[Weekly funding report] Venture investments into startups continue to remain lacklustre

The venture capital funding into the Indian startup ecosystem continues to remain lacklustre for the second week of May given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the whole country battles the deadly second wave, startups are also pulling in all efforts to minimise suffering. In such a context, it is quite natural that the funding momentum is impacted.

The second week of May witnessed total venture funding worth $9 million, spread across 13 deals. In contrast, the first week of the month saw a total funding amount of $21 million.

It remains to be seen for how long the current subdued environment is likely to continue, as any uptick in investments can begin only when there is confidence that the second wave is starting to subside.

Transactions

SuperOps.ai, a tech startup, raised $3 million in seed funding led by Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners India.

Rulezero, a legal/fintech platform raised Rs 10 crore in seed funding from Rainmatter Capital, Kris Gopalakrishnan, IndusLaw, and Reddy Futures.

Locobuzz Solutions, a SaaS startup, raised Rs 9 crore in a pre-Series A round from Maharashtra State Social Venture Fund.

Deeptech AI startup Myelin Foundry raised $1 million in pre-Series A round led by Beyond Next Ventures. Endiya Partners also participated.

Haqdarshak, a social enterprise startup, closed its pre-Series A round at Rs 6.65 crore from investors such as The Deepak Group, Impact India Investment Partners, Beyond Capital Fund, Shalini Chhabra, and 3i Partners.

Rubix Data Sciences, a tech startup raised Rs 6.2 crore in seed round from Cactus Venture Partners, family offices, and high net worth individuals (HNIs).

Geekster, a startup for tech professionals, raised $200,000 from We Founder Circle and ah! Ventures.

Enthu.ai, a tech startup raised $200,000 from Appitsimple. The funding will be used by this startup for engineering and sales effort.

Celcius, a cold chain marketplace startup raised an undisclosed seed round from a group of investors.

Cron AI, a UK and India-based deeptech startup, raised $4 million in Series A round led by VenturEast and Kitaki Ventures.

M&A

Fuel delivery platform FuelBuddy acquired Bengaluru-based on-demand fuel delivery startup MyPetrolPump, which would provide it access to new geographies and customers.

Third-party logistics (3PL) company Sitics Logistic acquired a majority stake in tech-enabled logistics startup Quifers.