners, Unshackled Ventures and Explorer Group also participated in the funding round. The startup will utilize the funding for product development and marketing.

Automobile Industry

10) LetsService founded by Girish G, Sachin Radder and Sachin Vasanth Shenoy: Bengaluru-based B2B automobile service startup LetsService secured an undisclosed amount of funding in a Pre Series A round from Aequs Group and has marked the group’s first steps to expand into the digital space. The fund will be used towards strengthening its team, expand into multiple cities and enhancing technology stack.

Education Industry

11) UCLID founded by Anurag Shivarathri, Bhargav Krishna and Sahitya Yerramsetty: Hyderabad-based edtech startup UCLID EduLabs Pvt Ltd raised a Seed funding round of $235K from a bunch of US-based investors. The startup is currently running in the alpha mode with services in Hyderabad and will make a global beta launch in April 2018.

Finance Industry

12) IBSFINtech founded by Chandra Mohan Grover and TM Manjunath: Corporate treasury management solutions provider IBSFINtech secured an undisclosed seed funding from Shailesh Haribhakti, Chairman of Haribhakti & Co. The company is also in an early stage of discussions to raise growth funding of $2-4 million for scaling up operations globally, product research and development.

13) BankBazaar founded by Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty and Rati Shetty: Chennai-based online financial marketplace BankBazaar secured $30 million in a funding round from credit rating agency and information management company Experian. The funds will be utilized to further strengthen its position as the leader in secure paperless access to loans, cards, and mutual funds.

14) KrazyBee founded by Karthikeyan K, Madhusudan E and Wan Hong: Bengaluru-based microlending platform KrazyBee secured $8 million Series A equity and debt financing led by Xiaomi Technologies and Shunwei Capital. The round also saw participation from E-city Ventures and RK Group. The fresh capital will be used for strengthening the company’s risk model and core algorithm, geared towards catering to new market segments and focusing on product diversification.

15) RenewBuy founded by Balachander Sekhar: Gurugram-headquartered auto insurance aggregator RenewBuy raised $9.2 million from Bengaluru-based growth-stage PE firm, Amicus Capital Partners. With the fresh capital, RenewBuy is looking to expand its portfolio of services to include health, accident and life insurance.

Food & Beverage Industry

16) Chaayos founded by Nitin Saluja: Gurugram-headquartered chai startup, Chaayos secured $2 million funding from existing investor Tiger Global Management. The investment is part of an internal round of funding and will be deployed to expand the chain of tea outlets currently operating under the Chaayos brand.

17) EazyDiner founded by Vir Sanghvi: Gurugram-based online restaurant reservation platform EazyDiner raised $4.5 million in a Series B funding round from existing investors, including Saama Capital and DSG Consumer Partners. Two news backers, Singapore-based VC firm Beenext and a Middle Eastern family office, also participated in the round.

18) Fingerlix founded by Shree Bharambe: Ready-to-cook foodtech startup Fingerlix raised $7 million from venture capital firm, Accel Partners. The newly-secured funding will allow Fingerlix to expand its geographical reach beyond Mumbai, Pune, and NCR. The investment will be used to enter the markets in 10 Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai. The funding will also be spent on strengthening the company’s presence in Delhi/NCR.

Advertising Industry

19) Oplifi founded by Anup Kumar and Gautam Dutt: Mumbai based early-stage venture capital fund Rainmaker Ventures capitalized $750K in Oplifi, a Singapore based programmatic media company that focuses on transparency, simplicity, and accessibility. Presently, Oplifi works with brands like Lufthansa, Motorola, Vicco in India, RWS and Amex in Singapore, Trapper Media in Malaysia, Cyber One Group in Hong Kong amongst others.

Logistics Industry

20) BlackBuck founded by Rajesh Yabaji: Bengaluru-based logistics firm BlackBuck raised $23.05 million in a venture debt funding from InnoVen Capital. The company will deploy the recently raised funds to expand its service offerings.

The post 20 Indian Startups Making News This Week (09 October- 22 October) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) ParkEasy founded by Eric Tan and Warren Chan: Machine learning based parking discovery startup Park Easy, which operates Android app Peazy secured an angel funding from Dutch Accelerator Rockstart. The amount is said to be around $117.4K and the deal has been done at a valuation of $1.8 million. With this deal, Park Easy will also shift its base to the Netherlands.

2) Skillenza founded by Prashant Koirala, Rajesh Rai, and Subhendu Panigrahi: Bengaluru-based online platform, Skillenza (formerly known as Venturesity), which helps enterprises in hiring talent secured $722K in a Seed funding round from Blume Ventures and Indian Angel Network. Aneesh Reddy from Capillary, Surojit Niyogi from HomeBit, Raghu from Taxi for Sure, Pallav Nadhani from Fusion Charts and Tracxn also participated in this round of funding. The freshly raised funds will be deployed to disrupt skill building and talent engagement activities.

3) Harness.io founded by Jyoti Bansal: BIG Labs invested in the $20 million Series A round of Harness.io, a Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform, along with Menlo Ventures. Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures is joining the board of Harness.

4) TagBox founded by Saumitra Singh and Adarsh Kumar: Bengaluru-based cold chain monitoring solution provider TagBox raised an undisclosed amount of angel investment from Indian Angel network and the IAN Fund. The funding round was led by IAN members Naveen Gupta and Dinesh Goel. The startup plans to use the funds for product development, filing patents and global certifications for its entire tech stack and is currently focusing on cold chain solutions for pharma, F&V, dairy, meats, processed and frozen food, e-commerce and retail.

E-commerce Industry

5) BigBasket founded by Abhinay Choudhari, VS Sudhakar and Hari Menon: Bengaluru-based online grocery startup Bigbasket raised $5 million from Helion Ventures Partners. This comes at a time when rival Grofers India has pumped in $14.7 million from its Singapore-based parent company Grofers International.

Technology Industry

6) Bharati Robotics founded by Debashis Das: Pune-based cleaning and material handling equipment maker Bharati Robotics raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by its existing investors – Society For Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE, IITB Incubator), and other angel investors. The raised fund will be deployed to expand the manufacturing capacity and technology applicability and cater to demand from both local and global customers.

7) ShieldSquare founded by Rakesh Thatha, Vasanth Kumar Gopalakrishnan, Jyoti Kakatkar, Srikanth Konijeti and Pavan Thatha: Bengaluru-based bot mitigation and management startup ShieldSquare secured an undisclosed amount of Series A funding in a round from Endiya Partners and RPG Ventures. Anthill Ventures and existing investors StartupxSeed, Venture Highway and a few angel investors also participated in the round. The company will use the freshly-secured financing to strengthen its bot mitigation technology platform. A portion of the funding will also go into expanding its market presence across the US and Europe.

8) Cashfree founded by Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta: Payments platform Cashfree secured $120K in seed funding from Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator. The funds will be used for product development, hiring more individuals to sales and engineering platforms, strengthening bank partnerships, as well as for marketing engagements.

Education Industry

9) Toppr founded by Hemanth Goteti and Zishaan Hayath: Mumbai-based personalized e-learning solutions provider and online test preparation platform, Toppr raised $6.92 million in its Series B funding, from its existing investors SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures, and FIL Capital Management. This capital will be utilized to expand the geographical footprint and accelerate user acquisition.

Fintech Industry

10) Olly Credit founded by Ashwin Bhambri and Ringaile Noq: Delhi-based fintech startup that offers micro-credit cards Olly Credit raised an undisclosed amount of funding in Seed round of funding from Incubate Fund. Former Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company CEO Sandesh Kirkire; Anand Kumar, Partner at Sand Hill Counsel and  Jaipur Rugs Director Yogesh Chaudhary also participated in this round of funding.

11) OfBusiness founded by Nitin Jain, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Ruchi Kalra, Asish Mohapatra, Vasant Sridhar, Bhuvan Gupta, and Chandranshu Sinha: Gurugram-based SME lending platform OfBusiness secured $3.8 million in debt funding from Kotak Mahindra Bank.The funding comes as an extension to the $7.6 million working capital limit that the startup recently procured from the bank. With the raised funding from Kotak Mahindra, the startup aims to further expand its reach across the country to encompass a larger number of asset-light MSMEs that are currently unbanked.

12) ZipLoan founded by Shalabh Singhal and Kshitij Puri: Delhi-based SME lending platform, ZipLoan secured $3 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners India. The round also saw the participation of the fintech startup’s existing investors, including WaterBridge Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and former Capital18 MD, Sarbvir Singh. The company will use the raised capital for geographical expansion in non-metro cities. The funds will also enable the SME lending platform to increase its loan book size.

13) CASHe founded by V. Raman Kumar: Mumbai-based app-only lending platform CASHe raised $3.07 million in debt funding from IFMR Capital in its NBFC company, Bhanix Finance and Investment. The funding will be used by the fintech startup to ramp up its loan book.

Legal Industry

14) SpotDraft founded by Shashank Bijapur and Madhav Bhagat: Gurugram-based legaltech startup SpotDraft raised $550K in a Seed funding round led by VC firm Hunch Ventures. The other investors that participated in the round include Japan-based Spiral Ventures, 500 Startups, Singapore Angel Network and Citrus Payments founder Satyen Kothari. The platform has plans to use this capital from Hunch Ventures and others for scaling the business and marketing the product locally. The capital will be further deployed to strengthen the startup’s presence in the contract automation sector, which boasts a market potential of $80 billion.

Healthcare Industry

15) Medsmart founded by Nelson and P S Anand Kumar: Bengaluru-based healthtech startup Medsmart raised $1 million led by Excel Business Solutions. The investment is a structured deal involving an equity and technology partnership, where Excel will develop and maintain the Medsmart’s real-time intelligence data engine.

16) Original4Sure founded by Shreyans Sipani and Divay Kumar: Original4Sure, which offers anti-counterfeiting and original product identification solutions, raised $400K from a group of investors led by Venture Highway, Startup Buddy and Nirav Chokshi. The funds, to be utilized for tech and business development, were raised through the platforms Mumbai Angels and Let’s Venture.

Sports Industry

17) PlayX founded by Kabeer Jain:  Gurugram-based esports startup PlayX secured undisclosed amount as angel funding from Lead Angels Network – an alumni-focused pan India angel network. The startup will utilize the funds to develop its technology, build the team and create gaming focused marketing campaigns.

Real Estate Industry

18) PropStory founded by Ashish Mahajan and Bhagwandas Paliwal: Gurugram-based real estate content portal PropStory raised an undisclosed amount in an angel funding round. The investors included Abhishek Bhatewara, a member of angel investor platform Mumbai Angels; Vivek Shah, head of investment banking at Chinese securities and brokerage major Haitong Securities; Suraj Saharan, co-founder of logistics startup Delhivery; Paras Arora, co-founder of Tea Halt, a tea-based restaurant chain; and a few other angels participated in the round. PropStory will deploy the funds to recruit full-time content writers, for business development, product development, and to introduce new services.

Food & Beverage Industry

19) RAW Pressery founded by Anuj Rakyan: Rakyan Beverages Pvt. Ltd, the maker of organic cold-pressed juices and other beverages sold under the brand RAW Pressery, raised $6 million to fund expansion. It plans to deploy the funds to expand its manufacturing capacity and distribution reach for new product launches.

20) FYRE founded by Rahul Manek: Herbal energy shot maker FYRE raised $500K in a seed funding round from Venture Catalysts. The investment in FYRE is led by Venture Catalysts angels – Apurva Parekh (Director, Pidilite Industries),Anupam Mittal (Founder, Shaadi.com), Vikash Agarwal, Manish Agarwal (Founders,Nandan Group) RomilRatra (Cofounder, Bellona Hospitality), Kunal Kishore(Founder, Value 360 Communications) AkshayBardia (Director, AT Plus), Karim Jaffer (MD, Gossip Shoes) Vijay Lakhani, Anil Jain, Amit Agrawal, Anup Agrawal, Dipan Dalal and others. The startup funding will be utilized by the company to ramp up operations, expanding sales & marketing team and enhance its distribution network.

21) Chevon founded by Rizwan Thakur: Chevon Agrotech, an integrated frozen food company raised funding from Singapore-based Greenfield Advisory to develop new products and expansion. With plans to enhance its reach to all major markets in India, the company will also use the funds to launch marketing campaigns, ramp up distribution and drive its international foray in the Middle East and South-East Asian markets.

The post 21 Indian Startups Making News This Week (23 October- 29 October) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) EdGE Networks founded by Arjun Pratap: Bengaluru-based EdGE Networks, an AI-driven HRTech solutions company secured $4.5 million in Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital and Ventureast. The startup will deploy the capital to strengthen its core product offerings for workforce optimization and talent acquisition.

2) Freshboxx founded by Rohan Kulkarni: A fresh produce supply chain management startup Freshboxx raised an undisclosed fund in a seed round funding led by Belgaum Industrialist Joint MD of Ashok Iron Works. It first rotated the business model in January 2016 and soon it would be rolling out HoReCa in some of the places to strengthen the bottom line.

E-commerce Industry

3) Bigbasket founded by Abhinay Choudhari, VS Sudhakar and Hari Menon: An online grocery startup BigBasket secured $8.02 million in funding from four of its existing investors. The startup funding round was led by Abraaj Basket, Bessemer Venture Partners along with International Finance Corp and Sands Capital.

