Vy Capital buys Urban Company Esops worth $5 million

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

According to Urban Company chief executive Abhiraj Singh Bhal, about 183 employees, across designations and roles, were eligible to participate in the latest Esop transaction, of which about 120 people, ranging from call centre executives to senior leadership, took part. In 2017, Urban Clap, as it was known then, had undertaken a $1 million Esop sale round, which was followed by a $2.5 million secondary round in December 2018. Under Urban Company’s Esop programme, every employee gets Esops at a face value of one rupee and the prevailing stock price has crossed Rs 1 lakh. Founded by Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra, Urban Company runs spa, beauty, grooming, repairs and cleaning services and earns revenue through a commission fee model based on transactions made on its platform. In August last year, the company had raised $75 million in a Series E round led by US-based investment fund Tiger Global Management, valuing it at close to $1 billion. The firm has till date cumulatively raised about $200 million from investors, including SAIF Partners, Accel, Steadview Capital, and Vy Capital.

Sharechat

ShareChat buys hyperlocal information platform Circle Internet

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

Bengaluru: Homegrown social media app ShareChat has acquired hyperlocal information platform Circle Internet. “The acquisition will help us penetrate deeper into geographies and nurture a thriving hyperlocal content ecosystem that will understand and serve the latent content needs of the next billion internet users more effectively,” said Manohar Charan, VP – Corporate Development and Strategic Finance, ShareChat. SAIF Partners is a common investor in ShareChat and Circle Internet. Circle Internet provides locally-relevant information to Indian language internet users across tier-II and tier-III cities. Circle Internet’s 15-member team has joined ShareChat, and CEO Shashank Shekhar will head the overall content strategy of the Twitter-backed social media platform.

Co-living startup COVIE to start with 3000+ beds in Pune, Bangalore, and Mumbai

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

PUNE: Real estate entrepreneurs Swapnali Bhosale Kadam and Abhishek Kumar have launched COVIE, a new age co-living startup with 3000+ beds in Pune, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The startup aims at clocking revenue at an industry average of Rs 10,000 per bed in the first year through aggressive acquisition of customers, beds and geographical reach. Talking about the new venture, Swapnali Bhosale Kadam, Co-Founder, COVIE said in a statement, “The co-living ecosystem in India has been growing at a speedy pace with newer working models coming into the scenario. The concept has brought in opportunities, mostly catering to students, professionals, and senior citizens, thus bringing much growth for this segment. Currently, our focus is on building long-lasting capabilities that are vital in strengthening the co-living ecosystem in India.” COVIE caters to all the three segments of students, professionals, and senior citizens under the brands Covie Ed, CovieLiv & Covie Plus.

 

Mumbai startup Passwork offering 'Walk to Work' solutions raises angel investment

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

To ease this, Passwork is a mobile based real-time marketplace for using co-working spaces and workspaces which allow users to book a place to work from near their homes. Through its ‘Walk to Work’ platform, Passwork has initiated a B2B network for offering customized flexible workspace solution and remote workforce management tools to corporates. With the introduction of ‘Walk to Work’, employees will be able to work in an office-like environment with all the necessary supplies and amenities without needing to go to an actual office, allowing employees to do away with all the inefficiencies they face at home and secure the interests of the organization. Passwork’s remote workforce management software has been specially designed to help corporates efficiently manage their remote workforce by issuing e-passes for employees to come to a particular satellite office, QR code based check-in and check-out to analyze work hours, sharing virtual and physical meeting details on the Passwork app and keeping a tab on meeting hours to avoid work-life imbalance. McKinsey research indicates the percentage of time worked in main and satellite will decline while flex office space and work from home will increase.

