[Weekly funding roundup] Two new unicorns emerge in the last week of 2020

The year 2020 is witnessing perhaps one of the best endings for the Indian startup ecosystem as two new unicorns emerged in the last week of December.

The Indian startup ecosystem has created 11 unicorns during 2020, which was perhaps not expected given the deep impact that COVID-19 has had on the overall funding momentum. Despite this, the last week of December saw Glance and DailyHunt entering the unicorn club.

In fact, late on the weekend in the third week of December, Zomato announced it is raising funding of $660 million.

This should certainly come as a booster shot for the Indian startups which right through the year saw a majority of the funding going to early-stage companies.

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In the last week of December, the total funding raised by Indian startups stood at $262 million compared to $134 million in the previous week. As has been the trend during the course of the year, majority of the 17 deals during the week was into early-stage startups.

It remains to be seen, what is in store for the Indian startup ecosystem in 2021. Hopefully, things will turn positive as a handful of venture capital firms have already raised fresh round of capital and this could turn into effective dry powder for the new year.

Key deals

Glance, a subsidiary of InMobi, raised $145 million in funding from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital at a valuation of $1 billion.

VerSe Innovation, the parent company of Dailyhunt raised more than $100 million led by AlphaWave, Google, and Microsoft. Existing investors Sofina Group and Lupa Systems also participated in this round. It also turned into unicorn.

Other transactions

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX raised $13.9 million in Series B funding round. The investors in this round were Block.one, Jump Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Mehta Ventures, and Alex Pack.

TaxBuddy.com, a Mumbai-based fintech startup raised $1 million in early-stage funding from UAE-based fund Zenith Global.

OurEye.ai, a startup offering end to end automated virtual auditing, has raised $120k from a clutch of angel investors, including 100X.VC and Amara Ventures. 

Axilor Ventures invested in eight startups as part of its new pre-seed funding programme. The startups are Emitrr, eShipz, Peer Robotics, Helicrofter, BizzTM, Clergo, and SuperBeings.

Pine Labs raised an undisclosed fresh round of funding from Lone Pine Capital at a valuation of more than $2 billion.

Healthcare startup Medfin raised an undisclosed Series A funding round led by HealthXCapital and Blume Ventures. Dream Incubator and Axilor also participated.

EWar Games raised a pre-Series A funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV), JITO Angel Network, Hyderabad Angels, and Pearl Agarwal.

India connect

Skuad, a Singapore headquartered HR tech startup raised $4 million in a seed round from BEENEXT and Anthemis Group, alongside Alto Partners Multi-Family Office and Rohan Monga.