Technology Industry

4) Kalpnik Technologies founded by John Kuruvilla: Venture Catalysts made a seed investment worth $500K into Mumbai-based AR/VR tech startup Kalpnik. The investment was led by Ashwani Kakkar (Mercury Travels & Via.com), G G Gulati (Chairman, United Group of Institutions), Bobby Reddy ( Indus Homes), Dr. Tinku Acharya (Co-architect-Webcam & MD-Videonetics), and Raja Sahi ( SVP, Pixelogic Media) and more along with  investments from professionals from leading companies like CISCO, 24/7 etc. Vansh Gulati from UGI and Anuj Puri from Venture Catalysts will be joining the board of Kalpnik. The startup will deploy the funding to develop content for hundreds of temples and gurus and onboard the same on its platform.

5) AadhaarAPI founded by Ritesh Kothari: An Aadhaar-based technology startup, Aadhaar API raised an undisclosed amount in an angel round of funding led by CIO Angel Network (CAN). The round was from Kalpana Maniar, CIO Edelweiss; Sanjay Mehta, Private Investor and Anoop Mathur, Founder of CIO Angel Network. The freshly raised funding will allow the company to boost its operations and scale up.

Healthcare Industry

6) Netmeds founded by Pradeep Dadha: An online pharmacy Netmeds secured $14 million funding from Cambodian investment holding company Tanncam. The round also saw the participation of the Sistema Asia Fund. The startup is looking to use the capital infusion for expanding its geographical reach across India. The last aim is to make affordable healthcare available to the masses.

Agritech Industry

7) Gobasco founded by Abhishek Sharma, Vedant Katiyar and Pranshu Aditya: New-Delhi and Lucknow-based agritech startup Gobasco raised an undisclosed amount in its seed funding round from Matrix Partners India. The startup will use the raised funds for scaling and building a full stack commerce platform that yields higher operational efficiency, improves realizations for farmers, reduces wastage and boosts price and market discovery for agricultural commodities.

8) Gold Farm founded by Abhilash Thirupathy: Agritech startup, Gold Farm secured $2 million in an angel funding led by Mahindra & Mahindra and Infuse Ventures. The newly-secured capital from VC fund Infuse Ventures and Mahindra will be used to expand the company’s services across most village districts in Karnataka. The funding will also help infrastructure building and farmer outreach programmes.

Finance Industry

9) OneAssist founded by Gagan Maini and Subrat Pani: Mumbai-based OneAssist Consumer Solutions secured an undisclosed funding led by Arun Sarin, Former Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Group Plc as part of the Series C funding.

Fashion Industry

10) Benoit founded by Vishal Singh: Deepak Nathani, Cybage co-founder picked up 30% stake in fashion startup, Benoit. The investment amount remains undisclosed. This funding will be used for scaling-up faster by adding more designs and expanding the marketing efforts. The brand also stands to benefit with Nathani’s sustained mentorship which will help the firm grow.

Sports Industry

11) HalaPlay founded by Swapnil Saurav: Kae Capital, along with Nazara Games made an undisclosed amount of investment in HalaPlay, a Mumbai-based daily fantasy sports platform. The startup uses data analytics and machine learning to help users draft teams, analyze their playing behavior and help them to improve fantasy skills. The goal is to increase sports fan engagement and improve viewership for sports by making matches interesting for its users.

Education Industry

12) Meritnation founded by Pavan Chauhan and Ritesh Hemrajani: Delhi-based e-learning platform Meritnation secured $5.8 million from online classifieds platform Info Edge. With the funding, Info Edge now holds a 66% stake in Meritnation. The freshly-raised capital, $5 million will be spent on paying off some of Meritnation’s debt on its books, while the remaining amount will be infused towards scaling the startup’s daily operations.

The post 12 Indian Startups Making News This Week (30 October- 05 November) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) HappilyUnmarried founded by Rahul Anand and Rajat Tuli: Info Edge (India) Ltd. made a follow-on investment of $770K in HappilyUnmarried against a 47.21% stake. Out of $770K, about $632.9K is planned to be used by HappilyUnmarried for reimbursement of existing debt advanced by a just owned subsidiary of the company to HappilyUnmarried, occasionally. It was also stated that Wipro Consumer Care will be investing $7.6 million in the company against 20% stake.

2) Fisdom founded by Subramanya SV, Anand Dalmia and Ramganesh Iyer: Personal wealth management startup Fisdom secured $3.8 million in its second institutional round of funding from Quona Capital with the participation of existing investor, Saama Capital. With this funding, the startup aims to further boost the technology, expand its team and increase its customer achievement efforts.

3) Meetingsandoffices.com founded by Meenal Sinha: Meetingsandoffices.com – a pan India platform aggregating shared and flexible workspaces, raised angel investment at the Nasscom Product Conclave Live Funding event.  The startup raised investments from five investors from Abhishek Bhatewara, Sharan Aggarwal, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Dr. Anu Gupta and Gagan Gupta.

Technology Industry

4) NoPaperForms founded by Nitesh Damani and Naveen Goyal: Mumbai-based online classifieds platform Info Edge (India) Ltd. capitalized $871K in Nopaperforms against a 27.92% stake. As a part of company’s strategic investments, the acquisition would help the company to differentiate its presence into a new line of business within the Internet services industry.

5) Hevo Data founded by Sourabh Agarwal and Manish Jethani: Bengaluru and San Francisco-based Hevo Data raised $1 million in a Seed funding round from VC firm, IDG Ventures India. The startup functions as a cloud-based data integration platform that assists businesses in utilizing data well to make better and more informed decisions. The funding will go into hiring a team and expanding operations across the US.

6) Itlilite founded by Mayank Kukreja and Anish Khadiya: Bengaluru-based B2B SaaS travel startup Itilite secured an undisclosed amount in funding from Matrix Partners and a group of angel investors. The fresh funding will be used to reinforce its technology while it also looks to hire an additional workforce.

7) Automate.io founded by Ashok Gudibandla: SMB SaaS startup Automate.io secured an undisclosed amount of funding from 50K Ventures. The startup looks to leverage the strong presence of 50K Ventures in the US markets to help them scale speedily.

8) Open Appliances founded by Gotama Gowda: Bengaluru-based Open Appliances Pvt. Ltd, a manufacturer of industrial grade smart locks for enterprises secured $550K from Axilor and Kumar Vembu Co-Founder, ZOHO and CEO, Gofrugal. It will deploy the funding to reinforce its product offering and expand into new verticals.

9) Crayon Data founded by Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi and Suresh Shankar: Bengaluru-based big data startup Crayon Data secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Senapathy “Kris” Gopalakrishnan, Infosys co-founder. The investment is part of Crayon’s Series A2 round of funding. Previous investors include Jungle Ventures, Tata Son’s chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and many prominent angels. The startup will utilize the Series A2 investment to further boost MayaTM and expand the global footprint of the company.

10) The Office Pass founded by Sachin Gaur, Aditya Verma and Nikhil Madan: Gurgaon based TOP Technologies Private Limited that runs a coworking platform The Office Pass, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of individual investors from Dhruv Agarwala, CEO of PropTiger, Makaan & Housing & an institution. The startup will deploy the funds for hiring technology & product talent and drive the growth of coworking centers over the next 18-24 months.

Travel Industry

11) AHA Taxis founded by Amit Grover: Noida-based online aggregator for outstation travel AHA Taxis (a division of WAAH Taxis Pvt Ltd) secured an undisclosed amount in Pre-Series A funding from ah! Ventures and Lead Angels Network. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its reach to newer geographies, and further strengthen the operations and service offering to customers.

Agritech Technology

12) FarmLink founded by Sreeram Chellappa: Agritech startup FarmLink closed $3 million funding in a round from investment firm-cum-incubator Pioneering Ventures and agrochemical company Syngenta. With fresh funding, the startup is planning to create a pan-India network of collection and service centers. The platform will also spend the capital from Pioneering Ventures and Syngenta on boosting its technological and analytical capabilities to improve the supply chain from farm to shelf.

Education Industry

13) Play Shifu founded by Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani: Bengaluru-based augmented reality-enabled interactive educational games startup Play Shifu raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round from IDG Ventures and IDFC-Parampara Fund. The startup will use the money to extend its reach, globally, and to support its technology and design team.

Hospitality Industry

14) FreshUp founded by Pothala Vinyl Reddy and Laxmi Narasimha: Chennai-based hospitality startup FreshUp secured $1.5 million in Seed Funding from Singapore-based Lotus Global Investments. The startup now aims to strengthen its presence in South India. The company will use the funding to expand its presence in other Indian cities including Guruvayur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Sabarimala.

Fintech Industry

15) Kissht founded by Krishnan Vishwanathan: Mumbai-based fintech startup Kissht raised $10 million from Chinese investment conglomerate, Fosun International. The startup’s existing investors, Endiya Partners, and Ventureast also participated in the equity financing round, which closed last week. In a bid to boost its data science capabilities, the startup is looking to deploy the funding to hire new engineering and analytics teams. Also, Kissht is keen on expanding its presence across 15 to 20 tier II and tier III cities in India.

16) Qubole founded by Ashish Thusoo and Joydeep Sen Sarma: Bengaluru and Singapore-based big data startup Qubole secured $25 million in a funding round from Singtel Innov8 and Harmony Partners. Startup’s existing investors Charles River Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners also participated in this funding round. The funding will allow the startup to strengthen its presence in the Asia Pacific region.

Food & Beverage Industry

17) Evolve Snacks founded by Angad Sehgal: Mumbai-based Evolve Snacks, which deals in healthy snacks segment, secured an undisclosed amount of funding from 50K Ventures. With this funding, the startup looks forward to expanding into omni-channel retail and starts partnerships with other food/ fitness-focused firms.

The post 17 Indian Startups Making News This Week (05 November- 12 November) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Josh Talks founded by Shobhit Banga and Supriya Paul: Gurugram-based Ted Talks like conference organiser Josh Talks secured an undisclosed amount of funding led by angel investors such as Girish Mathrubootham, founder of cloud-based customer engagement platform Freshworks; Apurva Chamaria, global brand director at IT services firm HCL; and Rohit Chanana, head of strategy and finance at scooter manufacturer Hero Corporation. The funding will bring on board strategic mentors and advisors in order to launch its platform in vernacular languages such as Telegu, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Bhojpuri.

2) Easyrewardz founded by Soumya Chatterjee, Angad Singh, Sapan Kadakia and Tejas Kadakia: Mumbai and Delhi-based Easyrewardz, an enterprise-focused end to end customer engagement providing platform raised $2 million in Series A round of funding led by TransContinental Venture Fund, and existing angel investors Jitendra Gupta and Vinay Chatlani (MD and CEO Soch). Venture Catalysts angels – Jagdish Gothi (Kamdhenu Retail), Vikas Kapoor (Rivoli Fashions), Nitin Bardia (AT Jewellers) Ankit Kankariya (Sumeet Jewellers), Akash Gajwani (Diaa Global), Amit Agarwal among others also participated in this round. The secured funding will help the startup to expand its sales and marketing efforts, both in India and overseas, as well as broaden and accelerate product development. With this deal, Ashesh Shah, founder of TCVF, will also join the EasyRewardz Board of Directors.

Technology Industry

3) Active Intelligence founded by Ravi Shankar: Active Intelligence, a Singapore-headquartered fintech platform with an innovation lab in Bengaluru raised $8.25 million in Series A round of funding from Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator. Existing investors Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures also participated in the round. The current funding will be deployed to scale up the talents and R&D works regarding AI technology in the banking sector.

4) I2e1founded by Satyam Darmora, Ashutosh Mishra, Anugrah Adams, Maanas Dwivedi and Gaurav Bansal: Delhi-based i2e1 (Information To Every One), a smart network layer platform raised $3 million in Series A round of funding from Omidyar Network. The round also saw the participation of Auxano Ventures and 3one4 Capital along with some of the organization’s existing investors. The raised funds will be utilized to scale up the existing operations and launch a mobile application.

5) Sumeru founded by Rekha Pillay Yadav, Harish Ramachandran and Rajesh Krishnamurthy: Bangalore-based banking software startup Sumeru Enterprise Tiger Business Solutions Pvt Ltd secured $1 million in angel funding from high-net-worth individuals. The company will deploy the funds to develop the product, grow its business and build a global distribution network.

Healthcare & Wellness Industry

6) ElderAid founded by Santosh Abraham and Dr. Vandana Nadig: Mumbai-based social enterprise catering to wellness industry secured an undisclosed amount of Angel funding from Rugmini Menon, a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur, to strengthen its operations in Bengaluru. This investment will allow augmentation of operations, investment in critical customer management technology, marketing and brand building efforts.

Real Estate Industry

7) Reniso founded by Alok Srivastava, Nishit Sharma: New Delhi-based property management startup Reniso secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a consortium of HNIs. The startup will deploy the funds to expand to other cities, develop its technology platform and build its marketing team.

Sport Industry

8) Universal Sportsbiz Pvt. Ltd founded by Anjana Reddy: US-based venture capital firm Accel Partners raised $15 million in Sachin Tendulkar-backed celebrity fashion company Universal Sportsbiz Pvt. Ltd (USPL). The startup will use the funds to expand its product portfolio and retailing capabilities and to enhance its geographical reach.

Food Industry

9) Hungry Foal founded by Rishi Kaushik and Vivek Kaushik: Gurugram-based Hungry Foal, a for-profit social venture secured an undisclosed amount of debt from SBI under the Standup India Scheme. The funds will be used for market expansion, technology and production ramp up.

Publishing Industry

10) Kahaniya founded by Devendar Gona: Hyderabad-based multi-lingual storytelling platform Kanhaiya secured $200K from a group of three NRI HNIs. The startup will use the raised funds to build a wider gamut of content accessible across different languages while improving revenue opportunities for creators.