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Paytm Payments Bank enables Aadhaar card-based services

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

NEW DELHI: Paytm Payments Bank Ltd on Monday said it has enabled banking services via Aadhaar cards for its customers. With the integration of Aadhaar enabled Payment System, PPBL’s customers can now access basic banking services such as cash withdrawal, balance enquiry and obtain a mini statement through the business correspondent of any banking and financial institution in the country. Will also be made live, the company said, adding that this will benefit people in rural and semi-urban areas who have limited access to the physical bank branch and ATM. “With AePS, we are aiming to accelerate the financial inclusion in our country and ensure that people in the remotest part of India are able to access complete banking services,” Satish Kumar Gupta, CEO and Managing Director, Paytm Payments Bank, said in a statement. AePS is a National Payments Corporation of India-led model which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transaction at point of sale through the business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication. The only inputs required for a customer to do a transaction under AePS mode are IIN, Aadhaar number and fingerprint.

Interview Mocha raises pre-Series A round, sees participation from Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

MUMBAI: Pune-based digital skills assessment platform ‘Interview Mocha’ has raised a pre-series A funding round of $600,000 with participation from Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks, Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, and Anand Chandrasekharan, former director at Facebook. Co-founder Mishra said that the pandemic had accelerated digital transformation initiatives across organisations and this was fuelling demand for the company’s online assessment products. The fresh round of funding will be used for the company’s rebranding campaign among other operations, he said. On the funding, Domkundwar of Better Capital said, “Talent leaders of global companies are struggling to upskill their workforce to continue to be competitive. Interview Mocha brings one of the most important tools for human capital management – a ‘skill meter’ for talent leaders to rapidly assess skills and invest in learning and development scientifically. I am not surprised by the demand Interview Mocha is seeing and am glad to be an investor.” Mathrubootham of Freshworks, said, “Amit and Sujit have built a solid team, and a product that customers love. The company is already profitable and has a big addressable market.”

Education-focused lender ISFC raises $30 mn

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

MUMBAI : ISFC, a non-bank lender focused on lending to educational institutions and entrepreneurs managing such institutions, has tied up equity and debt commitments worth $30 million from existing investor Gray Matters Capital and other partners such as non-banking financial companies, including Incred, U Gro Capital, and Profectus Capital. “We believe this sector is undervalued and will go through a significant evolution and expansion in the next few years,” said Erika Norwood, president and chief executive officer, Gray Matters Capital. The new investment round and joint lending partnership will enable ISFC to expand its current partner network from 6,500 schools to 15,000. “Out of this $30 million, $8 million is from Gray Matters, our existing investor. The remaining $ 22 million is from three NBFCs in the form of direct assignment to create liquidity and joint lending arrangement for disbursements for the remaining part of this financial year,” said Sandeep Wirkhare, managing director and CEO, ISFC. The lender believes demand from education institutions will be better because of spending on infrastructure, digitisation, and teachers training, following the implementation of the New Education Policy, Wirkhare said.

Mindtree co-founders’ Mela Ventures to invest in early-stage startups

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

Early stage startup fund Mela Ventures, started by Mindtree Ltd co-founders Krishnakumar Natarajan and Parthasarathy NS, has done a first close of its maiden fund ‘MV Core Tech Fund – I’ with ₹130 crore in commitment from a set of Indian investors. The Sebi-approved ‘Category-2 AIF fund’ for early stage companies targets a fund size of ₹200 crore. The announcement comes a year after Natarajan and Parthasarathy, now managing partners with Mela Ventures, left Mindtree post acquisition by business conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd in June last year. Other India-based Mindtree cofounders – Subroto Bagchi, Rostow Ravanan, Janakiraman Srinivasan, and Kalyan Banerjee – are also part of Mela Ventures in the form of investors. The founders believe their experience in building Mindtree to a billion-dollar company from a VC-funded startup will be a valuable asset to the entrepreneurs. Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani invests in startups through VC fund Fundamentum while Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal have launched Axilor Ventures focussed on early-stage startups. TV Mohandas Pai, former Infosys board member invests in technology startups through VC fund Aarin Capital.

