At $44 M and $20 M, Digit Insurance and Awfis raise big bucks, Walmart reiterates its faith in 'Bharat'

Thursday July 26, 2018 , 3 min Read

New Delhi-based co-working space provider Awfis announced it has raised $20 million in Series C funding. Existing investor Sequoia Capital was joined by Innoven Capital and The Three Sisters Institutional office in this round. The startup now has more than $50 million in total funding. A release from the company states the fresh capital will be used to deepen the Awfis network across India. It will also launch new and innovative products/services and improve the technology platform.

That Tier II cities and small towns offer Indian retail the biggest opportunity for retailers is amply clear. Even behemoths like Walmart India are betting on it. After launching its first ever fulfillment centre in Bhiwandi in Mumbai in 2017, the company has opened another near Lucknow. the fulfillment centre aims to serve businesses in a 100 km radius and will mainly target under-served small businesses such as kiranas and resellers, offices and institutions, and hotels, restaurants and caterers.

Walmart has been expanding its investments in India, expanding its cash and carry operations to serve the 55 million SMEs

Bengaluru-based insurtech startup Digit Insurance announced it has raised $44 million in its second round of funding. According to a statement released by the company, Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Holdings has invested the second round of capital ($45 million) in Digit Infoworks, the parent company for Digit Insurance, of which a significant part of the investment ($44 million) was given to Digit Insurance. This investment takes Digit Insurance’s total funding to $94 million.

Prem Watsa, Chief Executive of Fairfax Financial; Kamesh Goyal, Chairman, Digit Insurance

Lightspeed India is launching Extreme Entrepreneurs, an innovative entrepreneurial training series in India. The aim is to connect a select group of Indian startups to the top guns of global technology and entrepreneurship. EE2018 will have business leaders like Jon Steinberg, ex-COO of Buzzfeed; Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms; Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix; and John Thompson, Chairman, Microsoft, sharing what they have learnt from entrepreneurship. Investors Anu Hariharan of Y Combinator and Jeremy Liew and Ravi Mhatre of Lightspeed will be among the mentors.

Canada-based Customer Identity and Access Management startup LoginRadius has raised $17 million in Series A funding. ForgePoint Capital and Microsoft’s venture fund M12 led the round, along with existing investors including Real Ventures, BDC Capital, and Yaletown Venture Partners. The funds raised will be used to accelerate product innovation, customer acquisition, and global expansion. Launched in 2012 by Rakesh Soni and Deepak Gupta, LoginRadius provides the platform to securely manage and transact with billions of customer identities while keeping privacy and compliance regulations in mind.

Loginradius co-founders Rakesh Soni and Deepak Gupta

Security and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be key thrust areas for Google Cloud as it looks to broaden the scope of this technology with more use cases coming onto the platform. In a keynote address at the company’s NEXT conference in San Francisco, Google Cloud Chief Diane Greene said, “Security is built into every layer of our operation. We announced 20 new security advancements in March and will be announcing another 10 new security products and services this week.”

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