Education Industry

11) Perspectico founded by Nikhil Chainani: New Delhi-based edtech startup Perspectio secured an incubation support and an undisclosed amount of seed funding from the incubation cell of Delhi University, SIIF. SSCBS Innovation and Incubation Foundation (SIIF) is an outcome of Incubation Policy from Govt. of NCT, Delhi. The company will use the funds for marketing, expansion of team and footprint across multiple colleges/geographies.

The post 11 Indian Startups Making News This Week (13 November- 19 November) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Playment founded by Ajinkya Malasane, Akshay Lal and Siddharth Mall: Bengaluru-based Playment, an AI-driven mobile crowdsourcing platform, the Indian startup secured $1.6 million in Pre-Series A round of funding led by YCombinator, Sparkland Capital and Silicon Valley angel investors such as Ryan Petersen (CEO, Flexport), Max Altman and others. Playment was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2017 batch. Saif Partners did a super pro-rata in this round to take the total funding raised in the Pre Series A round to $2.2 million. The startup will use the newly raised funding to build its engineering, product, and data science teams, build an internal AI research lab, and set up an office in Bay area.

2) ONN Bikes founded by Namit Jain and Shanky Munoth: Mumbai-based self-drive bike rental startup ONN Bikes raised $696K in a Pre-Series A round of funding from Z Nation Lab, JITO Angels, and Venture Catalysts. Several VCats angels such as Jayesh Parekh (Sunidhi Securities), Pankaj Harlalka (Narnolia Capital), Gaurav Gandhi, Nikunj Pachisia, and Vijay Lakhani also participated in the startup funding round. The funding will be used by ONN Bikes to build a stronger technology base, increase the fleet size, expand to more cities, and promote its franchise model. The startup also plans to expand its range of electric vehicles in the coming months.

3) Rapido founded by Aravind Sanka, Rishikesh SR and Pavan Guntupalli: Bangalore-based Roppen Transportation Services Pvt. Ltd, which operates bike taxi startup Rapido secured $422K in a fresh funding round from US-based Battery Road Digital Holdings LLC, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.

Technology Industry

4) TAO Automation founded by Arjun Vaznaik: Bengaluru-based TAO Automation secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from 3one4 Capital and Arihant Patni. The startup also announced that Swaminathan Dandapani, former managing director and chief executive of Infosys BPO and former executive chairman of Manipal Health Enterprises, has joined its board of directors.

5) TempoGO founded by Pranav Shirke: Goa-based Internet of Things (IoT) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions provider for the transportation industry, TempoGO raised $250K from Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund. It also raised an additional funding from Dubai-based NB Ventures, which is a $50 million fund. This funding round takes the total amount of capital raised by TempoGO to over $1.35 million. TempoGo was incubated at Goa-based Prototyze.

6) WebEngage founded by Ankit Utreja and Avlesh Singh: Marketing automation startup Webengage secured an undisclosed amount of funding from BlackSoil Capital. The investment has been made in the form of short-term working capital demand loans.

7) Heckyl founded by Abhijit Vedak, Jaison Mathews, Mukund Mudras, Som Sagar: London- and Mumbai-based Heckyl Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates a big data analytics platform for investors, traders and researchers, secured $2.7 million, show the company’s filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

8) Nuvepro founded by Giridhar, Janakiraman Srinivasan, Umesh Bhatt, Moyukh Goswami and Rajesh Vasudevan: Bengaluru-based Nuvepro Technologies Pvt Ltd, which provides managed cloud environment solutions, secured $400K in a seed round of funding from angel investment platform 1crowd. The startup will use the funding to enhance research and development efforts and for expansion.

Fintech Industry

10) CreditMate founded by Ashish Doshi, Aditya Singh, Jonathan Bill: Paytm made an undisclosed amount of investment in Mumbai-based fintech startup CreditMate. The raised funds will help the Indian startup in expanding its operations, distribution, lending partnerships, and technology.

Healthcare & Wellness Industry

11) KIVIHealth founded by Bhanu Mahajan and Rajandeep Singh: Mumbai-based KiviHealth raised $400K in Pre-Series A round of funding from Claris Capital, with the participation of Chandigarh Angels Network (CAN), few HNIs and existing investors. The new funding will be used by the Indian startup to further strengthen its product offering and scale sales operations.

12) Truweight founded by Megha More and Vishnu Saraf: Weight loss counseling provider Truweight wellness raised an undisclosed amount of funding from BlackSoil Capital. The investment has been made in the form of short-term working capital demand loans.

13) Portea founded by Zachary Jones and Karan Aneja: Portea Medical secured $26 million in series C round of funding led by new investors Sabre Partners and MEMG CDC. Portea’s existing investors Accel, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Qualcomm Ventures also participated in this round.

Fashion Industry

14) StyleCracker founded by Dhimaan Shah and Archana Walavalkar: StyleCracker, a portal that connects women with designers for advice on fashion and styling trends, has raised around $1 million in its first round of funding from a bunch of high net-worth individuals. Beside Alia bhatt, a couple of undisclosed investors also participated in this Pre-Series A startup funding round. Post this round of funding, the founders will jointly hold a 65% stake in the company.

15) RedBook founded by Keith Halfhide: Mumbai-based AI enabled pharmacy platform RedBook raises Seed Funding round led by Vida Ventures and Dr. Aniruddha Malpani.  The company will use the funds to scale RedBook pan India.

Music Industry

16) Saavn founded by Rishi Malhotra, Vinodh Bhat and Paramdeep Singh: Saavn, an Indian music distribution app which operates globally through New York, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from two new strategic investors, Senvest Management LLC and Endeavor. For Senvest, this will be the company’s first investment in India. Endeavor’s involvement would help strengthen ties between East-West music industries and further allow Saavn to grow its unique collaborations between Western and South Asian artists and producers.

Travel Industry

17) MiStay founded by Pranav Prabhakar and Sandeep Jaiswal: Bengaluru-based MiStay, a travel-tech startup raised a round of investment from Axilor Ventures along with participation from a group of angel investors. The funds will be used in growing the team, marketing and scaling up operations across India. MiStay was part of Axilor’s Winter ’16 accelerator batch.

Logistics Industry

18) GoBolt founded by Naitik Baghla, Parag Aggarwal and Sumit Sharma: Delhi-based logistics startup GoBolt raised an undisclosed amount of funding from BlackSoil Capital. The investment has been made in the form of short-term working capital demand loans.

The post 18 Indian Startups Making News This Week (20 November- 26 November) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Chumbak founded by Shubhra Chadda: Bengaluru-based design-led lifestyle brand Chumbak raised $13.1 million funding from mid-market private equity firm, Gaja Capital, along with existing backers Matrix Partners India and Seedfund. Narayan Ramachandran, the Operating Partner at Gaja Capital, also joined the funding round in Chumbak.

2) Befikr founded by Chirajay Sharma, Mayank Sharma and Sumit Srivastava: Delhi NCR-based hyperlocal services provider befikr secured $2 million in Series A funding round from undisclosed investors. The freshly raised funding will be used towards the expansion of befikr’s services in Delhi-NCR and Pune region. The funding will further help the company to reinforce its current technology infrastructure and also be employed for brand building.

3) ERA: Venture Catalysts assisted an investment of $38.77K in the startup idea pitched by ERA, the winning team on the recently-concluded Droom.in MTV Dropout. Era offers integrated identity management platform, providing its users a safe and secure way to share their identities with the world. By building an ecosystem of real identities, by using Era organizations would be able to consistently and effortlessly authenticate users without an expensive & cumbersome KYC process, be it at a physical location or an online portal. The startup will use the funds to hire technologists, build underlying technology, and explore strategic partnerships.

Technology Industry

4) Uniphore Software Systems founded by Ravi Saraogi  and Umesh Sachdev: Chennai-based IT startup Uniphore Software Systems closed its series B round of funding from the Executive Chairman of Cisco and the newly made US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), John Chambers, in his personal capacity and the existing investor IDG Ventures.

5) Raybaby founded by Aardra Kannan Ambili, Ranjana Nair and Sanchi Poovaya: Hyderabad-based artificial intelligence startup Raybaby secured $1 million funding from Anthill Ventures.  Raybaby, promoted by three Bengaluru-based women entrepreneurs and registered in the US, was supported by Johnson & Johnson in the product development stage and recently teamed up with US retailer Target for marketing its products.

Food & Beverage Industry

6) HolaChef founded by Anil Gelra and Saurabh Saxena: Mumbai-based food delivery startup Holachef raised a fresh fund through a mix of equity and debt from Rajasthan-based software publishing and consultancy firm IPI Technolab Pvt. Ltd. and Innoven Capital, the venture debt arm of Singapore Government’s sovereign fund Temasek.

Agritech Industry

7) KrishiHub founded by Bhoopendra Kumar and Jyotiska Khasnabish: UP-based agritech startup KrishiHub secured an undisclosed seed funding from IIT Kanpur INVENT accelerator and Villgro Innovation Fund along with a few angel investors and HNIs. With this round of funding, KrishiHub plans to expand its operations aggressively across Delhi-NCR, add more businesses to its customer portfolio and increase its farmer base in more states.

Sports Industry

8) Smaaash founded by Shripal Morakhia: Sachin Tendulkar backed virtual reality gaming and entertainment company Smaaash raised $3.8 million from Mumbai-based consumer-centric VC firm, Sixth Sense Ventures. With the fresh funding, Smaaash is aiming to strengthen its physical presence in domestic as well as international markets. A portion of the financing will also be spent on making its augmented reality technology ready for the booming online gaming market.

9) Passion Gaming founded by Bobby Garg: Passion Gaming, which owns and operates online gaming startup RummyPassion secured $3.75 million funding in an all-cash deal from UK-based Stride Gaming. As part of the deal, the online gaming company has divested 51% stake in itself to Stride Gaming. The funding will allow Passion Gaming to achieve faster growth and will be used to strengthen its marketing, technology and customer service teams.

10) Nazara Technologies founded by Nitish Mittersain: Mobile gaming company Nazara Technologies raised $51 million in a funding round from IIFL Special Opportunities Fund.

Hospitality Industry

11) Stanza Living founded by Anindya Dutta and Sandeep Dalmia: New Delhi-based student accommodation platform Stanza Living raised $2 million in funding from investment firms Matrix Partners and California-headquartered Accel Partners. The startup will be using the fresh capital to expand its presence in new cities and further develop its technology platform. A portion of the funding will also be spent on talent acquisition.

Fitness Industry

12) MobieFit founded by Gul Panag: Mobile fitness startup Mobiefit raised $1.35 million in a Pre-Series A funding round from NB Ventures and existing investor, MediAssist India. The investment follows the startup’s Seed round of $1 million in December 2015.

Logistics Industry

13) FR8 founded by Vasanth Immanuel and Jayendran Panneerselvam: Chennai-based B2B logistics startup FR8 secured $971K from agritech-focussed VC firm Omnivore Partners. The funding will be utilized to ramp up its operations and technology. It will also be used for the company’s expansion in other Indian cities.

The post 13 Indian Startups Making News This Week (27 November- 03 December) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Dunzo founded by Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha and Kabeer Biswas: Bengaluru-based hyperlocal services startup Dunzo secured $12 million in a funding round led by Google, Blume Ventures and Aspada. With the raised funding, the startup plans to expand in five to six other cities apart from Bengaluru and also scale up its transactions from one lakh per month to one lakh per day by 2018.

2) Mobycy founded by Akash Gupta: Gurugram-based dockless bicycle sharing startup Mobycy raised an angel funding of $500K from an Angel Investor based out of USA. Through the raised funds, the company aims to increase the existing number of cycles to 50K & expand to 12 more cities in next six months and 20 key cities by 2018.

3) HandyTrain founded by Gourav Jaswal: Goa-based corporate training platform HandyTrain secured $1 million in a Pre-Series A round of funding from Dubai-based NB Ventures. The raised fund will be further deployed for improving the software and increasing the efficiency of its training courses.

4) MilkLane founded by Gaurav Haran: MilkLane, a dairy supply chain company secured $4 million in Pre-Series A round of funding led by Pioneering Ventures, Schreiber Foods and ultra-high net worth families. The dairy-tech company plans to use this capital to expand its network of milk collection centers and strengthen its digital & analytics capabilities in the supply chain.

5) The Man Company founded by Mohit, Bhisham and Parvesh Bareja: Kolkata-headquartered FMCG Company Emami has backed Helios Lifestyle, which owns and operates men’s grooming platform, The Man Company (TMC) with $3 million funding. As part of the deal, Emami will be acquiring 30% equity stake in the Gurugram-based startup.

E-commerce Industry

6) The Label Life founded by Yashika Punjabee and Preeta Sukhtankar: The Label Life, an online lifestyle brand of contemporary fashion, accessories and home decor secured $3.1 million from Kalpavriksh, the Centrum’s maiden PE fund under Centrum Alternatives LLP. With the fresh funding, the startup plans to aggressively expand the label, double the SKUs, explore an Omnichannel strategy and focus on associations & partnerships.

Technology Industry

7) Param.ai founded by Ashish Kumar Sahoo and Hari Krishna Morthala: AI-Based hiring solutions startup Param.ai raised $271.4K in a seed funding round from the US-based Institutional Fund Core Financials LLC and Bollywood actor Ashish Vidyarthi. The funding will be utilized to facilitate the product’s upcoming version which will have automated outbound hiring, candidate engagement and a few other features.

Fintech Industry

8) Happay founded by Anshul Rai and Varun Rathi: Bengaluru-based fintech startup Happay secured $10.1 million in a Series B round of funding from Sequoia Capital India. Singapore-headquartered private equity fund Axiom Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Brad Garlinghouse of Oak Street Trust and US-based businessman Ben Nelson also participated in the round.

