Investing in social good is finally becoming profitable
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
By Paul Sullivan Impact investments, which aim to promote a social good or prevent a social ill, have significantly outperformed traditional bets during the coronavirus pandemic. Impact investing typically focuses on three categories: environmental, social and governance, known as ESG. Returns can be tracked through various exchange-traded funds. Now, other investors are coming to him with questions about sustainable and profitable agriculture, said Kirkpatrick, who is also a founder of Impact Capital Managers, a trade group that seeks to show that impact investing can be a way to achieve higher returns. “The impact portfolios are very significantly outperforming the traditional ones,” said Brad Harrison, a co-head of impact investing at Tiedemann Advisors. Eric Lemelson, a philanthropist and vineyard owner in Oregon, has focused on clean-energy investments for nearly 20 years, and his portfolio has been almost entirely made up of impact investments for the past decade. There is some skepticism that impact investments look good because investments like energy and financial companies in traditional portfolios have not performed well over the past nine months.
Humans take a step closer to ‘flying cars’
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a “Flying car.” The company, SkyDrive, said in a news release Friday that it had completed a flight test using “The world’s first manned testing machine,” its SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive’s chief executive, said Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive was started in 2012 by members of a volunteer organization called Cartivator, and the company began developing a “Flying car” in 2014, according to its website. Several companies are developing similar technology, including Boeing and Airbus, as well as automakers Toyota and Porsche. Safe autonomous technology for eVTOL aircrafts is still being developed, Aksaray said. Fukuzawa said SkyDrive plans to begin selling a two-seat version of its eVTOL by 2023 for about $300,000 to $500,000.
Tech startup, trying to be Amazon for farms, runs into agricultural giants
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
He was Charles Baron, co-founder of Farmers Business Network, or FBN, a Silicon Valley startup that is trying to build an Amazon-like online marketplace for agricultural supplies. Major farm retailers and wholesalers have urged farmers and suppliers to avoid the platform, in some cases circulating letters and emails warning that FBN’s goal is to gather and secretly sell data on crops and farms. After FBN purchased a Canadian agricultural supplier in 2018, some large farm-supply companies stopped providing their products to the business, leaving FBN unable to sell them. Bayer AG, the world’s largest supplier of biotech seeds, tractor maker Deere & Co., grain giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. and other companies in recent years have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build data-powered platforms geared toward selling farm-management services, while also deepening their own view into farms. In 2016, officials for CHS Big Sky, a Montana branch of the biggest U.S. agricultural cooperative, warned farmers in a letter that FBN wasn’t doing anything different than the typical farmer-owned retail operation. FBN in June 2018 sued Univar in a Saskatchewan court, accusing the Illinois-based company of making false statements and encouraging other farm suppliers to avoid doing business with the startup.
Hena Mehta’s startup Basis has set out to solve every woman’s pain point of not having the right resources to plan out financial goals
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
After completing her MBA, returning to Bengaluru and speaking to over 500 women in various Indian cities, Hena realised she was not alone in facing challenges related to managing money. The app is jargon-free and targets women and their specific needs using algorithms that analyze five years of data. “Our vision is to build a platform that empowers women with all their money management needs: education, updated information, tailored advice and curated products. We aim to impact 10 million women over the next five years,” says the 33-year old, who co-founded Basis along with her school friend and financial expert Dipika Jaikishan. Hena, who is also the founder of Lean In Bangalore, narrates case studies of young women learning how to save wisely, build emergency funds, plan for early retirements, and even how to negotiate a salary equal to their male colleagues, all through Basis content and services. “To live a life truly on your own terms, you need to have complete autonomy of your money. Earning it, saving it, investing it, protecting it, and spending it. My advice to all women is to take complete ownership of your financial decisions. Outlining your goals and figuring out how to reach them is empowering and liberating. Chalk out as little as 30 minutes a week to educate yourself, and be in touch with your financial situation.”
