Here’s a lowdown of top deals secured in the startup universe.
apna turns unicorn, secures $100 M Series C funding led by Tiger Global at $1.1 bn valuation
Jobs and professional network platform for the rising workforce apna has secured $100 million in series C funding led by Tiger Global. The round also saw participation from Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures and GSV Ventures. With this round, apna has attained a total valuation of $1.1 billion making it a unicorn within 21 months of product launch.
‘Made in India, for the world’, apna aims to go into overdrive to sustainably solve the immense challenge of unemployment, poverty and upskilling. The venture has grown 125x over the past 15 months and is currently conducting 18 million interviews each month.
The company plans to use the proceeds to further strengthen its presence in the existing 28 cities and expand to 300 cities and 4,000 towns in India by the end of 2021. The team also plans to double down on its edtech platform for skilling and invest in hiring talent and building world class engineering and product capabilities.
apna plans to build a global enterprise by venturing into new markets such as the USA, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa starting in 2022.
Nirmit Parikh, Founder and CEO of the company, said, “apna has a deep social purpose, and is committed to discovery and creation of opportunities to enhance a billion livelihoods, across geographies. With the continued support of our partners, we aim to accelerate our journey of ‘solving for the world’.”
Founded in 2019, apna has secured more than $190 million to date.
Pine Labs raises $100M from Invesco ahead of IPO
Ahead of its planned IPO in the US, Pine Labs has raised $100 million from the US-based investment management company Invesco, in a fresh funding round. The investment has been done through Invesco Developing Markets Fund.
“The Invesco Developing Markets Fund is pleased to invest in Pine Labs, a leading fintech services company in India that fits our strategy of seeking high-quality companies that have durable long-term growth potential,” said Justin Leverenz, CIO of Developing Markets Equities at Invesco.
This comes after Pine Labs raised $600 million at a valuation of $3 billion led by Fidelity, Blackrock and other investors in July this year.
“Over the last 18 months we have scaled our Prepaid Issuing stack, Online Payments, and also the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering. We continue to make progress in the larger Asian markets with our BNPL platform. Very excited to have a marquee investor like Invesco join us in the journey,” said Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs.
While the investment has not been termed as a pre-IPO round, it comes at a time when discussions around Pine Labs’ IPO are picking pace. According to a report, Pine Labs has appointed Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as advisors for its IPO and is eyeing a valuation of $6 billion.
Fintech startup Bright Money raises $31M
Fintech startup Bright Money has secured $31 million in Series A funding round from Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, and Hummingbird Ventures. Founded in 2019, the startup is based out of San Francisco and Bengaluru, and was in stealth mode until now.
The startup has also assembled a strong set of angel investors, including Naveen Tewari and Abhay Singhal of InMobi, Kunal Shah of CRED, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter, Gunjan Soni of Zalora, Pradeep Parameswaran of Uber, and Ram Shriram, a technology investor, who was one of the first investors in Google and currently on the board of Alphabet.
Bright Money aims to use data science to build and scale a “consumer fintech startup for the world from India”, and will use the funding to expand its teams and product suite across markets.
The company helps consumers take control of debt and start building real wealth, doing all the datacrunching math and financial planning on their behalf.
“We exist to give people real results - not just another finance product. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to harnessing the power of data science to drive personal finances - and we are really proud to lead the charge in building out a unique product from India that can potentially help solve what’s turning out to be a massive challenge faced by consumers globally,” said Avi Patchava, co-founder, Bright Money.
For the past two years, a team of data scientists and engineers based in Bengaluru with experience in finance, consumer tech and adtech has been building Bright Money’s proprietary MoneyScience, the company said.
MoneyScience is a patented AI platform that uses thousands of data points on each consumer's financial life and 34 algorithms to build highly customised financial plans for users.
“Bright is a Data Science-first company where we apply predictive intelligence into every corner of our product, covering data enrichment, financial planning, customer communications, banking systems and user experience. We deploy more than 30+ data science solutions consuming thousands of data points from a consumer’s financial life to infer, predict and take financial decisions, building the best possible path to their financial well-being. This is the beginning of seeing Data Science first tech being built from India, for the global consumer,” said Varun Modi, Co-founder, Bright Money.
Bidgely bags $26M from Moore Strategic Ventures, others
Saas startup Bidgely has raised $26 million (about Rs 190.8 crore) in funding led by Moore Strategic Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Accurant International as well as existing investors like Future Energy Ventures, Georgian and Constellation Technology Ventures, a statement said.
The tech firm had raised Rs 15 crore from IvyCap Ventures in March this year. The US-headquartered company has raised a total of $77 million in funding to date.
The company offers artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions to electricity distribution companies to enable them to serve customers better as well as modernise grid operations.