9) FlexiLoans founded by Abhishek Kothari, Deepak Jain, Manish Lunia and Ritesh Jain: Mumbai-based digital SME lending platform FlexiLoans secured an institutional debt funding of about $7 million from Financial Institution(s). The funding will be utilized to expand its patented loans and supply chain financing segment.

10) Mswipe founded by Manish Patel: Mumbai-based payment services provider Mswipe locked Series D funding round with $41 million with the recent $10 million infusion from B Capital. Other investors like C-RNT Fund, Matrix Partners India, Falcon Edge Capital, and DSG Consumer Partners also took part in the fundraise earlier in June 2017. The capital raised will support company’s plans to expand its acceptance network at retail merchants for the card and digital payments and reinforce its product development capability.

Real Estate Industry

11) Rentickle founded by Amit Sodhi and Vineet Chawla: Gurugram-based, an online rental platform for furniture and home appliances Rentickle, raised $4 million in a funding round from Singapore-headquartered VC ThinKuvate, CX Partners Chairman Ajay Relan and also saw the participation of existing investors. The fresh capital was secured through a combination of equity and debt in the ratio of around 45:55. The debt line was secured by Delhi-based NBFC DMI Finance, while the equity funding was raised completely from ThinKuvate & other existing investors. The funding will allow the startup to expand its geographical reach, boost its product portfolio and also be used to drive internal growth.

Education Industry

12) Flintobox founded by Arunprasad Durairaj, Shreenidhi Srirangam and Vijay Gandhi: Chennai based edtech startup Flintobox secured Series A round of funding of $7 million in a round from early-stage venture capital firm Lightbox. Existing investors Globevestor, Ashwin Chadha, Asian E-Commerce Alliance and Mauj Mobile also participated in this round. The startup will use the freshly raised funding to expand its business in the unorganized pre-school segment through its enterprise offering, ‘FlintoClass’.

Entertainment Industry

13) Graphic India founded by Gotham Chopra, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman: Bengaluru-based Graphic India, a digital comic heroes developer secured $5 million in a funding round from investors at the US-based Liquid Comics along with Start Media LLC; Julian Farrior, co-founder of Backflip Studios; Mohandas Pai’s 3One4 Capital; Neeraj Bhargava, founder of Zodius Capital among others. With this funding, Graphic India will create and launch more characters into the international markets as well as expand beyond digital comics and animation, into original mobile content, live-action TV/Film and VR/AR.

14) Repaireasy founded by Naveen Goyal and Rishi Wahi: Gadget servicing startup Repaireasy raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Mumbai-based Startup accelerator ScaleMinds. The company was selected during the Investor Pitch that took place in front of a Board of Investors during FundTonic Pune Startup Marathon 2017 that took place in Pune recently.

15) Inshorts founded by Anunay Pandey, Azhar Iqubal and Deepit Purkayastha: Noida-based content discovery app Inshorts secured $5 million funding led by Tiger Global Management’s Singapore investment vehicle, Internet Fund III Pte Holdings. The investment, as per the company’s filings, was made in Inshorts’ Singapore-registered holding company in September 2017.

Automotive Industry

16) Loconav founded by Sridhar Gupta and Vidit Jain: Delhi-based integrated vehicle management startup LocoNav raised $3.42 million Series A funding from Sequoia Capital India and angel investor, Prateek Sharma. Of the total investment, Sequoia poured $3.41 million, while Sharma invested $10,843 in LocoNav.

17) Ultraviolette founded by Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan: TVS announced that it has bought a 14.78% stake in Bengaluru-based electric vehicle startup Ultraviolette Automotive Pvt. Ltd against an investment of $700K. The startup goals to build an ecosystem that addresses the transportation needs of an urban environment by designing and developing electric motorcycles and battery packs with a modern premium look.

The post 17 Indian Startups Making News This Week (04 December- 10 December) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) HomeLane founded by Rama Harinath, Srikanth Iyer and Vivek Parasuram: Bengaluru-based online home interiors startup HomeLane secured $10 million funding from Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and RB Investments. The Indian startup will use the funds to fuel growth and technology innovation to attract customers and designers alike, while also strengthening its operations in current markets in the country.

2) Houseome.com founded by Pradeep Singhvi: Home interior solutions provider Houseome.com raised an undisclosed amount of funding from an Angel Investor to scale up its operations in Pune. The funding will be used in improving its USP that leverages technology to provide a mock-up of the house to its end consumers, a 3D view of the house even before it is done along with furniture solutions, vaastu guidelines and theme based ideas.

3) Furlenco founded by Ajith Karimpana: Online Furniture Rental startup Furlenco secured an amount of $300K from Bollywood actor and producer Aamir Khan. The startup will utilize the raised funds to expand its record and footprint across the country. It currently has its presence in Bengaluru, Delhi – NCR, Mumbai and Pune.

4) Vacus Tech founded by Pratik Magar: Pune-based interior mapping startup, Vacus Tech, whose product Free Space Tech is based on RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology received prize money of $16K during the Startups Club Demo Day Finale, which is a Pan India pitching event. The startup will further get an opportunity to participate in the events of Startups club and will receive mentoring from some of the top investors in the industry.

5) Simility founded by Kedar Samant, Rahul Pangam and Uttam Phalnikar: California and Hyderabad-based adaptive fraud prevention startup Simility secured $17.million funding from Accel Partners in a Series B round. Existing investors The Valley Fund and Trinity Ventures also participated in this investment along with the new strategic investor PayPal. The startup will deploy the funds to expand its partner network, sales, partnerships, customer success and data science teams.

6) MindTickle founded by Deepak Diwakar, Joydeep Bhattacharyya, Krishna Depura, Mohit Garg and Nishant Mungali: Also, San Francisco and Pune-based sales enablement platform MindTickle raised $27 million in a Series B funding round from Silicon Valley-based VC firm Canaan Partners. Existing investors Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Qualcomm’s investment arm, Qualcomm Ventures, also participated in the round. The freshly-secured financing will be used to smooth product innovation and global expansion.

E-commerce Industry

7) Purplle.com founded by Manish Taneja and Rahul Dash: Mumbai-based beauty products and services marketplace Purplle.com, raised $537K in a fresh funding round from a group of investors from Singapore-based Mountain Pine Capital and Suncoast Investments. With the newly raised funding, the firm further plans to widen its range of beauty products on its platform.

8) Shopholix founded by Hemant Upadhyay, Abhinav Midha and Chinmay Bhatt: Mumbai-based fashion & lifestyle couponing platform for brick & mortar stores, Shopholix raised an amount of $233K in a Pre-Series A round of funding from investor Munesh Khanna, with participation from other investors in India and abroad. The startup will use the funds to improve the product, reinforce its partner network, and organize overall operations by March 2018. The company plans to bring on board 10 Lakh total users, and achieve success with a valuation of $15.5 million by 2022.

Healthcare Industry

9) DocsApp founded by Enbasekar D and Satish Kannan: Bengaluru-based online medical consultation platform DocsApp secured $7.2 million in Series A round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Japanese investment firms Techmatrix Corporation and DeNa Networks. The round also saw the participation of existing backers, including Facebook’s early investors Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayanan, and Japanese VC firm Rebright Partners. The newly-raised capital will go into product development, talent acquisition and expansion of its operational reach.

10) Curofy founded by Mudit Vijayvergiya, Nipun Goyal, Pawan Gupta, Pawan Gupya: Gurugram-based doctor networking app Curofy secured $250K in a fresh round of funding from existing US-based venture capital investor RoundGlass Partners LLC.  The Indian startup will use the raised amount in order to further improve its platform for doctors.

Travel Industry

11) Icanstay.com founded by Puneet Gupta: Delhi-based First Time Travellers Ltd, which operates luxury hotel aggregation startup Icanstay.com, raised $1.8 million from media company HT Media Ltd.  They also raised Rs 2.25 crore in equity funding from Manoj Prasad, an angel investor and founder of Singapore-based investment firm MP Morgan Pte Ltd. This investment will be used to increase their footprint and inventory. The company is targeting a turnover of $108 million by 2020.

Education Industry

12) Logic Roots founded by Gunjan Agrawal and Kunal Gandhi: Jaipur based edtech startup-Logic Roots which helps K-5 students to understand math, raised an investment of $50K from Village Capital through the Village Capital Education 2017, an exclusive platform for edtech startups to pitch their products/services. The startup will further expand its footprints and will improve its shared platform through the raised amount.

13) Project Mudra founded by Aman Srivastava and Sanskriti Dawle: Project Mudra, a startup that develops hardware that allows visually impaired students to read, write, and type Braille with minimal teacher intervention also raised an investment of $50K from Village Capital through the Village Capital Education 2017, an exclusive platform for edtech startups to pitch their products/services.

Fintech Industry

14) CapitaWorld founded by Jinand Shah: Mumbai based fintech startup CapitaWorld raised an undisclosed amount of funding through convertible instrument/equity. The raised funds will be deployed for its PAN India expansion as well as on-boarding and supporting Banks and NBFCs to go digital (contact-less) in their lending business. The funds have been importantly raised through high net-worth individual investors, corporate honchos and investors from Hong Kong and the Middle East.

15) FinBucket founded by Parit Garg and Heena Jain: FinBucket, a New Delhi-based online marketplace for loans raised $1.8 million from Impanix Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. The startup plans to utilize the funds to quadruple its staff strength to 200 and expand operations. It also plans to start offering insurance products, including life and health insurance.

16) Cash Suvidha founded by Anoop Garg and Rajesh Gupta: Delhi-based online lending startup Cash Suvidha raised an institutional debt of $2.7 million from various financial institutions. The funds have been raised from six financial institutions and will be mainly used to smooth further lending to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The funding will also allow the Indian startup to strengthen its personal loan products, particularly in Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

Real Estate Industry

17) BuildSupply founded by Nipun Yadvinder and Sarit Sethi: Proptech startup BuildSupply secured an undisclosed amount for its Pre-Series A financing round from Gree Ventures, a premier Japanese Tech Venture fund, with participation from Venture Highway fund; Sonny Kalsi, Founder at GreenOak Real Estate and some industry leading names like Kalpesh Mehta, Rohit Srivastava and Sameer Brij Verma of Nexus Partners. The recent investment round will allow BuildSupply to expand their product and tech team and establish a base across all major metros.

Entertainment Industry

18) Clip App founded by Nav Agrawal: Bengaluru-based video sharing startup Clip App raised $6 million in Series A round of funding from Matrix Partners India. Existing investors Shunwei Capital and India Quotient also participated in the round. The startup plans to use the proceeds majorly for growth and team building.

19) Nazara Technologies founded by Nitish Mittersain: Seasoned investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala invested $27.99 million in Mumbai-based mobile gaming startup Nazara Technologies. The startup will deploy the raised amount to strengthen its position further in the $360 million online gaming market.

Food & Beverage Industry

20) Teabox founded by Kausshal Dugarr: Siliguri and Bengaluru-based online premium tea brand Teabox raised $7 million in Series B round of funding from Singapore-headquartered VC firm RB Investments. The startup’s existing investors also participated in the round. With the freshly infused amount, the startup will bolster its cold-chain processing centres and it will introduce more resourceful, natural-nitrogen packaging and automate other processes in the supply chain to increase production by 3x to 4x.

21) Vahdam Teas founded by Bala Sarda: Online Tea brand Vahdam secured $1.4 million in a funding round from Fireside Ventures. The startup’s existing investors – Singapore Angel Network, Mumbai Angels and some HNI investors also participated in the round. Post the investment; Fireside Ventures founder Kanwaljit Singh will be joining Vahdam Teas as a board member. Vahdam Teas has picked up an additional $310K in a secondary transaction. The startup will be using the newly-raised financing to expand its product portfolio and introduce new categories of flavored tea and wellness tea.

The post 21 Indian Startups Making News This Week (11 December- 17 December) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Refreshed Car Care founded by Chirag Shah: The Mumbai-based on-demand car servicing startup received fiscal backing from USA-based Spiffy, a car care services company. India is one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets and on-demand car servicing needs will immensely increase in the future, hence Spiffy plans to collaborate with Refreshed in order to further leverage technology and link their products.

2) Baby Destination founded by Tamanna Dhamija: Delhi-based Baby Destination, a one-stop digital parenting community providing opportunities to learn and share parenting experiences and recommendations, raised an investment $313K from GEMs Partners (a micro-VC fund based in Delhi and from Mr. Aditya Gupta) and Tariq Khan (angel investor from New York) in a fresh round of funding. With the freshly raised funds, the startup plans to focus on product development and consolidation in order to increase the scale of users, offers a personalized user experience.

3) Livspace founded by Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma: Bangalore-based online home decor startup Livspace received funding from Media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd (BCCL) in an ad-for-equity deal that is expected to be valued at $1.8 million. An ad-for-equity deal means that the startup will use the national reach of publications, websites, e-papers and magazines of BCCL in order to further expand its footprint in the country.

4) Faclon founded by Tara Ranjan Patnaik: Bengaluru-based Water management startup Faclon labs secured an undisclosed amount of funding in a round from Vish Sathappan and Sameer Sainani along with Neev Angel Advisors and LetsVenture. The startup aims to use the funding for commercialization and further product development.

E-commerce Industry

5) IGP.com founded by Manan Sharma and Tarun Joshi: Mumbai-based gifting e-commerce startup raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A funding round that saw participation from several key financiers, including Sarvesh Goel, Abhijeet Birewar, Amit Dhanki, Digant Bhansali, Abhishek Subramanya, Vikash & Manish Agarwal, Mitesh Shah, Navleen Khanna, Siddharth Bhajenkar, CK Jinan, Jayesh Shah, Dharmesh Dalal, Dipan Dalal, Anshul Dave, and Vikram Soni. The startup funding will be deployed by IGP.com to improve its supply chain infrastructure and branding activities.

