[Funding roundup] Week 2 sees 10 deals amounting to $58.45M; AI is the new love

Be it at corporates or with ministers, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and fintech are the buzzwords these days. No wonder startups in these fields are winning major investor love.

This week saw 10 deals that amounted to $58.45 million in Series A funding in sectors ranging from fintech, AI, health, edtech, and big data companies.

Apart from the bigger rounds like Qubole and Active AI, other fund raises included edtech company PlayShifu raising undisclosed funding. Josh Talks, started in 2015 by Shobhit Banga and Supriya Paul, raised an undisclosed funding led by marquee investors like Apurva Chamaria, Global Brand Director , HCL, Girish Mathrubootham – Founder, Freshworks, and Rohit Chanana, Head, Strategy & Finance – Hero Corporation, to name a few.

Apart from this, the undisclosed funding included healthtech company ElderAid, Rensio, and Hungry Foul. Niche e-commerce platform Happily Unmarried raised funding from Wipro Customer Care.

Here's a closer look at the key fund raises made this week:

Qubole raises $25 million funding

The big data-as-a-service company Qubole announced a $25 million strategic round of funding led by Singtel Innov8 and Harmony Partners with participation from existing investors Charles River Ventures (CRV), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). The capital will be deployed to firm up efforts in R&D, sales, and marketing, including those in the APAC region.

Active AI raises $8.25 million Series A funding

Artificial Intelligence-based conversational banking platform Active.Ai raised $8.25 million in Series A financing led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator. The funds will be used to scale to other geographies, and to bolster their product and technology teams.

EasyRewardz raises $2 million Series A funding

EasyRewardz, a collaborative rewards marketplace, announced that it had raised $2 millon as a part of its Series A round. The financing round was led by TransContinental Venture Fund, an existing angel investor and Managing Director of PayU Jitendra Gupta, new investor and Co-founder of Soch Vinay Chatlani along with Venture Catalysts Angels.

According to a statement, the investment will help the company to aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts, in India and overseas, and broaden and accelerate product development.

i2e1 raises $3 million Series A funding

i2e1 (Information to Every One), a Wi-Fi analytics provider based in Delhi, raised $3 million Series A funding led by Omidyar Network. The round also saw participation from Auxano Ventures and 3one4 Capital along with some existing investors.

i2e1 plans to allocate these funds to scale existing operations and launch a mobile application, making the provider a B2B2C player. Incubated in IIT Delhi, i2e1 previously raised $500,000 in seed funding from GrowX ventures and Mohandas Pai.