Letstrack, CoutLoot raise funding; Power2SME gets $6.2 M debt funding from InnoVen

Payments behemoth PayPal said it had digitised the FIRC application process. FIRC is a document that acts as a testimonial for all inward remittances entering India. Most of the statutory authorities accept this document as proof that an individual or a business, such as a limited company, partnership firm, sole proprietorship firm and others, has received a payment in foreign currency from outside the country.

UK-based IoT startup Letstrack has raised $1.7 million seed funding from US-based investor James Arthur. Post this investment, James will join as the COO of Letstrack and will focus on international expansion. Letstrack, which started operations in India in August 2016, is aiming to expand in over 50 countries by 2020. Launched in Stratford UK by Vikram Kumar in 2015, Letstrack was started to make society “safer, happier and more productive”. The company recently launched its app and devices in India for both B2B and B2C consumption.

C2C fashion re-commerce platform CoutLoot recently received an investment of $1 million as a part of its ongoing pre-Series A funding round. Jadevalue Fintech, the investment arm of Chinese unicorn CashBUS, led the investment round, which also saw the participation of existing investors ArthaIndia Ventures and Venture Catalysts. From a selling-only platform operating in Mumbai, CoutLoot has extended its operations across 14 cities and claims to have achieved more than 5,00,000+  app downloads.

Power2SME, the B2B online marketplace for Small and Medium Enterprises, has raised $6.2 million in debt funding. This is the third time that Power2SME has taken debt funding from InnoVen; the online marketplace had earlier taken a loan two years back. In September last year, the company had raised funding of $10 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. The five-year-old startup raised around $35 million in four earlier rounds from Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, Inventus Capital, as well as Nandan Nilekani, who is also their strategic advisor.

As ecommerce was picking up in 2014-15, there came a few glitches - last mile delivery was a challenge, especially in rural markets. To address this very gap, L.R. Sridhar decided to set up Connect India and connect every single village in the country by 2020. He partnered with local retail entrepreneurs in different parts of the country to work as common service centres or last mile delivery partners.

While volunteering 2015 Chennai floods, it struck Anil Reddy that there was a mismatch between what victims required and what they received from donors. There was no dearth of donors, who’d generously given food, water and clothing. But the victims were in desperate need of things like tarpaulins, mosquito repellents, blankets, bleaching powder, and medicines. The “specific idea” of Donatekart was born right there, says Anil who, along with his batchmate Sandeep Sharma, co-founded the startup in late-2016.

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