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Deal Street: Indian Startups Raised Nearly Rs 200 Crore Last Week 

Your weekly dose of startup deals...

Source: BloombergQuint
Source: BloombergQuint

Fourteen startups raised around $28 million (around Rs 200 crore) last week in angel, seed or venture capital funding, a tad lower than $30 million in the previous week.

Delhi-based online marketplace ShopClues, which is looking to go public by next year, led the funding chart...

Shopclues Raises $7.7 Million In Debt Funding

Sanjay Sethi, Co-founder, Shopclues.com
Sanjay Sethi, Co-founder, Shopclues.com

Online marketplace Shopclues raised $7.6 million (around Rs 50 crore) in debt funding from InnoVen Capital, a company spokesperson said.

While Shopclues didn’t disclose how it plans to use the funds, a person privy to the development told BloombergQuint that the proceeds of the round will be used to meet working capital requirement and scale up rapidly.

The debt funding comes 15 months after the firm entered the unicorn club by raising an undisclosed amount from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd. and existing investors Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners at a valuation of over $1.1 billion.

The Gurugram-based company is said to have clocked 100 million monthly visits on its website. It offers over five crore products from more than five lakh merchants.

LegalRaasta Raises $5 Million

Source: LegalRaasta
Source: LegalRaasta

Delhi-based LegalRaasta that provides online legal services to small and medium-sized enterprises, entrepreneurs and professional raised $5 million (around Rs 32 crore ) in a Series A round led by Impanix Capital, the company said in a statement.

The startup will use the funds in building GST compliance software for SMEs, chartered accountants and enterprises, the statement said.

“We will be offering both standalone GST software and an API interface to connect ERPs (such as SAP, Oracle and Tally) with GST systems. We have already applied as a GSP provider (GST Suvidha Provider) with the government,” Himanshu Jain, co-founder of LegalRaasta, said.

The company said that it has served more than 80,000 SMEs in India and offers over 50 services linked to finance and taxation.

Vertex, CapitaLand Back E-Commerce Enabler Ace Turtle

Bangalore-based e-commerce consultancy Ace Turtle raised $5 million (Rs 32 crore) in its Series A round of funding from Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd., the venture capital arm of Singapore government’s investment firm Temasek, and Singapore-based real estate developer CapitaLand, the company said in a statement.

Ace Turtle said it will use the funds to ramp up its technology platform and build a leadership team. A part of the investment will also be used to expand overseas, beginning with southeast Asian markets such as Singapore and Malaysia.

Founded in 2013, the company helps offline brands go online by providing technology, customer support, marketing solutions and analytics through an integrated e-commerce platform. It also provides consulting services to e-commerce firms.

The company’s offline customers include Intex, Arrow, Ed Hardy, Flying Machine, Fossil and Ray Ban, among others. It also counts Flipkart and its subsidiaries Jabong and Myntra among its clients in the consulting vertical.

Credit App Early Salary Raises $4 Million

Left to Right: Akshay Mehrotra (CEO), Ashish Goyal (CFO), Vivek Jain (CTO), Vimal Saboo (CBO), Early Salary 
Left to Right: Akshay Mehrotra (CEO), Ashish Goyal (CFO), Vivek Jain (CTO), Vimal Saboo (CBO), Early Salary 

Pune-based Early Salary, which offers advance and short-term loans to young working professionals, raised $4 million in a fresh round of funding from IDG Ventures India Advisors and publicly traded lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd., co-founder Akshay Mehrotra told BloombergQuint over the phone.

The company aims to use the funds for product development, to grow customer base and provide 200,000 loans in this financial year, Mehrotra said.

The startup, which began operations in 2016, offers loans in the range of Rs 8,000 to Rs 1 lakh based on the credit worthiness of the applicant, which it determines using the propriety algorithm. The credit is handed out for a period of seven days to one month.

Mehrotra said there are 5,000 active users on the platform and the firm is growing at 40 percent month-on-month. The company is aiming at 50,000 users and a loan book of Rs 100 crore by the end of the year, he said.

Cybersecurity Startup Lucideus Gets Funding From Google’s Anandan

Delhi-based Lucideus Tech Pvt. Ltd., an IT risk assessment and cybersecurity platform, has raised angel investment from a clutch of investors, a company statement said.

The round saw participation from Rajan Anandan, managing director at Google India; Amit Ranjan, chief architect of the Indian government’s digital initiative Digilocker; Govind Rajan, former chief executive of payments platform Freecharge; Jonathan Boutelle, former director of technology at LinkedIn/SlideShare; and Kulmeet Bawa, managing director at Adobe.

In September last year, the company had raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Amit Choudhary, director at Motilal Oswal Private Equity Advisors.

Other Deals

Source: Vidooly 
Source: Vidooly 
  • Bangalore-based health and fitness platform CureFit secured $3 million (Rs 19.2 crore) in a fresh round of funding from UC-RNT Fund, a joint venture between Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates and the University of California, the company said.
  • Delhi-NCR-based video intelligence platform Vidooly raised Series A funding of around $1.4 million from Times Internet and Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd., the company said in a statement.
  • Cold pressed juice startup MyGreens, based in Delhi-NCR, secured around $1 million through angel funding platform LetsVenture, the company said in a statement. The round was led by Ajay Relan, founder and chairman, CX Partners. Other investors included Sundeep Bhandari, director and chief executive officer, Petrodil.
  • Pune-based restaurant automation firm Devourin raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Deepak Nathani, founder and chief executive of technology company Relfor Labs, the startup said.
  • Delhi based fashion e-commerce firm Yepme raised around $700,000 (Rs 4.5 crore) in bridge funding, documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show.
  • Chymera VR Inc, a virtual reality advertising platform, secured funding from a clutch of angel investors, including People Group founder and Chief Executive Officer Anupam Mittal, Airbnb’s global expansion head Varsha Rao, Google executive Surojit Chatterjee, and HHC Holdings chairman Nirav Choksi, among others. The investment was made through the LetsVenture platform, said a company statement.
  • Bangalore-based student/alumni community building startup Fourth Ambit raised $600,000 (Rs 4 crore) from crowdfunding platform 1Crowd and its investor community, a company statement said.
  • Bangalore-based nanotechnology startup Log 9 Materials raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from Delhi-based venture capital firm GEMs, a company statement said.
  • ION Energy, a clean tech startup based in Mumbai, raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Haptik founders Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, and the chairman of OMC Power and founder of Nippo Batteries Sushill Jiwarajka, the company said in a statement.