Investors pump $160.8 million in Indian startups across 33 deals in the third week of January

Tuesday January 26, 2016 , 3 min Read

Thirty three startups raised funding in the third week of January. 19 startups have disclosed the amount they have raised and the amount stood at $160.8 million. 16 startups raised Pre-Series A round of funding, while four raised Series A. There were two deals each in the Series C and D categories.

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Weekly highlights

Swiggy announced its latest fund raise of $35 million. Softbank has given Housing.com about $14.5 million runway in the latest round of funding.

Local Language has been a focus area—Indus OS and ShabdaNagari have raised funding. Formerly known as FirstTouch, Indus OS raised $5 million from Omidyar Network. Indus OS is an android based mobile operating system and supports 12 regional Indian languages. ShabdaNagari is a Kanpur-based Hindi social networking platform. CREO, a player in Android space has raised $3 million from Sequoia Capital, Beenext Ventures and India Quotient. TinyStep and PlexusMD are the other social network firms to raise funding in the week under consideration.

There were six mobile focused and e-commerce investments. Mobile investments included SnapBizz, Swiggy, Indus OS, DailyObjects, Fisdom and CREO. E-commerce investments included FirstCry, Just Buy Live, SnapBizz, IMbesharam, IndustryBuying and DailyObjects. There were three healthcare deals.

Top deals

Name	Amount in $	Investors	Round	City
Swiggy	35,000,000	Harmony Partners, RB Investments	Series C	Bengaluru
EPS	25,000,000	APIS Partners	Series D	Mumbai
Qubole	30,000,000	Institutional Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.	Series C	Bengaluru
Just Buy Live	20,000,000	Alpha Capital	Series A	Mumbai
Housing.com	14,500,000	SoftBank Corp	Series D	Mumbai
SnapBizz	7,200,000	Jungle Ventures, Taurus Value Creation, Konly Venture and Blume Ventures	Series A	Bengaluru
Kartrocket	6,000,000	Bertelsmann India Investments, Nirvana Digital India Fund, Nirvana Digital Investment Holding and 500 Startups	Series A	NCR-Delhi
Indus OS	5,000,000	Omidyar Network	Series A	Mumbai
IMbesharam	4,000,000	Undisclosed US Based Investors	Series A	NCR-Delhi
Villgro	3,500,000	Lemelson Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation	Private Equity	Chennai
CREO	3,000,000	Sequoia Capital, Beenext Ventures and India Quotient	Private Equity	Bengaluru
Easypolicy	2,200,000	Unilazer Ventures	Pre-series A	NCR-Delhi
IndustryBuying	1,800,000	Trifecta Capital	Debt financing	NCR-Delhi
DailyObjects	1,400,000	Unilazer Ventures, Phanindra Sama and Peyush Bansal	Pre-series A	NCR-Delhi

Top investment destinations last week

Delhi-NCR witnessed nine investments. While eight Bengaluru startups received funding, Mumbai saw seven deals. Ahmadabad, Kanpur, Chennai and Pune had one deal each.

Government trying to be proactive in harnessing the investment environment

After the unveiling of the Startup India initiative, the government is going all out to woo not just entrepreneurs but also the investor community. Last week Avnish Bajaj, MD of Matrix Partners tweet stormed his thoughts on the state of venture capital in India. One of the issues he raised was “we need to solve pooling and tax reasons for companies and funds to be structured overseas - loss for India” for which State minister of Finance, Jayant Sinha replied. “We are working on all these matter. Have intensive consultations with Indian venture capital association”

This level of responsiveness is most appreciated; hopefully the government will be swift in implementation and execution of policies that will ensure startups do not need to set up complex corporate structures.

@avnish @PMOIndia we are working on all these matters. Have had intensive consultations with Indian Venture Capital Association @adhia03
— Jayant Sinha (@jayantsinha) January 17, 2016