OYO raises $100m; CRED reviewed; Razorpay enters lending

Saturday December 08, 2018 , 3 min Read

OYO has raised $100 million from Indonesian ride-hailing giant Grab. The new unicorn had also confirmed it would receive an additional commitment of $200 million. This $103.4 million from Grab is a part of that commitment. OYO will use these funds from this round of financing, approximately $600 million, into strengthening its position in China, which is still in the early stages of growth, while the rest will go into maintaining its leadership position in India and expansion into new markets.

Ritesh Agarwal's OYO just hired a new CTO

Razorpay enters SME lending with new financial products

Payment solutions company Razorpay today announced that it was entering the SME lending space with Razorpay Capital, a lending platform designed to support SMEs with instant and easy access to lenders. A beta version of the platform was launched in September this year, and has already disbursed $30 million in loans and hopes to finish with an exit run rate of $100 million by March, according to Co-founder and CEO Harshil Mathur.

( L-R) - Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur

Kill the bill with Kunal Shah’s CRED

CRED, the newest venture by Kunal Shah, is the place to be for credit-worthy individuals. The platform allows credit card users to pay your credit card bills, get ‘cred coins’ for doing so, and redeem these coins for rewards from some of a wide collection of brands. The CRED app, which is currently in the beta stage, is available only to individuals with a credit score of over 750. For this week’s App Friday, we explored this new platform by Kunal Shah and managed to score quite a few rewards.

Quikr raises venture debt of Rs 55 Cr

Online classifieds marketplace Quikr has raised a debt funding of Rs 55 crore (approximately $7.76 million) led by InnoVen Capital. The platform helps users buy, rent, sell anything across India. The company has raised close to $400 million in equity funding and has made over 13 acquisitions. The funds will be used to scale transaction businesses across Quikr verticals. Founded by Pranay and Jiby Thomas in 2008, Quikr competes with Argentina-based OLX.

Kirthiga Reddy becomes first female venture partner at SoftBank

Former Facebook executive Kirthiga Reddy just became the first female venture partner at SoftBank and will work as part of SoftBank Investment Advisors, the team that manages the massive Vision Fund. She will now be based out of Silicon Valley and will be “working closely with Deep Nishar on frontier technologies. Prior to this, Reddy was with Facebook for eight years, and is also the Chairperson of Stanford Business School Management Board.

This startup promises to care for your ageing parents

Noida-based IVH Senior Care provides home healthcare service and social assistance to the elderly with a care manager attached to each person. To help the elderly both physically and emotionally, Manreet Kahlon and Swadeep Srivastav started IVH Senior Care in 2016. From basic medical needs to home healthcare service and providing social assistance with a care manager attached to each patient, it is catering to a growing number of senior citizens living alone in India.