Technology Industry

6) KaHa founded by Justin Tang, Pawan Gandhi, and Sudheendra Shantaram: Singapore-based consumer IoT startup KaHa raised $4.5 million in a funding round from Metals International, with the participation of Jungle Ventures, SPRING SEEDS Capital and existing investor YourNest. The raised capital will be used to drive expansion plans and invest in human resource, product development, infrastructure and R&D. Additionally; the startup will also focus on further growing its leadership position by opening an innovation centre in Geneva.

7) Indus OS founded by Akash Dongre, Rakesh Deshmukh, and Sudhir Bangarambandi: Mobile operating system and native applications platform Indus OS secured $4 million Pre Series B funding led by existing investors Omidyar Network, Ventureast and JSW Ventures. The newly-secured financing will allow Indus OS to accelerate brand partnerships, user acquisition and product development. By working with more smartphone brands, Indus OS plans to acquire 100 million users over the next 3 years.

8) Peel-Works founded by Sachin Chhabra: The consumer focused SaaS and big data analytics startup raised an undisclosed amount in Series B funding from Mumbai-based Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services. The round also saw the participation of existing investors Inventus Capital Partners and IDG Ventures India. The funding will let Peel-Works to boost its product and technology offerings, while also expanding its geographical reach and hiring more members for its team.

Education Industry

9) Springboard founded by Gautam Tambay and Parul Gupta: San Francisco and Bengaluru-based edtech startup Springboard secured $9.5 million in Series A funding from Costanoa Ventures. Other investors who participated in the funding are Learn Capital, Jyoti Bansal, founder of AppDynamics and returning investors Blue Fog Capital, Rocketship.vc, and Moneta Ventures. With the funding, Springboard goals to expand its offering into new verticals and geographies, improve its learning platform, expand career services and alumni support, and hire teams across product, marketing, engineering, and student services.

10) Univariety founded by Varun Aggarwal: The Education Counselling startup secured $1.9 million from online classifieds platform Info Edge, which runs job portal Naukri.com, real estate site 99acres and Jeevansaathi. With this, Info Edge has acquired a minority stake in the Hyderabad-based edtech startup. As part of its strategic investments, the acquisition would help Info Edge to diversify its presence into a new line of business within the internet services industry.

Gaming Industry

11) 9stacks founded by Pratik Kumar, Rishab Mathur and Sudhir Kamath: Delhi-based online gaming startup 9stacks secured Seed funding of $1.55 million from a group of investors that include Swati Gupta (founder, IndustryBuying), Purnima Khandelwal (founder, INI Farms), Maheshwer Peri (founder, Careers360) and Kartik Sheth (Chief executive, Wynk Music). The startup plans to use the investment to leverage more technology to improve its platform, hire new people in the product and design teams and prepare a marketing strategy to ramp up its consumer base in India.

Healthcare Industry

12) EasyBuyHealth founded by Gagan Kapur: The Mumbai-based healthcare startup raised a seed funding of $350K from HNIs and angel investors led by the healthcare industry. The list of investors includes Mukesh Agarwal, owner of MGM Forgings and a serial angel investor in 5 innovative companies. With the freshly raised funding, the startup goals to double its team size within the next 6 months & to develop a solid technical framework to build an all-encompassing healthcare platform that will emerge as the default destination for users to reach out for healthcare services ranging from preventive, operative, diagnostic to wellness.

13) Wellthy founded by Kevin Roche and Lindsay Jurist-Rosner: Mumbai-based Wellthy Therapeutics Pvt Ltd., which operates a mobile-based diabetes management platform, Wellthy, secured an undisclosed sum from GrowX Ventures. The startup further goals to use funds for hiring more team members and expand its geographical footprint.

Fintech Industry

14) Faircent founded by Nitin Gupta, Rajat Gandhi and Vinay Mathews: Gurugram-based P2P lending startup Faircent raised $3.9 million in a Series B round of funding. Investors participating in this latest funding round include Incofin Investment Management and Faircent’ts existing investors JM Financial, 3one4 Capital, M&S Partners Pte Ltd and Aarin Capital. The round also saw the participation of Muthoot Fincorp, Elevate Innovation Partners, Das Capital and Starharbor Asia Pte Ltd. The startup will deploy newly raised funds towards strengthening the platform’s technology and creating greater awareness about P2P lending significance as a new and highly rewarding asset class.

Food & Beverage Industry

15) The Bohri Kitchen founded by Munaf Kapadia: Mumbai-based specialized cuisine startup The Bohri Kitchen raised an undisclosed amount of seed capital from integrated incubation platform Venture Catalysts. The funding was from Anuj Puri, Abhishek Agarwal, Nikunj Pachisia, Anirudh Damani and Vishal Brahmbhatt. The startup funding round also saw participation from food and beverages doyenne Riyaaz Amlani, as well as several leading HNIs such as Romil Ratra, Chef Rahul Akerkar and others. The raised fund will be used to upgrade our current infrastructure, which will involve moving into a bigger central kitchen and hiring skilled workers who can help my mother in standardizing recipes.

Digital Industry

16) YourQuote founded by Ashish Singh and Harsh Snehanshu: Delhi-based content and digital community platform YourQuote, secured $1 million in Seed funding. The funding round was from IDG Ventures India, and also saw the participation of Atul Goel of the Essel City Group and Axilor. With the freshly raised capital, the startup will work on increasing the range of content available on its platform by expanding its footprint across the country. The final goal is to increase contributors and readers on the platform.

17) TapTap Meals Pvt. Ltd. founded by Bharat Khandelwal: Delhi-based TapTap Meals, which operates the delivery app NOW, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the promoters of Hero Electric and other investors from Bengaluru. As a part of this agreement, the startup will continue to use Hero’s eco-friendly ebikes to deliver products and will further boost its unit economics.

Agritech Industry

18) Skymet Weather Services founded by Jatin Singh: Noida-based agritech startup Skyment raised an undisclosed amount in Series C round of funding led by the German government’s InsuResilience Investment Fund. With the freshly raised funds, the startup plans to expand its Automated Weather Stations (AWS) network and secure new business in weather data, crop measurement, climate analytics, and disaster management, thereby extending its outreach to de-risk vulnerable Indian farmers from climate change.

The post 18 Indian Startups Making News This Week (18 December- 24 December) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) GarageOnRoad founded by Prateek Ranjan: Noida-based online auto services startup GarageOnRoad secured an undisclosed amount in an angel round of funding led by Gaurav Gupta, SVP at Reinsurance Multinational Swiss Re. The startup will use the funds to boost its technology and operations. It will introduce features like on-demand car services and expand into other major cities.

E-commerce Industry

2) Boodmo founded by Oleksandr Danylenko and Yevgen Sokolnikov: Boomo, an online marketplace for auto part buyers secured 780.5K from its existing, taking its total infusion to $2.34 million till date. The company is looking to raise the additional fund to unlock additional opportunities in the domain, adding more storage and arranging hubs and increasing its warehousing capabilities.

Technology Industry

3) Foyr founded by Shailesh Goswami: Virtual reality-based prop-tech startup Foyr raised $3.8 million in Series A round of funding from property consultancy JLL and other individual and non-institutional investors. The startup, which is a technology platform for visualizing real estate spaces, will deploy continues to allow deeper integration of its proprietary technology in real estate projects and for expansion of the brand in global markets.

4) Anytimeloan.in founded by Keerthi Kumar Jain: Spice Mobility is gearing up to buy 30% stake in Luharia Technologies, which owns and operates P2P lending platform Anytimeloan.in. As part of the all-cash deal, which is expected to be completed by next month, an investment of $1.95 million has seemingly been made in the fintech startup.

Fintech Industry

5) Lendingkart Finance founded by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan: The Ahmedabad-based SME lending startup raised $3.8 million in debt from the State Bank of India. The latest entry of funds will be used to strengthen Lendingkart’s loan book. The fresh capital will also allow the startup to expand its geographical reach to over 950 cities.

The post 5 Indian Startups Making News This Week (25 December- 31 December) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Chaaipani founded by Shruti Chaturvedi: Ahmedabad-based internet-media startup Chaaipani ends a seed funding round. The investment is made by a group of entrepreneurs such as Bhupesh Chowdary (CEO, Powermech), Chiranjiv Patel (MD, PC Snehal Group), Yogesh Chaudhary (Director, Jaipur Rugs), Prabhu Ram (Founder, Paynear), Yogesh Goyal (Director, RTG Ventures), Rahul Agarwal (Founder, Idea Insurances) and Pankaj Maloo (Founder, Kreative Fingers). The company plans to deploy the funding to build high-quality video content, boost its distribution platform as well as reinforce its technology infrastructure. The investment will also be utilized to set-up a community-driven network to prove and validate content shared on the website.

E-commerce Industry

2) Buttercups founded by Arpita Ganesh: Bengaluru-based online lingerie startup Buttercups raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Google India MD Rajan Anandan and angel investor Chandra Chappadi. Existing investors Kanwaljit Singh and Anand Chandrasekaran also participated in the round. The investment was made through online deals platform, LetsVenture. With this, Buttercups’ total fundraises till date is believed to have reached $1.2 million. The investment would allow the lingerie startup to pivot to a no-inventory model, while also moving manufacturing to India. Also, the new funds will be used to introduce new ranges of bras in sports, maternity, and nursing categories.

Fintech Industry

3) Early Salary founded by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal: Pune-based fintech startup EarlySalary secured $15.7 million in Series B funding from Eight Roads Ventures India. Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd (DHFL) and early backer Ashok Agarwal also participated in the round.

4) FinREQ founded by Bhavik Mehta: Online lending platform FinREQ secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Bennett Coleman and Co Ltd (BCCL) against a minor stake in the company. The startup will now focus on improving the deal flow with better brand recognition and market awareness in India.

5) Paisabazaar founded by Naveen Kukreja: The online financial services arm of digital insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, They received a funding commitment of $31.58 million from its parent firm EtechAces Marketing and Consulting. As per reports, this is part of $78.9 million pre-IPO fund raised by EtechAces in October 2017.

The post 5 Indian Startups Making News This Week (1 January – 7 January 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Hippo Video founded by Karthi Mariappan S, Nilam Chand Jain and Srinivasan Santhanakrishnan: Online video-as-a-service (VaaS) platform Hippo Video secured an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A round of funding led by Kae Capital. The freshly secured funding will be used to expand the startup’s present operations to Europe, apart from India and the US.

2) Workflexi founded by Geetha Prabhu: The Bengaluru-based online platform for contingent workforce raised $157K in Seed funding led by Kamalraj Chandrasekaran, Executive Director, Kamalraj Hospitality Concepts India Pvt Ltd and also saw the participation of Parashiva J Ravikumar, Director, Orva Networks Pvt Ltd. The funds will be utilized for product development, team expansion and execution of marketing activities.

3) Kuants founded by Ayush Gangwar and Mohit Bansal: New Delhi-based algorithmic trading platform Kuants secured $786K led by angel investors – Pankaj Chopra and Ankush Gupta at a valuation of $1.03 million. The new funds will be used to build up the GUI-based online stock market simulator, and acquiring high-end servers required for multi-core processing.

4) Bikxie founded by Mohit Sharma, Divya Kalia and Dennis Ching: New Delhi-based bike taxi startup Bikxie raised $314K from GEMs Partners and Sachin Khandelwal, ex-Honda Cars and ICICI Bank Vehicle Loans Head in a new round of funding. The funds received from this round will be deployed in upgrading technology and infrastructure, pushing internal growth, partnership, and expansion of operations to other cities.

E-commerce Industry

5) Satvacart founded by Deepika Saxena and Rahul Hari: Online grocery store Satvacart secured an undisclosed sum in Pre-Series A round of funding led by Keshu Dubey, the founder of startup database platform Xeler8 and Shishir Kumar, a former top executive at security solutions firm Symantec India.

Technology Industry

6) Simulanis founded by Raman Talwar: Delhi-based virtual reality startup Simulanis raised $500K in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by Education Catalyst Fund. The startup primarily offered skilling programme for engineering students via computer-based modules.

Entertainment Industry

7) Kinsane founded by Ashok Kunder, Kurt Inderbitzin, and Neeraj Bhargava: Global digital entertainment company Kinsane Entertainment Inc raised $2.5 million funding led by an undisclosed consortium of angel investors. Kinsane Entertainment Inc. is a US-based corporation which works in India through its subsidiary, Kinsane Digital LLP. With the new funding round, the startup plans to launch over eight new shows and 100 games featuring 30 new and compelling characters over the next 12 months. The core target markets for their content are the US, Europe, India, Brazil, and China.

Fintech Industry

8) NiYO Solutions founded by Vinay Bagri and Virender Bisht: The Bengaluru-based fintech startup NiYO Solutions secured $13.2 million in Series A funding led by Social Capital, JS Capital LLC, Horizons Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners. The new funds will allow NiYO Solutions to expand its presence across tier II and tier III cities.

9) Moneytor founded by Anubhav Singh and Ayush Srivastava: Mumbai-based stressed receivables management startup Moneytor secured an undisclosed amount of Seed funding led by 500 Startups and fintech accelerator ISME ACE. The round also saw the participation of a few angel investors including Satyen Kothari, founder and CEO of Cube Consumer Services and former executives of Dun & Bradstreet. With this funding, the startup is looking to automate and digitize all the processes related to debt collection, post a consumer or organization defaulting on their loans.

10) Lendingkart founded by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan: Ahmedabad-based SME lending startup Lendingkart raised $4.7 million in a debt funding round led by a Dutch development bank – Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. (FMO). This new arrival of debt funds will be deployed towards growing the loan book and expanding the reach of Lendingkart Finance across SME industries in different parts of the country.

