Fynd, Carmel Organics raise funds; Microsoft could reach $1 trillion in valuation this year

Friday March 30, 2018 , 3 min Read

From not finding favour with investors to becoming hot property, this year marked the resurrection of foodtech in the Indian startup ecosystem. With two major funding rounds, acquisitions and even a controversy thrown in, FY 2017-18 has been a busy year for Swiggy.

Founders of Swiggy. (L-R - Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini and Sriharsha Majety)

Canada-based La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a leading institutional investor, announced an investment of $20 million in the first growth fund of Bengaluru-based investment fund Fundamentum under ‘Fundamentum Partnership - Fund I.’ Founded by Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Helion Venture Partners Founder Sanjeev Aggarwal last year, Fundamentum is a scale-up platform for midstage technology companies in India.

Mumbai-based omnichannel platform for fashion and lifestyle Fynd has raised funding from Google. Closing the Series C round, Kae Capital, IIFL, Singularity Ventures, GrowX, Tracxn Labs, Venture Catalyst, Patni family office, Hong Kong-based Axis Capital, among other angel investors, participated in the funding round.

Fynd founders: L to R: Sreeraman MG, Harsh Shah, and Farooq Adam.

Hyperlocal delivery company Delyver’s net worth fell to (-)Rs 6.76 crore despite posting a 36 percent increase in revenue to Rs 47.7 lakh in FY17, recent filings with Registrar of Companies show. The BigBasket subsidiary's revenue in FY17 was less than half that in FY15, when had been acquired. Delyver posted a revenue of Rs 47.8 lakh in FY17, its revenue in FY16 and FY15 was Rs 35.17 lakh and Rs 1.16 crore, respectively.

Carmel Organics, a supplier of medicinal herbs, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Ankur Capital. This is the first round of funding raised by Carmel. Founded in 2012 by Shailendra Dhakad and Rajesh Sagitla, Carmel Organics was started with the aim of helping small farmers in India increase their income through production of organic herbs and spices.

The race for the world’s first trillion-dollar corporation has begun. It is most likely that one out of the top three consumer tech giants — Apple, Amazon, Alphabet — will breach the $1 trillion mark first, either this year or early next. Analysts at global investment giant Morgan Stanley have released a new forecast stating Microsoft is on the verge of crossing a trillion-dollar valuation within a year.

FINO Payments Bank has rolled out an Android-based point-of-sale device to ramp up its door-to-door banking services. More than 10,000 locations across India will be equipped with this multi-utility device that bundles a tablet, a fingerprint scanner, a card reader, a camera, and a printer. FINO intends to reach 50 million customers in the next five years, and strengthening its last-mile delivery network with an Android-based mPOS is a step in that direction.

Parties, though fun, are anything but for those planning them, which is why many resort to seeking help. This is how Kunal Makhija and Parth Chandok started Sloshout in 2015. Sloshout is a web-based platform that lets users find venues for their parties and events and helps book packages for their parties or events. Users can either put filters on the Sloshout website to get desired results for a venue, or fill in a form online or tell them over a call.