"As India's extensive smart meter penetration continues, this new investment enables Bidgely to provide tailored solutions that support the country's biggest utility needs: electricity theft prevention, grid stability and electric vehicle (EV) accommodation," the company said.
Working with a leading private Indian electricity distribution company (Discom), Bidgely has demonstrated the acute ability to detect non-technical losses through disaggregated smart meter data, it added.
Bidgely is targeting multiple use cases, including AI-based short-term load forecasting, analytics-based customer indexing and asset predictive maintenance to solve multiple challenges for Discoms, the statement said.
"Bidgely's Silicon Valley roots and strong engineering arm in India play not only to our strength of providing AI technology to established markets like North America and Europe but also to our ability to address key issues in emerging markets," Bidgely CEO Abhay Gupta said.
He added that India's energy landscape, specifically, is evolving rapidly, and the company's work around theft detection and grid stabilisation goes to the heart of problems that cost the utility industry billions of dollars a year.
Bidgely pioneered load disaggregation, holds 17 patents for its technology and partners with nearly 40 global utilities and energy retailers to glean valuable customer energy insights, using data from smart meters already installed in the home. It processes more than two billion energy data points a day.
BharatAgri gets $6.5M from Omnivore, India Quotient in Series A
Agritech startup BharatAgri has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round led by agri-focused fund Omnivore.
The startup said it will use this funding to expand its subscriber base beyond Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, accelerate growth of its inputs marketplace, and refine existing technology offering.
In October 2020, the company had raised an undisclosed amount as part of its pre-Series A funding round Binny Bansal-backed 021 Capital and existing investor India Quotient, Better Capital and Ajay Prabhu. The company plans to launch its Series B round in January 2022.
BharatAgri offers farmers an app-based platform for AI-based agronomy services on a paid subscription basis, which increases farm incomes through systematic implementation of scientific farming techniques.
“Even three years ago, it was unimaginable that rural Indians would be paying monthly subscription fees to Netflix and YouTube, which is normal today. BharatAgri has demonstrated that the same is possible with farmers, who see so much value in our advisory platform that they willingly pay subscription fees,” said Siddharth Dialani, co-founder and CEO of BharatAgri.
“In the next few months, we will be expanding our platform to provide other agricultural services, starting with direct-to-farmer agri input supply,” Dialani added.
Over the past 12 months, BharatAgri has clocked 20x growth in paid subscription sales with a 65 percent renewal rate, the company said.
BharatAgri currently has over 33,000 active paid users and aims to expand its subscription base to 150,000 by March 2022. The farmer population on the platform is evenly split between those growing horticulture crops and those growing commodity crops. On average, farmers pay approximately $8.00 (Rs 600) per acre for a six-month subscription, the company added.
A July 2021 report by Bain & Co. says that agritech and agri- ecosystem sectors have received significant interest from the investor community, making India the third-largest country in terms of agritech funding and the number of such startups. According to the report, several estimates show that by 2025, the value pool will be created in agri-logistics, offtake, and agri-input delivery will be anywhere between $30–$35 billion.
Healthtech startup Ayu Health secures $6.3M
Healthcare startup Ayu Health has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding round from Singapore-headquartered Vertex Ventures and Stellaris Venture Partners.
The round also saw participation from serial entrepreneur and angel investor Ashish Gupta, Mamaearth's co-founder Varun Alagh, and Rajat Goel, Founder of Gurugram-based EyeQ Super Speciality Eye Hospitals.
The startup said it will use the funds to expand its hospital network, improve technology solutions, procurement and quality management. Ayu Health also expects to expand its bed capacity to over 5,000 beds across six cities by December 2022, according to the company.
Ayu Health acquires speciality hospitals and rebrands them to create a network of hospitals. Currently, the firm has about 20 hospitals across Chandigarh and Bengaluru.
Liquor startup Boutique Spirit Brands raises Rs 80 crore
Liquor startup Boutique Spirit Brands on Thursday said it has raised Rs 80 crore through a combination of equity and debt.
The funding round saw participation from TradeCred, IIFL Private Equity, Anicut Angel Fund, Kae capital and investors like Narendra Madhusudan Murkumbi and Vikramaditya Mohan Thapar Family Trust, the company said in a statement.
“The investment will help to launch new products, scale-up and expand retail footprint as well services to customers across India,” it added.
TradeCred, India’s largest Alternate Debt platform, came in as a debt partner with Rs 60 crore.
Incorporated in 2016, Boutique Spirit Brands (BSB) is a multi-category spirits brand that specialises in manufacturing branded alcoholic beverages in India.