Otipy raises $1 million from Inflection Point Ventures

Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read

Otipy, the social commerce venture of farm-to-fork agritech startup Crofarm, has raised a million dollars from Inflection Point Ventures, the company said on August 24. Otipy is working on a model that connects consumers to farmers through women resellers. It has partnered with 1,000 resellers to cater to around 1 lakh consumers, it said. The company offers fresh fruits and vegetables sourced directly from farms and prices them 25 percent lower than market rates. “We have built a very strong community with our partner resellers and have empowered them by providing an alternate source of income especially in these times when other sources have dried up. Also, with the recent changes in APMC our farmer network is growing at a very fast pace,” Otipy cofounder Varun Khanna said. Otipy will use these funds to augment the existing technology infrastructure, expand the reseller base in Delhi-NCR and go deeper with its farmer relationships. It also uses customer relationship management tools on WhatsApp to seamlessly interact and serve consumers while keeping the overall transaction fully transparent at every step.

PhonePe Looks To Go Public Even As Twitter Calls For ‘Uninstall’

Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read

PhonePe plans to go public by 2023 and will list itself in India or the US depending on market conditions. Walmart-owned digital payments platform PhonePe is reportedly working aggressively to go public by 2023 as a separate entity in the US or India, eyeing a valuation of $7 to $10 Bn. PhonePe will finalise between India or US initial public offering, based on the market conditions. A person close to the matter said that Flipkart plans to go public by 2022 in the US. Interestingly, a Morgan Stanley report published last year had valued PhonePe at $7 Bn. It had highlighted that the company could be worth as much as $20 Bn in the bull case, especially due to the growing potential of the company beyond just payments. According to a Business Standard report citing sources PhonePe has been looking to diversify its portfolio after the government’s zero MDR rule which leaves very little revenue potential in UPI alone, and this remains a key aspect of the company’s plan to go public. Even as PhonePe plans its path to profitability and to go public, consumer sentiment is something the company needs to be taken into account too.

Edtech companies see record buyouts this year

Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read

Edtech and e-health startups are on an acquisition spree as stronger companies attempt to fill gaps in portfolios or try to gain scale amid a surge in demand for remote learning and treatment options. Year to date, there have been 13 buyouts and funding rounds worth $954 million in edtech startups, compared to nine buyouts and investments of $520 million in 2019, according to data sourced from researcher Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Healthtech saw four acquisitions and funding rounds totaling $300 million, in the year to date period, according to Tracxn data. Unacademy bought PrepLadder, a postgraduate medical entrance exam preparation platform for $50 million in July, as it looks to strengthen its presence in medical entrance examination categories. While Unacademy raised $110 million at a valuation of more than $500 million earlier this year, Byju’s has raised $500 million this year at a valuation of $10.5 billion and is in talks to raise another $400 million from DST Global. Much like e-commerce marketplaces, dominated by the duopoly of Flipkart and Amazon, a spate of mergers and acquisitions in both e-health and edtech may see the rise of a few, strong companies.

Digital payments market in India likely to grow 3-folds to Rs 7,092 trillion by 2025: Report

Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read

New Delhi: Digital payments in India are expected to grow over three-folds to Rs 7,092 trillion by 2025 on account of government policies around financial inclusion and growing digitisation of merchants, according to a research report. The country’s digital payment market was worth around Rs 2,162 trillion in 2019-20, RedSeer Consulting said in its report. “Mobile payments will drive around 3.5 per cent of total digital payments of Rs 7,092 trillion by financial year 2025, up from the current 1 per cent. The total mobile payment users who currently stand at about 162 million would reach around 800 million during this period,” the report said. RedSeer, which serves various e-commerce companies and venture capitalists including Tiger Global, estimates that the growth of digital payments specifically will come out by increasing penetration with offline merchants and the penetration with the unorganised retail sector will grow on the back of increased merchant digitisation in cities beyond tier II. Redseer sees COVID-19 as a catalyst to digital payments across India.