11) ToneTag founded by Kumar Abhishek and Vivek Singh: Offline, proximity-based mobile payments solutions startup ToneTag raised $1.3 million funding from the overseas investor, Tropical Star Limited. With the freshly secured funding, the startup is likely to gear up to capture the relatively untapped NFC-based mobile payments market in India.

12) IndianMoney founded by Sudheer CS: Bengaluru-based financial advisory startup IndianMoney raised $3 million in a Series A round of funding from SRI Capital. The round also saw the participation of existing angel investor Hyderabad Angels. With this funding, IndianMoney is looking to scale up operations and increase its user base. More specifically, the company plans to use the newly-secured funding from SRI Capital and the existing backers to increase its capacity to 100K phone calls every day.

Healthcare Industry

13) KivaShots founded by Shalabh Gupta: Gurugram-based ayurvedic healthcare beverages Indian startup KivaShots raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Max Life Insurance CEO Rajesh Sud, Max Healthcare MD Rajit Mehta, Ward Ferry Management chief information officer Vineet Mitera, MindTickle cofounder Mohit Garg, Zomato cofounder Pankaj Chaddha and Startup Buddy cofounder Amit Singal.

14) Daaki founded by Amit Dabas: Bengaluru-based Indian sports nutrition brand Daaki secured an undisclosed amount in an angel funding round led by Rohan Agila, Business Partner and Capvent Advisors. The funds secured will be deployed in research and product development, in order to provide nutrition to athletes beyond existing standards. They will be leveraged to establish the upcoming brand as a promising business entity as well as help in expanding its all-new supplement product line.

Advertising Industry

15) SalesPro founded by Abhinav Sharma and Kejal Haria: Bengaluru-based SalesPro secured an undisclosed amount of funding led by a Silicon Valley-based VC firm 37.37 North Capital. With this funding, SalesPro targets to accelerate its market expansion into North America and India.

The post 15 Indian Startups Making News This Week (08 January- 14 January 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) ShareChat founded by Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Ankush Sachdeva: Bengaluru-based Indian regional language social platform ShareChat raised $18.2 million in Series B round of funding from Xiaomi Singapore and its sister company Shunwei Capital. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Saif Partners, India Quotient, VH Capital also participated in this funding round. The raised funds will be used to reinforce the machine learning and AI efforts of the company, with a main focus on expanding the aforesaid technology divisions.

2) PeopleStrong founded by Anubhab Goel, Pankaj Bansal and Shelly Singh: New Delhi-based digital payments and meal vouchers company Zeta invested an undisclosed sum in Gurugram-based PeopleStrong HR Services for a minority stake.

3) Streak founded by Aleem Mawani and Omar Ismail: Rainmatter, Zerodha’s fund, and incubator invested a sum of $352.5K in startup Streak. The startup had built a platform for algo trading without any coding being required and alerts the user when the right signals are generated, giving an algo trading edge.

4) Green Ideology founded by Abhishek Lodha and Neerja Lakhani: An organic cotton and bamboo fibre manufacturing company, Green Ideology secured $78.5K in debt funding from YES Bank. The startup is incubated by CrAdLE EDII. The startup has more than 60 styles under its fold and also sells in the US, UK, and Malaysia.

Technology Industry

5) myGate founded by Vijay Arisetty: Mobile-based security management solution for gated premises myGate secured $2.5 million in its first round of funding from Prime Venture Partners. The Bengaluru-based startup will use the funds to invest in technology and scale to 2 million homes across the country’s top seven cities within the next two years.

6) Keepsake Automation founded by Manan Bateriwala: Robotics startup Keepsake Automation raised $78.5K in debt funding from YES Bank. The startup is incubated by CrAdLE EDII. Keepsake Automation is presently equipped with Six-axis articulated arm robots and has been successful in roping in industrial giants like L & T as their client.

7) Naapbooks founded by Abhishek Jain: Cloud-based customized accounting application Naapbooks received $25K in debt funding from YES BANK. The startup is incubated by CrAdLE EDII. The startup provides an automated process of accounting which gives accurate and secure accounting records.

8) Rubix 108 founded by Anmol Chhoriya: Pune-based edtech startup Rubix108 Technologies secured $1 million in Pre-Series A round of funding led by Polaris Fund. Ayush Kankariya, an HNI, and financial services expert, also participated in the round. The funding will be used to facilitate customer acquisition and enable seamless communication at the school and college levels.

9) Faclon Labs founded by Archit Naraniwal, Rishi Sharma and Utkarsh Srivastava: Smart water management startup, Faclon raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Vish Sathappan, Sameer Sainani along with Neev Angel Advisors on LetsVenture with Paula Mariwala joining Faclon’s board, the Mumbai-based startup is looking forward to using the funds for commercialization and further product development.

Education Industry

10) CollPoll founded by Hemant Sahal: Bengaluru-based edtech startup CollPoll raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Pre-Series A round from Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE) and a few other individual investors, whose names were not disclosed. The raised funds will be used to invest in technology and to expand the startup’s offerings of campus-related products and services. The startup also plans to expand globally, especially in markets such as South Asia and Africa.

Finance Industry

11) Awign founded by Annanya Sarthak and Praveen Sah: Bengaluru-based outsourcing by crowdsourcing platform Awign raised $783K led by Unitus Seed Fund and a couple of undisclosed angel investors. With this funding, the startup aims to expand its presence in 12,000 pin codes across India, partner with 100 corporates and startups by June 2019.

12) RazorPay founded by Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur: Digital payments company RazorPay secured $20 million in a Series B funding round from existing investors Tiger Global and Y Combinator along with the participation of Matrix Partners.

Real Estate Industry

13) CorporatEdge founded by Mona Shukla: Gurugram-based serviced offices platform CorporatEdge raised an undisclosed sum from SIDBI India Opportunities Fund, the venture investment arm of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). The company will deploy the funds to expand in over six cities across the country.

The post 13 Indian Startups Making News This Week (15 January- 21 January 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Paymatrix founded by Anusha Kurupathi Parambil, Mukesh Chandra Anchuri and Muralidhar Nayak: Hyderabad-based end to end rent management platform Paymatrix raised $4K led by International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad’s IIIT Seed Fund. The startup was a portfolio company of Axis Bank’s accelerator programme and was among five fintech startups recently shortlisted for PayPal’s India Incubator Challenge.

2) Advantage Club founded by Smiti Deorah, Sourabh Deorah: Gurugram-based Advantage Club, a platform for employee perks and reward & recognition, raised $300K from Axilor Ventures, Mumbai Angels, Purvi Ventures, and Prominent Individual Investors including the existing investors Avtar Singh Monga (COO IDFC Bank), Amit Singhal and Manish Agarwal (Startup Buddy directors). The funds will be deployed to boost the reward and recognition program, building distinguished features and redemption options.

E-commerce Industry

3) MilkBasket founded by Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, Ekwe Chiwundu Charles and Yatish Talavdia: Gurugram-based online grocery startup, Milkbasket received $3 million funding in a Pre-Series A round from Unilever Ventures. The startup plans to utilize the latest funding and Unilever’s expertise to strengthen technology as well as in expanding their assortment and customer base and monetizing other streams of revenues.

Technology Industry

4) Paperflite founded by Anant Bhat, Vinoth Kumar and Yega Kumarappan: Chennai-based SaaS startup Paperflite secured $400K in a Seed funding round led by The Chennai Angels. Lakshmi Narayanan, ex-Vice Chairman and ex-CEO of Cognizant, along with Like Mind Ventures and an HNI group led by Adrian Rusu from Singapore also participated in the deal, both of whom will join the board as Observers. With its affordable cost to small businesses, the startup aims to drive higher growth.

5) Skillate founded by Anand Kumar, Bipul Vaibhav and Kumar Sambhav: AI-based HRTech startup Skillate secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Incubate Fund India, and Industry expert and Director of Zyoin, Anuj Agrawal, says co-founder Anand Baranwal. The newly raised funding will be deployed to accelerate product development, expand its team and reinforce marketing initiatives to ramp up its customer base in India and abroad.

Entertainment Industry

6) Spoofin founded by Siddhant Sahni: Mumbai-based video-based entertainment platform, Spoofin secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Mumbai Angels Network. The app allows users to interact and manipulate video content by way of an intuitive creator’s studio, equipped with video editing, voice-over and audio imposing capabilities. The launch of their MVP in the international markets is scheduled early 2018.

7) BookMyShow founded by Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande: Mumbai-based BookMyShow is in final talks with private equity firm TPG Growth to raise $50 million- $ 60 million. BookMyShow might be valued at $750 million with this fundraising.

Fintech Industry

8) OptaCredit founded by S.Kumar Srivatsan: OptaCredit, the alternative-lending fintech startup, secured an initial $4 million credit line from DMI Finance. The credit facility will be directly imbibed in aiding the company’s present financial offerings in aiding salaried customers across India to get access to timely and transformational credit.

9) WealthTrust founded by Jasmin Gohil and Nisarg Gandhi: Mumbai-based digital INVESTMENT advisory startup WealthTrust secured $500K in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by IndiaQuotient on LetsVenture. The funds will be deployed for product enhancement and growth of India’s first Zero Commission wealth management app.

10) NBFC: Mumbai-based non-banking financial company (NBFC) /digital lending platform NeoGrowth Credit raising $47 million in equity funding from investors from LeapFrog Investments. Existing investors Aspada INVESTMENT, Company and Quona Capital have also participated in the fundraising, through Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund.

Healthcare Industry

11) Axio Biosolutions founded by Leo Mavely: MedTech startup Axio Biosolutions raised $7.4 million in a Series B round of funding from Ratan Tata’s RNT Capital. Existing investors Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India also participated in the funding round. The startup plans to utilize the funds for expansion to new markets while continuing to work on high-impact medical products.

Education Industry

12) GreyAtom founded by Mitul Thakkar, Mayuresh Shilotri and Shweta Doshi: Mumbai-based edtech startup GreyAtom raised $1 million in a funding round from early-stage fund Pravega Ventures. The startup will utilize the raised funds to develop its innovative AI-based learning solution Commit.Live. GreyAtom further aims to use the raised funds in further strengthening its ecosystem of quality instructors, hiring partners and academia.

13) AEON Learning founder Karthik KS: Edtech startup, AEON Learning raised $3.2 million in a Series B round of funding from MEMG Family Office LLP, a fund set up by Dr. Ranjan Pai, chairman of the Manipal Education and Medical Group. The edtech startup plans to deploy the latest investments towards growing business from its university partnerships and skill programmes. The startup expects to reach a student base of over 100K in the next five years and is currently operating in India and the US.

Real Estate Industry

14) ZiffyHomes founded by Salil Agarwal, Sanchal Ranjan and Saurabh Kumar: Gurugram-based home Rental Service Startup, ZiffyHomes raised $314.6K as seed funding from Bikky Khosla, Angel Investor, and CEO at TradeIndia.com and Anirudh Agarwal, Managing Director at Shree Sharda Group.  The duo will also join ZiffyHomes as Board Members to mentor the team for fast growth. The startup plans to use the freshly-raised capital in infrastructure expansion including exclusive studio Apartments which would further cater to the niche segment of executive class accommodation.

Food & Beverage Industry

15) HungerBox founded by Sandipan Mitra: Growth Story-promoted B2B foodtech company, HungerBox closed a Pre-Series A round of funding of worth $2.5 million from Lionrock Capital and Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys.

The post 15 Indian Startups Making News This Week (22 January- 28 January 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) The Wedding Brigade founded by Sanna Vohra: Mumbai-based online wedding startup secured $1 million in Pre-Series A round of funding from Blume Ventures. The also saw participation of Czar Capital, Mountain Pine Capital, Lets Venture investors and the Keiretsu Forum. The company plans to utilize this funding to expand the team and business verticals, strengthen its community, and introduce an array of new products and services to the market.

2) Creator’s Gurukul founded by Abhinav Tandon and Mohammed Sirajuddin: New Delhi-based co-working chain Creator’s Gurukul raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Sandeepan Senapati, and existing investors namely Rohit Nanda and Smarak Bhuyan. The startup is also going live with the first center in Gurugram. With the team expansion and launch of new centres, Creator’s Gurukul looks to establish a differentiated and unique proposition in managed rental spaces.

E-commerce Industry

3) FabAlley founded by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik: New Delhi-based online fashion platform FabAlley raised $780K from Trifecta Capital in venture debt funding. The startup plans to deploy this funding mainly to augment its offline growth.

4) BigBasket founded by Hari Menon, Abhinay Choudhari, VS Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh and VS Ramesh: Alibaba Group, Chinese e-commerce giant was seen participating in a $300 million Series E round of funding of BigBasket. The round also saw the participation of Abraaj Capital, Sands Capital, and IFC. The company will use the funds raised towards improving its technological, analytical, and infrastructural ability.

Technology Industry

5) BrowserStack founded by Nakul Aggarwal, and Ritesh Arora: Web testing platform BrowserStack secured $50 million Series A round of funding from Accel Partners valuation of about $400 million-$500 million. The investment will fuel BrowserStack’s continued guarantee to being the testing infrastructure for the Internet and allows the company to expand its world-class team and raise global brand awareness.

6) 6Degree founded by Nikhil Hegde: Mumbai-based fashion tech startup 6Degree raised $400K from IAN and TAN Advisors. The funds will be used in expanding the team, upgradation of the technology and in expanding the reach of the company.