Boutique Spirit had earlier raised Rs 6.8 crore in seed funding from KAE Capital in 2018.
apna turns unicorn, secures $100 M Series C funding led by Tiger Global at $1.1 bn valuation
Jobs and professional network platform for the rising workforce apna has secured $100 million in series C funding led by Tiger Global. The round also saw participation from Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures and GSV Ventures. With this round, apna has attained a total valuation of $1.1 billion making it a unicorn within 21 months of product launch.
‘Made in India, for the world’, apna aims to go into overdrive to sustainably solve the immense challenge of unemployment, poverty and upskilling. The venture has grown 125x over the past 15 months and is currently conducting 18 million interviews each month.
The company plans to use the proceeds to further strengthen its presence in the existing 28 cities and expand to 300 cities and 4,000 towns in India by the end of 2021. The team also plans to double down on its edtech platform for skilling and invest in hiring talent and building world class engineering and product capabilities.
apna plans to build a global enterprise by venturing into new markets such as the USA, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa starting in 2022.
Nirmit Parikh, Founder and CEO of the company, said, “apna has a deep social purpose, and is committed to discovery and creation of opportunities to enhance a billion livelihoods, across geographies. With the continued support of our partners, we aim to accelerate our journey of ‘solving for the world’.”
Founded in 2019, apna has secured more than $190 million to date.
Pine Labs raises $100M from Invesco ahead of IPO
Ahead of its planned IPO in the US, Pine Labs has raised $100 million from the US-based investment management company Invesco, in a fresh funding round. The investment has been done through Invesco Developing Markets Fund.
“The Invesco Developing Markets Fund is pleased to invest in Pine Labs, a leading fintech services company in India that fits our strategy of seeking high-quality companies that have durable long-term growth potential,” said Justin Leverenz, CIO of Developing Markets Equities at Invesco.
This comes after Pine Labs raised $600 million at a valuation of $3 billion led by Fidelity, Blackrock and other investors in July this year.
“Over the last 18 months we have scaled our Prepaid Issuing stack, Online Payments, and also the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering. We continue to make progress in the larger Asian markets with our BNPL platform. Very excited to have a marquee investor like Invesco join us in the journey,” said Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs.
While the investment has not been termed as a pre-IPO round, it comes at a time when discussions around Pine Labs’ IPO are picking pace. According to a report, Pine Labs has appointed Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as advisors for its IPO and is eyeing a valuation of $6 billion.
Fintech startup Bright Money raises $31M
Fintech startup Bright Money has secured $31 million in Series A funding round from Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, and Hummingbird Ventures. Founded in 2019, the startup is based out of San Francisco and Bengaluru, and was in stealth mode until now.
The startup has also assembled a strong set of angel investors, including Naveen Tewari and Abhay Singhal of InMobi, Kunal Shah of CRED, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter, Gunjan Soni of Zalora, Pradeep Parameswaran of Uber, and Ram Shriram, a technology investor, who was one of the first investors in Google and currently on the board of Alphabet.
Bright Money aims to use data science to build and scale a “consumer fintech startup for the world from India”, and will use the funding to expand its teams and product suite across markets.
The company helps consumers take control of debt and start building real wealth, doing all the datacrunching math and financial planning on their behalf.
“We exist to give people real results - not just another finance product. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to harnessing the power of data science to drive personal finances - and we are really proud to lead the charge in building out a unique product from India that can potentially help solve what’s turning out to be a massive challenge faced by consumers globally,” said Avi Patchava, co-founder, Bright Money.
For the past two years, a team of data scientists and engineers based in Bengaluru with experience in finance, consumer tech and adtech has been building Bright Money’s proprietary MoneyScience, the company said.
MoneyScience is a patented AI platform that uses thousands of data points on each consumer's financial life and 34 algorithms to build highly customised financial plans for users.
“Bright is a Data Science-first company where we apply predictive intelligence into every corner of our product, covering data enrichment, financial planning, customer communications, banking systems and user experience. We deploy more than 30+ data science solutions consuming thousands of data points from a consumer’s financial life to infer, predict and take financial decisions, building the best possible path to their financial well-being. This is the beginning of seeing Data Science first tech being built from India, for the global consumer,” said Varun Modi, Co-founder, Bright Money.
Bidgely bags $26M from Moore Strategic Ventures, others
Saas startup Bidgely has raised $26 million (about Rs 190.8 crore) in funding led by Moore Strategic Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Accurant International as well as existing investors like Future Energy Ventures, Georgian and Constellation Technology Ventures, a statement said.
The tech firm had raised Rs 15 crore from IvyCap Ventures in March this year. The US-headquartered company has raised a total of $77 million in funding to date.
The company offers artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions to electricity distribution companies to enable them to serve customers better as well as modernise grid operations.
