Deal Street: Ola, Flipkart, FreeCharge Founders Invest In Lending Platform
Indian startups raised nearly Rs 1,000 crore last week.
Six Indian startups raised nearly Rs 1,000 crore in angel, seed or venture capital funding last week, across areas such as payments, lending, grocery and health technology.
Founders of cab-hailing app Ola, e-commerce firm Flipkart, mobile wallet firm FreeCharge and payment solutions firm Mswipe all turned investors in a Bengaluru-based lending company.
Pine Labs Raises $82 Million At Just Under $1 Billion Valuation
Digital retail payments platform Pine Labs raised $82 million (around Rs 545 crores) in a fresh round of funding led by Actis Capital and new investor Altimeter Capital, its Chief Executive Lokvir Kapoor told BloombergQuint.
The investment values the company at close to $1 billion, two people privy to the development said requesting anonymity as the details of the deal have not been made public. Kapoor declined to comment on the company’s valuation. Venture capital fund Sequoia Capital, which is the largest shareholder in the company, did not participate in this round, he added.
Pine Labs, which offers cloud-based point-of-sale payments platform to the merchants, said the funds will be used to expansion within the country and to launch new products and services for merchants. Part of the investment will fuel its overseas expansion plans, Kapoor added.
Pine Labs has already present in Malaysia and is looking to expand further into markets such as UAE, Qatar, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
SoftBank Leads $40 Million Round In Grofers
Online grocer Grofers raised Rs 400 crore in a fresh round led by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp at a lower valuation, signalling increasing competition with rivals like BigBasket, Flipkart Ltd. and Amazon.com Inc.
Other investors including Tiger Global Management and Apoletto Asia also participated in the funding, Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder of the Gurugram-based startup, told BloombergQuint. The deal takes total funds raised by Grofers to $226.5 million.
The company said the funds will be used to build private labels. “A significant amount of investment will also go towards building infrastructure and technology and efficient supply chain management to achieve deeper penetration in existing cities,” Dhindsa said.
The fresh infusion nearly after two years came at a lower valuation. Dhindsa said the company is now valued at $300 million, compared with $350 million when it last raised capital in 2015. Big Basket was valued at $950 million when it raised funds from Alibaba and others last month.
Matrix Partners Leads $17.2 Million Funding Fintech Startup Avail Finance
Online lending platform Avail Finance raised $17.2 million (Rs 111 crore) in a fresh round of funding led by venture capital firm Matrix Partners.
Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, co-founders of cab-hailing app Ola; Binny Bansal, co-founder and group chief executive of e-commerce firm Flipkart; Kunal Shah, founder of mobile wallet firm FreeCharge; and Manish Patel, founder and CEO of payment solutions firm Mswipe, have also participated in the round, the company said in a statement.
Funds were raised through a mix of equity, debt and credit lines from a few non-banking financial companies and will be used to to expand the team and develop technology. The Bengaluru-based firm, which lends to consumers who work as office boys, cleaning staff and in other blue collar jobs at big companies, also aims to increase their portfolio.
Others
Parenting social network startup, Healofy raised $1 million (Rs 6.5 crore) in a seed funding round from Omidyar Network
HealthAssure, a health-tech platform, raised $1 million (Rs 6.5 crore) in a funding round led by The HR Fund, the company said in a statement.
Bengaluru-based food-tech startup SmartQ, raised $1 million (Rs 6.5 crore) from a consortium of investors from Dubai. The company said in a statement that its existing investor YourNest also participated in the round.