sense.bio, fitness startup launches e-store for covid-19 essentials

Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read

Bio, an IOT based health and fitness app in India has announced the launch of an e-store offering covid-19 essentials and personal protective gears to meet the surge in demand during the outbreak of the global coronavirus crisis. Launched with an idea to reduce the risk of viral transmission, the store makes it convenient for the customers to order the products while staying indoors. Bio said” Now since the unlock is happening across nation and people are resuming work now it’s the time to take extra safety measures with protecting themselves and boosting their immunity. Bio e-store witnesses the need for modern personal protective gear. The store strives to reduce the gap and boosts the implementation of safety measures. Bio is a data-driven app backed by innovative technology. The products can be ordered from its user-friendly mobile app and website.

Employee social network Mesh raises funds from Y Combinator, others

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

One of Silicon Valley’s most influential startup incubators, Y Combinator, has backed Mesh, an internal social network for employees. Started in March this year by Saurabh Nangia, Rahul Singh, and Gaurav Chaubey, Mesh is building an internal social platform for companies that makes it easier for employees to track their daily and weekly tasks, manage long-terms goals, and get timely feedback from managers. “At present, corporates typically use two disparate platforms, one for managing their monthly and quarterly goals, and another one for managing their daily and weekly deliverables. We are offering both in a central place, thereby making performance management a simple, ongoing habit rather than a forced, periodic process” chief executive Saurabh Nangia told ET. Mesh also has a Facebook-like social feed that helps employees interact with their co-workers, to recreate a physical office environment. Over time, Mesh starts curating the user’s public profile showcasing their top strengths, competencies and contributions based on the progress made on their goals and feedback received from other employees. In the future, Mesh also plans to integrate data from third-party platforms like customer relationship management platforms onto the feed, Nangia said.

Palantir, tech’s next big IPO, lost $580 million in 2019

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

SAN FRANCISCO: Palantir, a Silicon Valley company with strong links to the defense and intelligence communities, is poised to be the latest in a string of tech companies to offer shares on Wall Street well before turning a profit. Palantir’s revenue in 2019 was $742.5 million, nearly 25% more than the year before. Palantir has recently been the subject of sustained protests over its government contracts, particularly its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and critics have called on the company to stop assisting the agency with deportations. Despite efforts to land more commercial customers, Palantir earned $345.5 million from its work with government agencies in 2019 and $397 million from commercial entities, the documents said. Palantir has arranged a structure to ensure that its founders retain power. In the documents, Palantir made the case that its strong ties to government contractors were an opportunity, citing the “Systemic failures of government institutions to provide for the public.” Karp, who received roughly $12 million in compensation last year, controls 8.9% of the company’s voting power.

Goldman plans to raise about $2 billion for a new venture fund

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is considering raising a venture and growth fund of around $2 billion, a move that would make it a bigger player in the competitive world of technology investing, according to people familiar with the matter. A $2 billion fund for investing in growth- and venture-stage companies would be one of larger ones in the industry and could give the bank an edge with large startups that are seeking big checks from investors. Other than SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund, which has about $100 billion, only a handful of firms have several billion dollars of venture and growth capital to invest. This new fund comes after Goldman reorganized its investing teams last year. Investing in startups at different stages could help Goldman Sachs work with some of these same businesses when they go public through its investment banking divisions. Goldman Sachs has made a number of growth stage investments and has also made lucrative bets in Uber Technologies Inc. and Plaid Inc., when they were private. Growth-stage investing is just one of the pillars under its newly reorganized merchant bank and it has already been active in the market with a new giant credit fund that could raise at least $10 billion.