Wonderchef expects Rs 400 crore revenues in current fiscal
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Wonderchef, kitchenware brand co-founded by renowned chefs Sanjeev Kapoor and Ravi Saxena, is looking at adding Rs 100 crore to the revenues this fiscal over the Rs 300 crore it clocked last fiscal, a senior company official said. Started off in 2009 as a direct selling company by entreprenuerial women who now number over 75,000, the firm nets 40 per cent of its volume from modern and general trade sales now, and online accounts for an equal share, co-founder and managing director of Wonderchef Home Appliance, Ravi Saxena said. “We have seen our sales, mostly through online, increasing by over 30 per cent in May as the lockdowns forced people to stay indoors and eat home food… We closed 2019-20 with a topline of Rs 300 crore and going by the current volume, I am confident of closing this fiscal at Rs 400 crore,” Saxena told. Wonderchef products, mostly mixer grinders and pressure cookers and other cookwares, command a 10-20 per cent premium over products from other brands. “We will plan an IPO when our topline crosses Rs 1,000 crore, which we expect over the next five years. Rs 300-400 crore sales is too small to get a good valuation,” he said.
Revolt Motors looks to raise $100 million in equity capital
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma’s electric vehicle venture Revolt Intellicorp plans to raise equity capital of up to $100 million to fund product development and expansion into more cities. The company will launch operations in Mumbai – its sixth market – this Sunday and aims to have a pan-India presence within a year, Sharma told ET. It is also working on at least two new vehicle platforms. The company has not raised any external equity capital so far, according to Sharma. The cloud-connected motorcycles have cumulatively run for about 5 million kilometres on Indian roads so far, according to Sharma. Foot traffic at the company’s experience centres in Delhi, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad have yet to recover, but sales have been picking up thanks to online bookings, Sharma said. The company aims to completely localise the sourcing of products by December this year. Speaking about the slow uptake of EVs in the country, Sharma said products that were sold earlier either did not match the performance of conventional vehicles or were too deemed expensive.
GOQii to launch medical-grade wearables in 6-12 months: CEO
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Home-grown wearable devices maker GOQii will launch its own range of medical devices over the next 6-12 months, a senior company executive told ET. The Mumbai and Palo Alto-based company will launch the medical-grade wearable devices that will be clinically accurate and monitor ECG, blood pressure and temperature, among others, Vishal Gondal, founder and chief executive of GOQii, told ET. The company is launching its first product, under its Smart Vital smartwatch, which can track blood pressure, oxygen levels, among other functions, and which, according to Gondal, has undergone third-party clinical trials as part of the required regulatory process. “Over the last six months, we have upgraded all our medical manufacturing processes, and now, we have completed clinical trials, and our devices are classified as close to medical devices. This was conducted by third-party performed in India, and GOQii devices will be apt to be used for remote consultations and remote diagnostics,” Gondal said. The company is also in talks to ink a partnership with a major pharmaceutical company, which will serve as its go-to-market partner as GOQii launches the products over the next 6-12 months, Mondal said. “They will bring these devices to pharmacies, hospitals. The partnership will be announced in about a month’s time. The devices are now the same grade as any consumer medical device,” Gondal said.
Wellness startup Sarva raises funding from Cutting Edge Group
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Yoga and mindfulness-focussed startup Sarva has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from international music provider Cutting Edge Group. The deal will enable Sarva gain access to over 20,000 minutes of music and meditation-based content provided via Myndstream, Cutting Edge’s record label, a press statement issued by the company said. Cutting Edge will also help design and manage music priorities across Sarva’s platform, the release added. According to its website, the Cutting Edge Group is an independent music publisher, financier and services provider for film and television studios, as well as production houses, gaming studios and online media platforms. The United States and United Kingdom-based group’s services also include music branding and royalty analysis. The fund raise from the Cutting Edge Group comes just a little over two months after the firm raised capital from cricketer Shikhar Dhawan. Founded in March 2016, the company’s offerings include guided meditation and interactive fitness.
