[Weekly funding roundup] Unicorns give boost to venture investments; Razorpay enters $1B club

The third week of October saw two Indian startups bag venture funding, which gave the much-needed momentum to the funding activity of this week.

The total venture funding for the third week of October stood at $172 million, up by 300 percent, as compared to $43 million in the second week of the month. However, of the $172 million raised during the week, $152 million funding came from just two companies – Razorpay and Zomato.

In fact, during the week, fintech startup Razorpay — which raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion — entered the unicorn club.

The total number of deals during the week stood at 13 with early-stage dominating at eight transactions, followed by three in late-stage and two in growth-stage. Venture debt funding also came back into contention after being absent for quite some time.

Key deals

Bengaluru-based fintech startup Razorpay entered the unicorn club amidst the coronavirus pandemic with its Series D round of funding of $100 million. The round was co-led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors Y Combinator, Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global, and Ribbit Capital also participated in the round. With this funding, Razorpay hopes to further grow its product lines - the neobanking platform Razorpay, and its lending arm, Razorpay Capital.

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Gurugram-based foodtech unicorn Zomato received $52 million in the third tranche of the ongoing Series J round from US-based Kora Investments. In September, it had raised $100 million from Internet Fund VI Pte Holdings, Tiger Global's Singapore investment arm.

Other deals

3D and Augmented Reality (AR) platform Avataar.me raised Series A funding of $7 million from Sequoia Capital India. The new funds will be deployed towards creating cutting-edge R&D product initiatives. It is also looking at strategic growth acceleration for brands across digital and digitally influenced commerce industries globally. 

Pepper Content, the Mumbai-based content marketplace, raised $4.2 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed India and leading angels across India and Silicon Valley. With this fundraise, the startup aims to enter into the newer content category like video and audio and expand into Southeast Asia.

Robotics startup Miko, founded by IIT Bombay graduates Sneh R Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar, and Chintan Raikar raised Rs 23 crore in pre-series B funding led by Stride Ventures. Existing investors YourNest Venture Capital; Chiratae Ventures; Keshav Murugesh, Former Chairman of NASSCOM, and a group of angels participated in the funding round.

Fleetx.io, a Gurugram-based intelligent operating system to optimise fleet and logistics operations, raised $3.1 million in Pre-Series B funding from existing investors, including Singapore-based Beenext and India Quotient. Founded in 2017 by Vineet Sharma, Abhay Jeet Gupta, Udbhav Rai, Parveen Kataria, and Vishal Misra, Fleetx offers a suite of software-based products to help mid to large fleets to monitor and optimise their day-to-day logistics operations.

Bengaluru-based online fitness startup TREAD raised $1.1 million in its Pre-Seed round from a clutch of angel investors and VC firms, including Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh; Udaan Co-founder Sujeet Kumar; CRED Founder Kunal Shah; Citruspay Founder Amrish Rau, etc. The startup will be using the funds to fast-track its product development and accelerate the growth of its business.

TeaMonk, a Bengaluru-based premium tea brand, raised Rs 6.5 crore in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures with participation from Sarcha Ventures and Lead Angels, and several HNIs.

Bengaluru-based foodtech startup Anveshan raised Rs 1.12 crore in the Pre-Seed funding round led by Titan Capital to focus on expanding its supply chain and operations across India. The startup creates food micro-entrepreneurs in villages across India, who make these food products using traditional practices while ensuring quality control through traceability.

Tango Eye, a Chennai-based AI video analytics startup that converts CCTV data into actionable insights, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Delhi-based eyewear retailer Lenskart. Silicon Valley-based seed fund RiSo capital and angel investor Gaurav Gulati, Co-founder, Innov8, also participated in the round. Currently implemented at about 1,000 outlets, the startup will use the funding to scale to 10,000 outlets, in addition to expanding its product features.

Walmart and the Flipkart Group have made a fresh round of undisclosed investment into agritech startup Ninjacart in continuation of its earlier funding done in December 2019. The second round of funding demonstrated Walmart and Flipkart Group's continued commitment to invest in India’s agriculture and food supply chain, and strong confidence in Ninjacart.

Bengaluru-based fruits and vegetables brand Gourmet Garden, whose produce is cultivated through its patented naturopohic farming approach, has raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A funding from Incubate Fund India and Whiteboard Capital.