7) Groww founded by Lalit Keshre: Data science-based mutual fund investing platform Groww secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Y Combinator, Curefit founders Mukesh Bansal, and Ankit Nagori. Bengaluru-based Groww’s mission is to make investing simple for the next 100 million people to successfully grow their wealth by moving towards digital financial products.

8) SCAPIC founded by Ajay Ponna Venkatesh and Sai Krishna V K: Virtual and Augmented Reality platform Scapic raised a seed round of funding led by Axilor, Speciale Invest and Newfort Capital. The startup looks to use the funds towards product development and research.

Entertainment Industry

9) SuperMOM Mitali founded by Mitali Jakatdar: An experiment started as a YouTube channel, SuperMOM Mitali raised and an undisclosed amount of funding from private investors. The platform will be using this funding to reinforce the tech – infrastructure, scale and expand its national reach. The startup will also be aiming at the quality of the content and pay emphasis to high-quality videos to include Interviews, Comedy, Sketches and Product integrations amongst other things.

Fintech Industry

10) MoneyOnMobile founded by Jolly Mathur, Rajat Sharma, Ranjeet Oak and Shshank Joshi: Mumbai-based fintech startup MoneyOnMobile raised $7.6 million in a Series F round of funding through preference shares. The company plans to utilize these funds to perform its business plan and drive growth across its product lines.

11) Continual Engine founded by Mousumi Kapoor: Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence-enabled education startup, Continual Engine secured $500K in a Seed funding round from the majority stakeholders of learning design company ansrsource. Continual Engine is working to use automation, machine earning and natural language processing/generation (NLP, NLG) techniques to make the process of learning content discovery, extraction, curation, and consumption more detailed and efficient.

Healthcare & Fitness Industry

12) CureFit founded by Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal: Bengaluru-based fitness startup CureFit raised $10 million in debt financing from HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. The latest fundraising is part of an earlier round, wherein it secured $3.2 million debt funding from Trifecta Capital and Kris Gopalakrishnan-founded Prathithi Investment Trust in August 2017.

13) eKincare founded by Dinesh Koka, Kiran Kalakuntla and Srikanth Samudrala: Hyderabad-based healthcare startup eKincare secured $1.5 million in Series A funding from a group of investors, including Ventureast, Endiya Partners, Eight Roads, Touchstone Equities and former NASSCOM Chairman B.V.R. Mohan Reddy. The new funding will be deployed to grow and expand the startup’s core technology platform as well as its sales team.

14) PeeSafe founded by Vikas Bagaria: O2O global brand for toilet hygiene PeeSafe raised $1 million in a fresh round of funding by issuing forcibly convertible debentures (CCD) to its existing and new investors. The funds will be used to accelerate its growth by expanding into international markets of the US and South Africa. With this round, the company onboard an array of new investors and existing investors including Alfa Universal Ventures, Green Shoot Capital, Venture Catalysts among others also participated in this funding round.

Education Industry

15) iNurture founded by Ashwin Ajila and R Lakshminarayanan: Bengaluru-based edtech company iNurture raised $4.3 million in its Series C round of funding from Ventureast along with existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments and Ascent Capital. The company plans to use these funds to expand its unique e-Learning platform for Skill Centers and Distance Learning and to expand its managed campuses business.

16) Mahindra First Choice Wheels Ltd founded by Nagendra Palle: The company raised $15 million in a fresh funding round from its existing investors. The edtech company will be using the funds to expand its franchise dealer network and to invest further in new technology-enabled products and services for online customers.

17) Chrysalis founded by Chitra Ravi: Chennai-based education startup Chrysalis raised Pre-Series A funding round from Impact Investor Gray Matters Capital. The amount raised will be utilized by Chrysalis to build on its research and development and to support its multichannel approach to take its Education for Human Potential movement to every child in the country.

Food Industry

18) Zomato founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah: Food ordering and restaurant discovery platform Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd secured $200 million from Ant Small, the payments affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Micro Financial Services Group, valuing the company at about $1.1 billion.

Logistics Industry

19) XpressBees founded by Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari: Alibaba invested $35 million in Pune-based logistics company XpressBees. Owned by Busybees Logistics Solutions, Xpressbees aims to fulfill complete supply-demand needs of India’s online industry through best in class solutions and domain proficiency.

The post 19 Indian Startups Making News This Week (29 January- 04 February 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) SectorQube founded by Arjun Sarath, Biniyas Valiyaveettil, and Sabarish Prakash: Kerala-based SectorQube raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Unicorn India Ventures. The startup has developed smart kitchen appliance and with this funding, it plans to make the product market ready. It also has an eye on international expansion where the Indian diaspora is strong.

E-commerce Industry

2) Furlenco founded by Ajith Karimpana: Bengaluru-based online furniture rental startup Furlenco secured $1.5 million in a debt funding round from a consortium of HNI investors via non-convertible debentures. The investors who participated in this round include Rekha Hrishikesh Mafatlal (Arvind Mafatlal Group), Lakshmi Narayanan – Ex-Vice Chairman of Cognizant, and M Krishna Sindhuri Private Trust.

Technology Industry

3) GenRobotic founded by Arun George, Nikhil NP, Rashid Bin Abdulla, and Vimal Govind MK: Kerala-based GenRobotic raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Unicorn India Ventures. The startup has also received a grant from BPCL to further research in the area and develop Bandicoot, a product under design to build an automatic robotic system for manhole and sewer cleaning to remove manual scavenging.

4) Icertis founded by Monish Darda and Samir Bodas: The software company Icertis raised $50 million in Series D round of funding led by Meritech Capital Partners with additional investments by PSP Growth and Cross Creek Advisors. Existing investors—B Capital, Ignition, Greycroft, and Eight Roads – also participated in the round. With the raised funding the software provider will accelerate investment in the ICM platform’s risk management, compliance, and revenue optimization capabilities, driven by artificial intelligence. The startup will also expand its geographical footprint in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.

5) Webengage founded by Ankit Utreja and Avlesh Singh: SaaS startup WebEngage, which provides on-site customer engagement suite raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Social Capital, the Palo Alto-based VC firm led by Chamath Palihapitiya. The funding will be utilized to build upon the product pipeline for 2018.

Healthcare Industry

6) CallHealth founded by Sandhya Raju: Hyderabad-based preventive healthcare startup CallHealth raised $7.8 million led by BCCL (Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd.). The funding will provide CallHealth with the ability to invest in customer education and engagement and to aid its next phase of growth and brand building.

7) Healthi founded by Rekuram Varadharaj and Krishna Ulagaratchagan: Digital preventive healthcare startup, healthi secured $3.1 million in a funding round from Montane Ventures. The startup plans to deploy the raised funding to boot up applications that empower users to understand, engage with and take control of their health. It further aims to accelerate product development efforts by expressively growing product and technology teams.

8) HealthifyMe founded by Tushar Vashisht, Sachin Shenoy and Mathew Cherian: Bengaluru-based health and fitness startup HealthifyMe raised $12 million in Series B round of funding from Sistema Asia Fund. The startup will deploy the funding to deepen its presence in India and also hopes to enter other emerging markets in near future.

9) Ambee founded by Jaimon Jose and Rohit Kumar: The Hyderabad-based healthcare transportation solutions provider raised $74.5 K led by Japanese VC firm, Spiral Ventures.

10) PinkBlue founded by Arun Sriram, Valliappan Kumarappan, and Varun Singh: Bengaluru-based clinical supplies provider raised $792K led by Orios Venture Partners, Anupam Mittal, Sakate Khaitan of Khaitan Legal Associates and other HNIs in what appears to be a Pre-Series A round, Paper.vc reported.

11) Strand Life Sciences founded by Ramesh Hariharan, and Srinivasan Seshadri: Bengaluru-based Strand Life Sciences raised an investment of $13 million from Quadria Capital, HealthQuad Fund, and Singapore-based Heritas Venture Fund. This investment will be used to fund the growth and expansion of Strand towards becoming Asia’s leading integrated diagnostics company.

12) MedTel founded by Lalit Ranjan Manik, Shashank Singhal and Ajit Choudhury: Bhubaneswar-based B2B2C telehealth platform MedTel has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a pre-Series A round from DFID (UK)-INVENT equity funds. The startup will utilize the new funds towards technology and product development, activating more digital health clinics & onboarding more specialist doctors on its platform.

Fintech Industry

13) CashSuvidha founded by Anoop Garg, and Rajesh Gupta: Delhi-based online lending platform Cash Suvidha secured $2.5 million in debt financing through financial institutions and private placement. The startup will use the fresh funding to increase the loan books of the company. The loans will cater to financing SMEs and individuals particularly in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Rajasthan.

Education Industry

14) Shape India founded by Raju Deb: Pune-based Shape (School Health and Physical Education) India raised $200K in Pre-Series A round from a group of investors from Sandeep Mathur, former managing director of business software and hardware firm Oracle India Pvt. Ltd.

15) CollegeDekho founded by Ruchir Arora: Gurugram-based CollegeDekho secured $2 million in its third round of funding from GirnarSoft, London-based ManCapital, the investment arm of the Mansour Group, and others. The startup will deploy the funding to strengthen its technology, to expand collaboration with international colleges and to increase marketing activities, including more offline campaigns.

Food Industry

16) Swiggy founded by Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini, and Sriharsha Majety: Online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy which announced its Series F funding. The foodtech startup revealed an investment of $100 million from Naspers, in participation with the new investor Meituan-Dianping.

17) FoodMemories founded by Harmitsingh Sikh: Ahmedabad- based foodtech startup FoodMemories, a marketplace for authentic geographically unique Indian foods raised seed funding from a consortium of eight investors led by Delhivery co-founders Bhavesh Manglani and Suraj Saharan as well as Darshan Upadhyay and Sanjay Notani, Partners at Economic Laws Practice, Mumbai. Additionally, Sachin Khandelwal, Founder of Bangalore-based Corporate Gifting major – Kirti Sales & Services, has joined the investor group.

Logistics Industry

18) FarEye founded by Gaurav Srivastava, Gautam Kumar, and Kushal Nahata: New Delhi-based logistics management startup FarEye picked up $9.5 million in Series C funding from Deutsche Post DHL Group. The newly-secured financing from Deutsche Post DHL Group will be used to expand the logistics management platform’s presence across Europe and the US later this year.

Fashion Industry

19) Perfectfit Fashion founded by Judith March: Koshi-based Perfectfit Fashion raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Unicorn India Ventures. The startup plans to use the fresh funding towards product enhancement and customer acquisition.

Advertising Industry

20) Joveo founded by Rahul Chaki, and Shannon-Marie Butters: Hyderabad-based Joveo, which runs a job advertising technology platform, raised $5 million in a Series A round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners. The startup will be deploying the funds to accelerate its product offerings, expand its partnerships and scale its AI and deep learning layer.

21) Pratilipi founded by Prashant Gupta, Rahul Ranjan, Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Sahradayi Modi, and Sankaranarayanan Devarajan: Self-publishing platform Pratilipi raised $4.3 million in its Series A round of funding from Omidyar Network. The round also saw the participation of existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners, Atul Goel, Contrarian Capital and Times Internet Limited and new investors Shunwei Capital and WEH Ventures. The funds will be utilized to expand and strengthen the existing team in the areas of product, technology and data science and also for further growth and partnerships.

Real Estate Industry

22) HeyHolidays founded by Kenny Blatt: Bengaluru-based holiday rental platform HeyHolidays raised $1 million in funding led by Hampton Capital. The funds will be deployed for expanding company’s global footprint with an increase in demand shown by its Indian outbound travellers.

23) Propstack founded by Raja Seetharaman, and Shubhankar Dongre: Mumbai-based real estate data analytics platform Propstack raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Private equity and hedge fund professionals.

24) Placio founded by Rohit Pateria, Ankush Arora and Atul Kumar Singh: Noida-based Placio, a student housing startup raised $2 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Prestellar Ventures, a Singapore-based private equity fund. The startup plans to use new funds to expand its services in India and Southeast Asia. It also plans to use these funds to acquire additional beds and make its technology platform well-equipped.

Gaming Industry

25) Nazara Technologies founded by Nitish Mittersain: Mobile gaming startup Nazara Technologies Limited secured an undisclosed amount of funding from ESL (Electronic Sports League), the world’s largest esports company against a minority stake in it. The funding will be utilized to scale up Nazara’s footprint in emerging markets.

Automobile Industry

26) Tork Motorcycles founded by Kapil Shelke: Pune-based electric bike startup, Tork Motorcycles received $194K from the Ola founders and Kapil Shelke, founder of Tork. Kapil has put in $124K and the balance came from Bhavish and Ankit. The current amount included, the Ola founders have invested $497K in the e-bike startup. The company has raised a total of $746K.

27) TyreMarket founded by Michael Welch: Online tyre retailer Tyremarket.com raised around $500k from Blackcicles’s founder Michael Welch. He is also a strategic adviser to Tyremarket.

The post 27 Indian Startups Making News This Week (05 February- 11 February 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Zoomcar founded by David Back and Greg Moran: Bengaluru-based Zoomcar raised $40 million in a Series C funding round from Mahindra & Mahindra. Zoomcar’s capital raise will be deployed mainly for accelerating its marketplace supply growth, improving its lead within applied IoT technologies, and expanding into additional mobility categories across India.

2) PetSutra founded by Amol Sharma: New Delhi-based niche pet startup PetSutra raised $147.7K led by undisclosed angel investors whose names were not disclosed. The raised funds will be used towards expanding its brand presence across India and globally, thereby increasing the customer base around the globe.

E-commerce Industry

3) Wydr founded by Matthias Dörner and Timo Hahn: Mobile-based B2B marketplace Wyder secured an undisclosed amount in a fresh round of funding from its existing investors. The startup will use these funds to strengthen its seller base, set up pan-India offices and improve its product and technology load to penetrate deeper in the Indian wholesale market.