Monster.com partners with Nasscom for SME jobs
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Job portal Monster.com on Thursday said it has partnered with the National Association of Software and Service Companies as its exclusive talent search partner for small and medium- sized enterprises. Through this partnership, Monster aims to support over 2,400 small and medium- sized enterprises in meeting their talent requirements by offering its cutting-edge hiring solutions, the job portal said in a statement. In addition to offering Monster’s platform, this alliance will provide solutions to help SMEs to connect with job seekers from remote locations, it added. “It has been our constant endeavour to connect the right people to the right jobs. Our expertise in reaching job seekers, especially at a time when the job market is adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, will help alleviate Nasscom’s SME Advantage programme.” “Committed to bringing cost savings and best in class solutions to Nasscom SMEs, we are glad to partner with Monster.com under our SME Advantage programme,” Nasscom Senior Director and Head – India Market Development, Gaurav Hazra said.
IIT Kanpur-backed startup Phool.co raises $1.4 mn in pre-Series A funding
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
During the covid-19 lockdown, the company ensured its supply chain by sourcing flower waste directly from the distressed horticulture farmers, bringing them critical income in these times. Co, a start-up backed by the-Kanpur, said on Thursday it has have raised $1.4 million in a pre-Series A funding round. The funding was led by IAN Fund and San Francisco-based Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, according to IAN Fund’s institutional investors include SIDBI’s Fund of Funds for Startups, apart from several marquee individuals in the league of Kris Gopalakrishnan, Sunil Munjal etc. During the covid-19 lockdown, the company ensured its by sourcing flower waste directly from the distressed horticulture farmers, bringing them critical income in these times. The company has developed ‘Fleather’ leveraging the flower cycling technology. He claimed his company was perhaps India’s first natural incense brand taking a digital-first approach and having a first-mover advantage as bio-leathers were barely available in India. “We are delighted to get IAN on board as an investor and the funds raised will be used to advance the research and scale operations of the company.”
Avail Finance raises $11.5 Mn round from Alphawave and Matrix
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Blue collar-focused lending startup, Avail Finance has raised Rs 85.6 crore~$11. 5 million in a Series B funding round from Alphawave Incubation Fund and Matrix Partners. The fresh round for the Bengaluru-based company has come after a gap of 13 months. Alphawave Incubation which is managed by Falcon Edge Capital led the latest round by infusing Rs 57 crore, while the existing backer, Matrix Partners poured in Rs 30.2 crore. Post allotment, Matrix Partners will be one of the biggest stakeholders in the company, commanding 26.4%, whereas Alphawave has picked up 11.5% in the company. As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Avail Finance has been valued north of Rs 500 crore in this transaction. Founded by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta in February 2017, Avail Finance caters to India’s blue-collared workforce, who are currently underserved by organized lending institutions.
Indian gaming startup Gamezop raises ₹32 crore from US investors Bitkraft
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Homegrown multi-games platform Gamezop with over 34 million monthly active users has raised ?32 crore in Series A funding from US-based Bitkraft Ventures, Velo Partners, and FJ Labs. “Gamezop powers the gaming section on various other platforms which want to drive up user engagement using games. Pushing on a new gaming application can be expensive. These partner tie-ups account for roughly 75% of Gamezop’s business,” said Gaurav Agarwal. “We have been looking to enter the Indian gaming market for a while and with Gamezop, the factors that excite us the most came together nicely – proven model ready to scale, extreme capital efficiency, solid product moat, and an unfair advantage in user acquisition. That Gamezop could scale to over 34 Mn users in a highly competitive space, while being profitable and with minimal external capital highlights the team’s capabilities to be a major internet company,” Malte Barth, Founding General Partner, Bitkraft said in a statement. In June, another gaming startup Bombay Play had raised $1.5 million in pre-series A round from Leo Capital, an angel investor and co-founder of Livspace Ramakant Sharma.