FarEye raises $13 million led by Nilekani’s VC fund

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

New Delhi: FarEye, a logistics software-as-a-service platform, has raised $13 million as an extension to its Series D round, taking the total funding in the round to $37.5 million. The funding was led by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership, a growth-capital fund for mid-stage technology companies in India, backed by Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal, and Korea’s largest investment firm KB Global Platform Fund. Nilekani and team are putting in $10 million, while KB Global has added $3 million, said Kushal Nahata, chief executive officer, FarEye. Investment in logistics space is essential for the economic growth of a nation and FarEye has captured the pulse of this industry and has all the ingredients to head towards global leadership, said Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder of Fundamentum. “… FarEye paves the way for its enterprise customers such as DHL and Walmart to gain flexibility as well as visibility in logistics by providing the easy-to-use platform to manage all moving parts,” said Chunsoo Kim, managing director at KB Investment. In April, FarEye had raised $24.5 million in Series D from M12 with participation from Eight Roads Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, and existing investor Saif Partners.

SAIF Partners in talks to back Country Delight at Rs 1,000 crore valuation

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

SAIF Partners, one of India’s leading venture capital firms, is in advanced talks to lead a Rs 100-crore round in direct-to-consumer milk startup Country Delight, sources have told Moneycontrol. The round will value Country Delight at Rs 1,000 crore, up from the Rs 600 crore it was valued at in February 2019. SAIF Partners and Country Delight did not respond to Moneycontrol’s emails seeking comment. The Delhi-NCR-based, which delivers in Pune, Mumbai, NCR and Bengaluru, has a revenue of about Rs 30 crore and an EBITDA of Rs 3 crore per month, indicating it is close to profitability. Country Delight is also the only venture-backed player in the D2C milk brand market. Country Delight competes with Parag Milk Foods Ltd, a listed stock whose brand Pride of Cows runs a similar premium subscription-based delivery model. For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Parag Milk Foods reported a net profit of Rs 8.5 crore, on an operating income of Rs 524 crore, less than Rs 26.8 crore profit on an income of Rs 623 crore for the December 2019 quarter.

OLX launches franchisee model for used cars

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

NEW DELHI: Consumer-to-consumer marketplace OLX on Friday launched its new franchisee-led pre-owned car retail offering where dealers and consumers can buy and sell pre-owned cars. The franchise-led model which will be branded as ‘OLX Autos’ will enable dealers to become a part of OLX India’s dealer network and is an extension of OLX’s online classifieds marketplace, according to a release. As OLX exclusive partners, the dealers will leverage the OLX Integrated-Omni Channel Store experience where they will be able to retail pre-owned cars across OLX’s online marketplace as well. The new franchise-led model contributes to further strengthen OLX’s market leadership in the pre-owned car segment thereby augmenting the largely untapped and unorganised pre-owned car retail market in India. Talking about the launch of the franchise network in India, Amit Kumar, head OLX Autos India, said, “We are launching the franchise operations to cater to the growing demands to organize retail of pre-owned cars in the country. We are confident that our move into franchising will bring several entrepreneurs onto our platform. Together, we will significantly enhance the customer experience for buyers and sellers.”

Edtech startup LEAD School raises $28 million led by Westbridge capital

Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read

Bengaluru: Education technology startup LEAD School, which helps private schools digitize their curriculum, has raised $28 million in a Series C funding round led by Westbridge Capital along with existing investor Elevar Equity. The latest round of funding will be used by the company to accelerate the development and roll out of new product offerings, increase its school network in Tier 2-3 cities and hire talent across domains. It started off as a full-fledged school focused on middle school students. Sumeet Mehta, co-founder and chief executive of LEAD School said that the firm’s partner schools have seen class averages improve from below 60% to above 70% after they adopted digitized curricula. “In the new world order, the lockdown ensuing the pandemic has given a massive boost to online education. In the last few months, the edtech sector has evolved rapidly, changing the trajectory of the Indian education system multifold. As a firm, we believe in investing in ventures that have a large scale impact and are convinced LEAD School will create a strong positive impact on the educational outcomes of millions of young minds”, said Sandeep Singhal, managing director, WestBridge Capital.