4)  Infibeam founded by Sachin Dalal: Infibeam secured $6.2 million from Network 18 by issuing the Preferential shares in form of fully convertible warrants via its subsidiary TV18 Broadcast Ltd.

Technology Industry

5) HackerRank founded by Harishankaran Karunanidhi and Vivek Ravisankar: Coding talent evaluation platform HackerRank secured $30 million in Series C funding from JMI Equity. Existing investors, including Khosla Ventures, Battery Ventures, Randstad Innovation Fund and Chartline Capital Partners, also participated in the round. The funding will be utilized to accelerate its growth in the enterprise, expand and support its growing community of more than 3.4 million developers, and advance its data science research and development.

6) Pandorum founded by Tuhin Bhowmick: Bengaluru-based biotech startup Pandorum Technologies secured $3.2 million in its Series A funding from Binny Bansal, Indian Angel Network (IAN) and other high net worth individuals (HNIs). The startup has already received $1.2 million and the remaining amount will come in tranches.

7) Awaaz De founded by Neil Patel and Tapan Parikh: Awaaz De Infosystems Pvt. Ltd, a startup providing mobile solutions to enterprises that focus exclusively on social programmes, raised an undisclosed amount of funds from angel investors rounded up by Tribe Impact Capital LLP. The angel investors include Takeshi Kato, Paula Mariwala, Prashant Adurty, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India.

Fintech Industry

8) MoneyOnMobile founded by Jolly Mathur, Rajat Sharma, Ranjeet Oak and Shshank Joshi: Mumbai-based fintech startup MoneyOnMobile raised $5 million in Series H funding from Russia-based private aviation and aerospace holding company S7 Group. The development comes just two weeks after the startup secured $7.6 million Series F funding from undisclosed investors. The capital infusion will allow MoneyOnMobile to drive growth across its range of products.

9) Cashify founded by Mandeep Manocha and Nakul Kumar: Cashify, an online used phone platform raised close to a million dollar in a venture debt funding round from Trifecta Capital. The startup will use these funds to meet its growing working capital requirements.

10) Eduvanz Financing founded by Varun Chopra: Mumbai-based edtech startup Eduvanz Financing raised $500K in a round of funding round led by Blinc Advisors. The startup aims to use the funds for strengthening its AI-based lending technology for loan appraisal and expand its operations across the country.

11) Fincash founded by Gaurav Perti and Pawan Kumar: Mumbai- based fintech startup Fincash raised $150K in a funding round from Angel investors. The startup will use this investment to expand it’s product solutions, customer base and widen the reach of its financial services across the country.

Education Industry

12) IMAX Program founded by Naveen Mandava and Varun Kumar: Bengaluru-based edtech startup IMAX Program secured $13.5 million funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, LGT Impact Venture, and Aspada. The startup will deploy the funding for product innovation and expansion of IMAX Program’s customer base through multiple distribution channels and to team up with school publishers globally.

13) Littlemore founded by Padmanabhan Anand , Srikanth Ganesan, and Tathagata Guha Roy: Singapore- and Chennai-based edtech startup Littlemore Innovation Labs raised $3 million funding from Centrum Group’s PE fund Kalpavriksh. The company is planning to use the newly-secured capital to fund research and development activities.

Food Industry

14) Holachef founded by Anil Gelra and Saurabh Saxena: Food-tech startup Holachef raised $311K led by Ashok Kumar Gajera, director at Mumbai-based Laxmi Diamond Pvt Ltd at an estimated valuation of $27.4 million.

The post 14 Indian Startups Making News This Week (12 February- 18 February 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Grab founded by Jignesh Patel, Nishant Vora and Prakshit Sanghvi: Mumbai-based hyperlocal delivery startup Grab raised $1.5 million in funding led by SIDBI Venture Capital Arm, SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL). The startup will utilize the funding towards scaling up its smart locker platform and crowdsourced distribution centre model.

2) Linksmart DNA founded by Ashish Anand: An IP-oriented mass market vertical startup Linksmart DNA secured $200K from Amrita Technology Business Incubator (TBI) during PitchFest 2018.

3) CoLive founded by Suresh Rangarajan: Bengaluru-based co-living space provider CoLive raised $1.8 million in a round of funding from Ncubate Capital Partners, the private investment arm of SAR Family Office. The startup plans to use the newly raised funding to expand its presence and work towards its goal of offering one million managed homes in 25 cities across India. It will also deploy the funds to rise up its technology infrastructure and improve its talent pool.

4) FourKites founded by Mathew Elenjickal: Chennai-based predictive supply chain platform FourKites secured $35 million in Series B funding round from August Capital with the participation of existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Hyde Park Venture Partners. With this, Eric Carlborg, General Partner at August Capital, will join the FourKites board. The startup will use funding towards geographic and product expansion.

5) ODeX founded by Liji Nowal, Vinit Shetty, Anand Raman, Kapil Patel, and Binai Thoppil.: Mumbai-based Odex, an online shipping documentation provider, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Dubai-based fintech startup Invoice Bazaar Holdings Ltd against a minority stake. The startup will use the funds to expand its footprint across West Asia as well as to develop products.

E-commerce Industry

6) Shopclues founded by Sanjay Sethi, Sandeep Aggarwal and Radhika Aggarwal: Online marketplace ShopClues raised $1 million in a bridge round of funding from Ronnie Screwvala-managed Unilazer Ventures.

7) Doodhwala founded by Aakash Agrawal and Ebrahim Akbari: Bengaluru-based Doodhwala, a micro-delivery service for fresh groceries received an angel funding of $2.2 million led by Omnivore. The new funding will go towards expanding Doodhwala’s service into new markets, finding talent acquisition and upgrading technology.

Technology Industry

8) Yellow Messenger founded by Anik Das, Kishore Reddy, Raghu Kumar and Rashid Khan: Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform Yellow Messenger secured $200K from Amrita Technology Business Incubator (TBI) during PitchFest 2018.

9) Book My Diamond founded by Pinank Kamdar and Sankalp Goyal: Mumbai-based Book My Diamond, a technology platform that helps jewellery retailers to search a live inventory of loose, certified diamonds and buy them, secured $200K from Amrita Technology Business Incubator (TBI) during PitchFest 2018.

10) Capillary Technologies founded by Ajay Modani, Aneesh Reddy and Krishna Mehra: Capillary Technologies secured $20 million funding from Warburg Pincus and Sequoia Capital. The startup will deploy the funding to strengthen its new product development, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, catering to Asia and other upcoming emerging markets. They also plan to invest in the newly launched consumer goods vertical.

11) DroneHQ founded by Akash Shah, Divyesh Kharade and Jinen Dedhia: Mumbai-based enterprise mobile app platform DronaHQ raised $500K in the second round of angel funding from Kutchi Angel Network. The startup will utilize the new funds to create its sales team in the US and South East Asia.

Finance Industry

12) Aye Finance founded by Sanjay Sharma and Vikram Jetley: Gurugram-based online lending startup Aye Finance raised $3.8 million from three investors, including Hinduja Leyland Finance and IntelleGrow. The funds will be deployed to expand its online lending offerings in the MSME sector.

13) HighRadius founded by Sashi Narahari: AI-based fintech company HighRadius secured an undisclosed amount in a strategic funding round from Citi Ventures and PNC. The startup plans to invest the present fundraise towards its expansion across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Healthcare Industry

14) THB founded by Akansh Khurana: Gurugram-based healthcare analytics startup THB (Technology | Healthcare | Big Data Analytics) secured $2.1 million funding from Blume Ventures and HealthQuad. Existing investors like Fireside Ventures; Apoorva Patni, Director of Currae Healthtech Fund and Arpan Sheth, Partner at Bain & Company, also participated in the round.

Agriculture Industry

15) Agricx Lab founded by Ritesh Dhoot and Saurabh Kumar: Mumbai-based agritech startup Agricx Lab raised Seed funding to the tune of $500K from India-focussed VC fund Ankur Capital along with IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). The capital will be deployed to support product development and expansion.

The post 15 Indian Startups Making News This Week (19 February- 25 February 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Trilyo founded by Abhishek Moharana and Gaurav Gambhir: A Bengaluru-based B2B hospitality industry SaaS startup, Trilyo that offers AI driven Voice and chat-based solutions for providing next-generation customer experience secured $250K funding led by Startup Buddy, Pulse Venture Capital, Amit Manocha and others. The capital will be mainly deployed to scale the operations in India and Southeast Asia.

2) Gegadyne Energy founded by Jubin Varghese: Indian startup Gegadyne raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round from Mumbai Angels Network. With its patent-pending battery technology, the startup will allow recharging batteries in a rapid manner without the need for fast charging.

3) MintClean founded by Arunabh Sinha: Faridabad-based home cleaning venture MintClean, a subsidiary of united laundry services providing startup UClean raised $1 million in initial funding from UClean’s existing backer Franchise India, and Anubhav Chopra. The startup plans to use these funds to create a tech platform for the business, which mainly is B2B and B2C in nature. It also targets to use these funds to beginner suitable franchises and leads them through marketing.

E-commerce Industry

4) Urban Ladder founded by Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa: Bengaluru-based online furniture retailer Urban Ladder secured $12 million from Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners and Kalaari capital in Series E1 funding round. The startup will utilize the funding to further its omnichannel expansion, online and offline.

5) Furlenco founded by Ajith Karimpana: Bengaluru-based online furniture rental startup Furlenco secured $773.1K led by Mumbai-based Signet Chemical Corporation.

6) Myntra founded by Ashutosh Lawania, Raveen Sastry and Vineet Saxena: Indian e-commerce giant, Flipkart has infused $176 million in its fashion arm Myntra Jabong Private Limited. The funding was routed through Flipkart’s Singapore-based subsidiary FK Myntra Holding Private Limited.

Technology Industry

7) Qandle founded by Chayan Mukhopadhyay and Himanshu Aggarwal: HRTech startup Qandle raised $1.2 million in a Pre-Series A funding from Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Redwood Internet Ventures Ltd. Arun Chandra Mohan, former managing director at fashion e-tailer Jabong and ex-venture partner at Rocket Internet, had also participated in the round.

8) Survaider founded by Madhulika Mukherjee and Tushar Mishra: SaaS-based customer experience management startup Survaider secured $500K in a funding round co-led by The Chennai Angels and Axilor Ventures with participation from other angels. With this round of funding, the startup aims to focus on product enrichment, expanding to other verticals, in India as well as internationally.

9) Planys Technologies founded by Tanuj Jhunjhunwala: Chennai-based submersible robotic inspection startup Planys Technologies raised $2.16 million in Series A round of funding from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) Start-up Fund and Ranjan Pai’s MEMG Family Office. Kris Gopalakrishnan’s (Co-Founder, Infosys; Chairman, Axilor Ventures) Pratithi Trust, Keiretsu Forum (Chennai and Singapore) and other individuals also participated in the round.

Fintech Industry

10) Credy founded by Harshit Vaishnav and Pratish Gandhi: Online lending platform Credy raised $1.4 million in Seed funding from prominent investors including Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Vy Capital, and a bunch of Silicon Valley-based angel investors. The startup will utilize the incomes to expressively ramp up the loan book, forge partnerships with institutional lenders, hire talent for operations, and further build the technology to underwrite the customer.

Healthcare Industry

11) Predible Health founded by Suthirth Vaidya: Artificial Intelligence-based cancer radiology platform Predible Health raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Unitus Seed Fund, an impact venture fund investing in early-stage startups. The startup will use the funds to scale its cancer AI platform as well as invest in regulatory approvals for its existing products.

12) PharmEasy founded by Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah and Mikhil Innani: Mumbai-based health tech startup PharmEasy raised $30 million in Series C funding round led by existing investors: Bessemer Venture Partners and Orios Venture Partners, and new investors: JM Financials and MEMG. The startup will utilize the funds to boost up its geographical expansion and in hiring tech talent.

Entertainment Industry

13) Gaana founded by Avinash Mudaliar: An online music streaming service provider Gaana revealing $115 million fundraise from Tencent and Times Internet in order to enhance the user experience on its platform and strengthen its tech. The company plans to use AI to personalize music experiences for each consumer, to further develop its subscription product for paying users, and to develop aligned music experiences for Gaana consumers.

Digital Industry

14) Lollypop founded by Anil Reddy: Bengaluru-based digital design startup, Lollypop raised angel funding from Dr. Devi Shetty and Family. The funding will be utilized by the startup for expansion into multiple cities with an aim to be able to serve the clients better.

Real Estate Industry

15) NestAway founded by Amarendra Sahu, Deepak Dhar, Jitendra Jagadev and Smruti Parida: A home rental startup NestAway secured $51 million funding from Goldman Sachs, UC-RNT Fund and the University of California.Apart from that, existing investors including Tiger Global and IDG India also participated in the financing round.

Education Industry

16) Avishkaar Box founded by Tarun Bhalla: Edtech startup, working on creating an ecosystem to create immersive learning experiences that encourage innovation, secured $767K in Pre Series A round of funding from Auxano Deals. The startups plan to utilize these funds to strengthen its presence pan-India and for a rapid expansion in Asia.

17) Buddy4Study founded by Ashutosh Burnwal: Noida-based online scholarship providing platform Buddy4Study raised around $3 million in Series A round of funding round led by existing investor CBA Capital through its $15.6 million Education Catalyst Fund or ECF. The startup will use the freshly raised funding to scale up in a major way and expand its operations significantly.

The post 17 Indian Startups Making News This Week (26 February- 04 March 2018) appeared first on Delhi School of Internet Marketing- Digital marketing blog.