Byju's Gets $122m From Tech Billionaire Yuri Milner's Fund DST Global
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Homegrown education technology unicorn Byju’s has raised $122 million from tech billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment fund DST Global as part of its ongoing funding round, a month after storied Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital chipped in $23 million at a $10.5 billion valuation. Byju’s has allotted 42,666 Series F preference shares to DST Global for ₹908. The company hopes to raise as much as $400 million in the ongoing round, sources told ET. It was unclear whether DST Global and other investors were also purchasing secondary shares and at what valuation. Byju’s has so far in the year raised around $550 million, with Tiger Global and General Atlantic ploughing in $200 million each in January. Investor interest in the company has been piqued after registered users grew to 57 million and it enrolled over 3.5 million paid subscribers quickly. ET reported last week that Unacademy was in talks to raise $150 million led by Japan’s SoftBank at a valuation of $1.3 billion, or more than two and a half times its valuation from its previous round. Vedantu, too, saw its valuation more than doubling to $600 million when it raised $100 million from US-based Coatue Management recently.
Trevor Milton: This Founder Is Giving His First 50 Employees $233 Million Of His Stock
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Trevor Milton, the founder and chairman of Nikola Corp., is giving the first 50 employees of the electric-truck startup 6 million of his own shares after making a promise when he hired them. “When I first started this company I was looking for the best employees in the world and it was a huge risk,” Milton said in a video posted on his Instagram page. I’m making good on my promise when I hired the first +- 50 employees – giving 6,000,000 of my personal shares to them. Trevor Milton August 26, 2020 The shares he’s handing over in the Phoenix-based company are currently worth about $233 million. The stock has surged since Nikola started trading on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger in early June, driven by investor appetite for electric-vehicle manufacturers, even as the company has yet to produce its first vehicle. Milton said a couple of those first employees have since departed. Among them is the Agnelli family’s CNH Industrial NV, Jeff Ubben’s ValueAct Capital Management, South Korea’s Hanwha Group, and Nikola’s first backer: Worthington Industries Inc., the metals manufacturer where Milton used to work.
IIT Bombay-developed app Lokacart is looking to solve inventory woes of small businesses and farmers
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
The e-commerce platform, developed jointly by Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan and Ashvin Gami, looks to address inventory management woes of small businesses and farmers. The app has been developed for Android and iOS platforms. Speaking to Moneycontrol, Ramakrishnan said the app has been developed after gathering feedback through various meetings and discussions with farmers and farmer groups. “This app is tailor-made for small enterprises. The idea behind Lokacart was to complement the existing arrangements in the MSME market place. We did not want to disrupt existing arrangements of customers with their suppliers. Many other e-commerce platforms take the discount model. But we realise that every seller has an USP and therefore, we have stayed away from that model. There are a lot of hidden costs in the discount model and we don’t want to overload the customer with these comparisons,” he told Moneycontrol. “They are already operating in other areas and have channel partners. Lokacart will be leveraging that avenue as it is very robust. They will be able to guide the sellers on how to use the app,” he said.
Alibaba arm Ant Group highlights 'significant influence' over Paytm, investments in Zomato, in IPO prospectus
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Chinese technology major Ant Group has reiterated in its IPO prospectus that it has significant influence over Paytm’s holding company One97 Communications in which it has a 30.33 percent stake. Ant’s stake in Paytm would be pegged at around $5 billion, based on its total $16 billion valuation after it raised $1 billion in November 2019, The Economic Times reported. Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has been criticised as the company’s major investors are Chinese. Ant also highlighted its investment position in Zomato – where it holds a 25 percent stake. The food delivery platform is yet to receive $100 million of the $150 million it had raised from existing backer Ant Group, the report noted. Ant said it has made its interests known after the Centre mandated that all investments from bordering countries will need government approval, stating: “Separately, in 2020, a change in foreign investment regulation in India led to our further evaluation of the timing of our additional investment in Zomato.” Paytm and Zomato did not respond to queries, the report added.
