Deal Street: Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Bets On Indian Social Media Platform, ShareChat
Your weekly dose of startup deals
The pace at which Indian startups raised from angel, seed or venture capital investors dropped almost by half last week, as compared to the week prior. Together five firms received around 23 million versus $41 million raised by three startups in the previous week.
ShareChat Raises $18.2 Million From Xiaomi, Others
Indian social media platform, ShareChat, raised $18.2 million led by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Singapore and Shun Wei Capital. Existing investors including SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Partners, India Quotient, and Venture Highway also participated, the company said in a statement.
Xiaomi put in Rs 36.84 crore ($5.76 million). Shunwei Capital, the venture fund started by Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, invested Rs 18.01 crore ($2.82 million), filings with the Registrar of Companies show.
ShareChat will use the funds for building machine learning and artificial intelligence technology and hire across segments. A part of the investment will also be utilised to expand and manage increasing cloud infrastructure costs.
Founded in 2015, the platform allows users to create, discover and share content with each other in the form of text, video, GIFs and audio formats. The app is currently available in 10 regional languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Bhojpuri and Odia
Vernacular content consumption in India has witnessed a meteoric rise in the last 2 years growing from 42 million in 2011 to 234 million in 2016. These numbers are a great indication of the huge opportunity available for products, focused on the vernacular audience.Ankush Sachdeva, Co-Founder, ShareChat
With roughly 8 million monthly active users on the platform, around 5 million content pieces get shared per day from ShareChat, the company said in its statement.
myGate Raises $2.5 Million In Maiden Round
myGate, a mobile-based security management solution for gated premises, raised Rs 16 crore ($2.5 million) in its first round of external funding led by Prime Venture Partners.
The Bengaluru-based startup said the fund raising will help it invest in technology to scale up to two million homes across top seven cities in two years.
Founded in 2016 myGate offers mobile based security solutions for security guards and residents, such as automatic visitor authentication, kids safety alerts, staff attendance, infrastructure-free vehicle management, touchless resident identification, clubhouse access management, management reporting and visitor overstay alerts. It works with builders such as Sobha, Prestige, Puravankara, Lodha and Salarpuria.
The company said it has so far monitored 24 million visits through its mobile app across 100,000 homes in around 700 gated communities. Around 5,000 guards are already using myGate in Bengaluru. It will launch in Hyderabad this month, followed by Pune and also plans to foray into Mumbai and Delhi-NCR later this year.
Others
Pune-based ed-tech startup Rubix108 Technologies secured $1 million (about Rs 6 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Polaris Fund, it said in a media statement. Ayush Kankariya, a high-net-worth individual and financial services expert, also participated in the round.
Mumbai-based internet-of-things startup Faclon Labs raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round led by Vish Sathappan, director at Brand Capital, Bennett, Coleman and Co Ltd., and Sameer Sainani, director, response, BCCL. Neev Angel Advisors and LetsVenture also participated in the round, the statement added.
The company will use the funds its product development and commercialisation efforts.
Gurgaon-based CorporatEdge, that provides serviced office infrastructure, raised an undisclosed sum from SIDBI India Opportunities Fund, the venture investment arm of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), according to a company statement.