Startup news and updates: Daily roundup (October 6, 2021)
YourStory presents this daily roundup of the latest startup news and updates from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Wednesday, October 6, 2021.
CoinSwitch Kuber turns unicorn; raises $260M from a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and existing investors (Funding)
Indian crypto exchange has announced its $260 million Series C round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, and existing investors Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital India, and Tiger Global.
With a valuation of $1.9 billion, CoinSwitch Kuber becomes the second Indian crypto startup to enter the unicorn club, after CoinDCX became the first in August 2021. The new round brings CoinSwitch's total funding to over $300 million.
BNPL is an urban consumer product, needs to be universal: Ashneer Grover on launch of BharatPe’s postpe
When Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani founded in 2018, the startup definitely wasn’t the first payments player in the market. Leading fintech players such as PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay were already operating across India.
But BharatPe didn’t let that be a stumbling block in its path. The fintech now does close to five million transactions every day, with an annualised process value of $12 million.
Equity management platform Qapita raises $15M in Series A led by East Ventures and Vulcan Capital (Funding)
Qapita, provider of equity management SaaS solutions, has announced it has raised $15 million in Series A round co-led by East Ventures (Growth Fund) and Vulcan Capital, with participation from NYCA and other existing investors, including MassMutual Ventures and Endiya Partners.
Several existing angel investors across India, Singapore, and Indonesia, including Alto Partners, Partners of the Northstar Group, K3 Ventures, Mission Holdings, Anjali Bansal (Founder of Avaana Capital) and Sujeet Kumar (Co-founder of Udaan) invested in this round.
Swiggy announces committed two-year ESOP liquidity programme for employees
Bengaluru-based foodtech startup on Wednesday said its board has decided to institute a "one-of-its-kind programme" to enable consistent wealth creation for its employees through two distinct liquidity events in the next two years.
The development comes after Swiggy raised $1.25 billion from Softbank Vision Fund and existing investor Prosus, at a valuation of $5.5 billion, in July earlier this year.
Sunstone Eduversity raises $28M in Series B from WestBridge Capital, others (Funding)
, owned by Sunstone Education Tech, on Wednesday said it has raised $28 million (about Rs 208.8 crore) in funding, led by WestBridge Capital.
The Series B round also saw participation from existing investors Saama Capital and Alteria Capital as well as Work10m -- a work-focused fund by Pankaj Bansal, Group-CEO PeopleStrong, a statement said.
Employee benefits and insurtech platform Pazcare raises $3.5M in seed round (Funding)
Bengaluru-based employee benefits and insurtech platform on Wednesday announced that it has raised $3.5 million (Rs 25 crore) as part of its seed round, led by BEENEXT, along with 3one4 Capital, and other investors.
Attentive founding team
Geospatial SaaS startup Attentive raises $2M in pre-Series A led by Info Edge Ventures (Funding)
Attentive, an early-stage Geospatial B2B SaaS startup, recently raised a pre-Series A round led by Info Edge Ventures. Redstart Labs, Pavitar Singh (CTO, ), Abhishek Khurana (SVP Product Engineering, Sprinklr), and five IIT Delhi alumni also participated in the round.
The primary and secondary transactions saw investors investing over $2 million in the startup.