"As India's extensive smart meter penetration continues, this new investment enables Bidgely to provide tailored solutions that support the country's biggest utility needs: electricity theft prevention, grid stability and electric vehicle (EV) accommodation," the company said.
Working with a leading private Indian electricity distribution company (Discom), Bidgely has demonstrated the acute ability to detect non-technical losses through disaggregated smart meter data, it added.
Bidgely is targeting multiple use cases, including AI-based short-term load forecasting, analytics-based customer indexing and asset predictive maintenance to solve multiple challenges for Discoms, the statement said.
"Bidgely's Silicon Valley roots and strong engineering arm in India play not only to our strength of providing AI technology to established markets like North America and Europe but also to our ability to address key issues in emerging markets," Bidgely CEO Abhay Gupta said.
He added that India's energy landscape, specifically, is evolving rapidly, and the company's work around theft detection and grid stabilisation goes to the heart of problems that cost the utility industry billions of dollars a year.
Bidgely pioneered load disaggregation, holds 17 patents for its technology and partners with nearly 40 global utilities and energy retailers to glean valuable customer energy insights, using data from smart meters already installed in the home. It processes more than two billion energy data points a day.
BharatAgri gets $6.5M from Omnivore, India Quotient in Series A
Agritech startup BharatAgri has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round led by agri-focused fund Omnivore.
The startup said it will use this funding to expand its subscriber base beyond Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, accelerate growth of its inputs marketplace, and refine existing technology offering.
In October 2020, the company had raised an undisclosed amount as part of its pre-Series A funding round Binny Bansal-backed 021 Capital and existing investor India Quotient, Better Capital and Ajay Prabhu. The company plans to launch its Series B round in January 2022.
BharatAgri offers farmers an app-based platform for AI-based agronomy services on a paid subscription basis, which increases farm incomes through systematic implementation of scientific farming techniques.
“Even three years ago, it was unimaginable that rural Indians would be paying monthly subscription fees to Netflix and YouTube, which is normal today. BharatAgri has demonstrated that the same is possible with farmers, who see so much value in our advisory platform that they willingly pay subscription fees,” said Siddharth Dialani, co-founder and CEO of BharatAgri.
“In the next few months, we will be expanding our platform to provide other agricultural services, starting with direct-to-farmer agri input supply,” Dialani added.
Over the past 12 months, BharatAgri has clocked 20x growth in paid subscription sales with a 65 percent renewal rate, the company said.
BharatAgri currently has over 33,000 active paid users and aims to expand its subscription base to 150,000 by March 2022. The farmer population on the platform is evenly split between those growing horticulture crops and those growing commodity crops. On average, farmers pay approximately $8.00 (Rs 600) per acre for a six-month subscription, the company added.
A July 2021 report by Bain & Co. says that agritech and agri- ecosystem sectors have received significant interest from the investor community, making India the third-largest country in terms of agritech funding and the number of such startups. According to the report, several estimates show that by 2025, the value pool will be created in agri-logistics, offtake, and agri-input delivery will be anywhere between $30–$35 billion.
Healthtech startup Ayu Health secures $6.3M
Healthcare startup Ayu Health has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding round from Singapore-headquartered Vertex Ventures and Stellaris Venture Partners.
The round also saw participation from serial entrepreneur and angel investor Ashish Gupta, Mamaearth's co-founder Varun Alagh, and Rajat Goel, Founder of Gurugram-based EyeQ Super Speciality Eye Hospitals.
The startup said it will use the funds to expand its hospital network, improve technology solutions, procurement and quality management. Ayu Health also expects to expand its bed capacity to over 5,000 beds across six cities by December 2022, according to the company.
Ayu Health acquires speciality hospitals and rebrands them to create a network of hospitals. Currently, the firm has about 20 hospitals across Chandigarh and Bengaluru.
Liquor startup Boutique Spirit Brands raises Rs 80 crore
Liquor startup Boutique Spirit Brands on Thursday said it has raised Rs 80 crore through a combination of equity and debt.
The funding round saw participation from TradeCred, IIFL Private Equity, Anicut Angel Fund, Kae capital and investors like Narendra Madhusudan Murkumbi and Vikramaditya Mohan Thapar Family Trust, the company said in a statement.
“The investment will help to launch new products, scale-up and expand retail footprint as well services to customers across India,” it added.
TradeCred, India’s largest Alternate Debt platform, came in as a debt partner with Rs 60 crore.
Incorporated in 2016, Boutique Spirit Brands (BSB) is a multi-category spirits brand that specialises in manufacturing branded alcoholic beverages in India.
Boutique Spirit had earlier raised Rs 6.8 crore in seed funding from KAE Capital in 2018.
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