[Weekly Funding Roundup] Indian startups corner $21M from early and growth-stage deals

Indian startups raised about $21 million in funding, across seven equity deals in the first week of January, marking a slow start for the startup ecosystem. This is a 73 percent drop from last week when Indian startups had raised $80.4 million in equity funding. 

Further, Indian startups did not raise any funding through debt deals.

The first week of January saw startups raising funds in early and growth-stage deals. However, no late-stage deals were signed by any startup during this period.

While early-stage startups cornered close to $6.28 million across six deals, there was only one growth-stage deal which was raised by Gurugram-based GoMechanic. 

This week did not include any exits or acquisitions in the Indian startup ecosystem.

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Deal of the week 

Gurugram-based automotive service startup GoMechanic raised Rs 105 crore (or $14.7 million) in Series B funding round led by existing investor Sequoia Capital. New investor Chiratae Ventures, along with Orios Venture Partners also participated in the round.

GoMechanic will use these funds to expand to 30 cities by 2020, and further scale up its operations.

Early and growth-stage deals

Fashor, a Chennai-based online women’s apparel brand raised $1 million in Pre-Series A funding led by Sprout Venture Partners, IP Ventures, and Venture Catalysts. The round also saw participation from a few HNIs. 

Delhi-based WealthBucket, an online platform for mutual fund investments, raised $3 million (Rs 18 crore) from NorthStar, angel investor Vinod Khatumal, and other HNIs. 

Zerodha’s fintech incubator, Rainmatter invested Rs 2 crore of seed funding in online tax planning and filing platform, Quicko. 

New Delhi-based university admissions and career guidance platform, Leverage Edtech Private Limited, which operates education platforms – Leverage Edu and Univalley – raised over $1.5 million led by existing investors DSG Consumer Partners and Blume Ventures. Saama Capital Founder Ash Lilani and PayU CEO Amrish Rau also participated.

Hyderabad-based interior design startup Super Surfaces announced its Series A round funding of $500,000 from NRI investor Vishnu Reddy.

Pune-based agritech startup Shivrai Technologies, which runs and owns enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform FarmERP, raised Series A funding of an undisclosed amount from Singapore-based strategic investor, Technogen.

(Edited by Suman Singh)

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