PregBuddy, Reliance Jio, AffordPlan raise funds; Ola to go the Electric Vehicle way

Bengaluru-based healthcare startup PregBuddy raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round from IAN. The funding round also saw the participation of Rajan Anandan, an IAN Member and MD at Google India; Madhusudhan Kannan, Chief Business Officer of Uber India and Emerging Markets; Jayant Kadambi, Co-Founder and Chairman of YuMe and Puneet Gupt, COO (News Business) of Times Internet Limited.

Reliance Jio has raised close to $500 million (Rs 3,250 crore) in funding from a consortium of Japanese banks. The loan will be utilised to fund Jio’s ongoing capital expenditure, Reliance Industries said. The announcement comes shortly after the Reliance Jio board approved raising around Rs 20,000 crore in debt in tranches. Reliance Industries has already invested close to Rs 2 lakh crore in its telecom unit since the rollout of Jio's services in September 2016.

A year after Ola, in partnership with Mahindra & Mahindra, launched a programme to build an electric mass mobility ecosystem in Nagpur, the firm is aiming to expand this across the country. The Bengaluru-based ride-hailing platform announced Mission: Electric, committing to place over 10,000 e-rickshaws and electric auto-rickshaws on the road in the next 12 months.

Pando, the company that digitises logistics for Fortune 500 companies, has raised $2 million seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. The round also saw participation from Kashyap Deorah - Founder Hypertrack, Girish Mathrubootham - Founder and CEO Freshdesk, Nishant Rao - Sirion Labs and P Balaji -Vodafone.

Delhi-based AffordPlan raised $10 million Series B funding led by Lok Capital along with Omidyar Network, Prime Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital. With the new funds, the platform plans to expand its presence across India and diversify its portfolio of financial services products.

With a deep-pocketed strategic investor in its basket, BigBasket has stepped up investments and is focusing solely on scaling up. Goal one is to reach Rs 300 crore GMV a month in September; goal two is to reach Rs 500 crore GMV a month in March 2019, and goal three to become a $1 billion-GMV company in March 2020. BigBasket has identified a few key initiatives to get there — from vending machines and subscription service to becoming the most preferred partner to farmers. The Alibaba funding, which will help drive this growth, could not have come at a better time.

Online fashion commerce market leader Myntra announced the acquisition of Witworks, a tech startup that manufactures smart wearable devices and related software. According to a press release, Myntra has inducted the team into its Innovation Labs as part of the acquisition. This is aimed at strengthening Myntra’s technology team and augmenting its product development capabilities.

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