[Weekly funding roundup] Startups raise $133M in the last week of March

The last week of March witnessed funding of $133 million into the Indian startup ecosystem. The funding was spread across nine deals but the figure crossing the $100 million was largely due to one large deal.

The funding raised by Indian startups was comparable to the third week of March, when the total amount was $125 million spread across 17 deals.

With the environment overwhelmed by the coronavirus crisis, the funding momentum was expected to drastically slow down.

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Of the total nine deals, seven came under the category of early stage while two were the later category. Debt financing made its mark after a period of two weeks, with just one deal raising $15 million.

Highlight of the week

Mukesh Bansal-founded health and fitness startup Curefit raised around Rs 832 crore ($111 million) in fresh round of funding led by Singapore government-backed investment house Temasek. The investment round also saw the participation of other investors such as GableHorn Investments and Ascent Capital.

The existing investors of Curefit like Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, investment arm of Unilever also participated in the round.

Other deals

Fintech startup MobiKwik has raised Rs 223 crore, a combination of debt and equity, from multiple investors.

CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency trading platform and liquidity aggregator, announced that it raised $3 million in its Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and HDR Group - operator of BitMEX, along with other venture capitalists.

QTalk, a smartphone dialer designed to make phone calls stress-free, has raised $1.6 million seed round from Accel India and Lightspeed Venture Partners, to accelerate product and market development. QTalk is the only public product of Quiph Media Private Limited, that initiated operations in early 2018. Founded by IIT Bombay alumni, Sagar Modi and Advaith Vishwanath, the app’s mission is to identify avenues to improve communication.

Excess2Sell, a B2B platform operated by Checkers India Technology, has raised $1 million in funding. This Mumbai-based startup raised this funding from angel investor Gautham Madhavan.

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Info Edge, the parent company of Naukri.com will invest around Rs 7 crore in medical healthcare records platform MedCords Healthcare Solutions. Following this transaction, the stake of Info Edge into this startup will rise to 16.89 percent from 11.37 percent. MedCords was founded in 2016 by Nikhil Baheti, Saida Dhanavath and Shreyans Mehta. 

Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) has made a seed investment in the Mumbai-based interiors startup Shadez. It claims to be India’s first paint company to deliver painting job in a day’s time with the liberty to choose paint of your choice. As part of investing at this very early stage in the startup’s journey, IPV will provide incubation support to the team with expertise in business strategy, expansion, and risk mitigation. With current operations across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai, Shadez aims to soon expand to other metro cities.

Rupifi Technologies which operates a software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm focused on financial products for small and medium enterprises in India and Southeast Asia, has raised capital as part of its pre-seed funding round. BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover, Cred and Freecharge founder Kunal Shah, Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma were the angel investors in the round.

Bigbasket's acquisition of DailyNinja

Online grocery platform Bigbasket has announced the acquisition of online milk delivery platform DailyNinja. The acquisition will enable Bigbasket to consolidate its position in the subscription delivery space in Bengaluru.

Bigbasket makes about 1.6 lakh deliveries every day, including fresh fruits and vegetables, bread, dairy and eggs, among other daily essentials, will now have access to DailyNinja's network of 2,000 milkman partners. DailyNinja currently caters to around 1.1 lakh customers daily.

(Edited by Kanishk Singh)