Sequoia top backer of Indian unicorns with eight bets, China's Tencent 11th with 3 investments
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Venture capital fund Sequoia Capital India is the top backer of unicorns, or firms which have attained a valuation of over $1 billion, a report said on Wednesday. The India-based Sequoia has invested in eight Indian unicorns including Byju’s and Unacademcy, followed by Japanese investor SoftBank and British Steadview Capital’s seven investments each, as per the Hurun India Unicorn Investors List. Even as concerns get raised about the Chinese play in Indian startups, the report said that only one investor from the country’s northern neighbour – Tencent Holdings – features among the top unicorn backers. With three unicorn investments, Tencent was ranked joint eleventh along with six other investors that include Bennett Coleman and Company, Bessemer India Capital Holdings, Chiratae Ventures, General Atlantic Singapore, IFC and LTR Focus Fund. In the list of top investors, where each has backed at least three unicorns or more, American venture capital funds lead the way with seven investors in the list, followed by India-origin funds which have five investments, it said.
Brew House records 10X growth during COVID-19 lockdown as consumers turn health conscious
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Brew House is one such startup that offers certified bottled iced tea. Part of the Positive Food Ventures and founded in 2017, the company is a collaborative effort of Food Empire Holdings of Singapore and Siddharth Jain, who is also the founder of Brew House Ice Tea. Jain always harboured entrepreneurial ambitions, and he realised that ice tea had become a huge beverage category globally, amounting to $65 billion, and growing on the back of rising health concerns. Brew House is now set to launch new ice tea products – ginger turmeric lemonade and strawberry hibiscus lemonade. Brew House has been aggressively working with both smaller cloud kitchens, and hospitality brands such as Taj Palace Mumbai and the ITC Grand Bharat apart from direct online sales through their platforms. As people feel the need for an organic beverage brand that offers cleaner, healthier products, Brew House now has an enormous opportunity to sell in a space where the consumer post-COVID-19 has become very conscious about health and what they consume. “We have seen a 10x growth from the start of the lockdown to now, in August, and we hope that this will continue to rise as people become more aware of what they are eating and drinking,” Jain revealed.
Redis Labs joins unicorn club with $100 mn fundraise
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : Database software startup Redis Labs has raised a $100-million Series F round led by Bain Capital Ventures and TCV, at a valuation of over $1 billion. Redis Labs, known for its open-source database, has so far raised over $246 million. In India, it caters to companies across sectors ranging from Saas startup Freshworks, messaging service Hike, matchmaker Matrimony.com, online payments Razorpay and OTT platforms such as SonyLiv. The US-headquartered firm will use this capital to expand the global Redis community, beef up its go-to-market team and programmes, invest in product development, expand sales and marketing, and build partnerships, besides developing and launch Redis AI. “India is one of our fastest growing markets over the past 18 months and we’ve made significant investments there to support and grow the massive opportunity…our success is driven by two factors-developers love for Redis, and the move to the cloud by so many companies in India,” said Ofer Bengal, co-founder and CEO, Redis Labs.
Verloop.io raises $5 million in Series A funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Customer support automation platform Verloop.io has raised $5 million as a part of its Series A funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation, managed by Falcon Edge Capital, along with existing investors IDFC Parampara and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan. The five-year old startup will use the funds to fuel its product development roadmap, which includes hiring top talent across the data science and engineering domains and will expand its presence across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Verloop.io enables businesses automate customer support across channels and claims to have processed over 2 billion queries from customers across its clients, with over 100 million unique users having interacted with the platform. “With rapidly changing consumer behaviors, brands are now looking to enhance their customer support experience. We are excited to back Verloop.io and believe their offering is well tied with increasing demand for solutions that enable brands to supercharge their support teams and drive growth,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder and partner of Falcon Edge Capital. In 2018, the Y-Combinator backed startup had said that it was supporting Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, and Telugu.