[Funding roundup] Marj Technologies, BeepKart, others raise early-stage funding

Former Anand Rathi IB Head and DMCC lead Series A round of Onest Limited

Onest Limited, a personal care, home care, and over-the-counter (OTC) goods company, secured Rs 100 million in a Series A funding round at a pre-money valuation of Rs 1,000 million.

Onest sells a variety of goods under brands called Florona, Hunk, Brio, and Freshia and has a presence in around 60 countries. "With a profusion of beauty and skincare alternatives on the market, the difficulty that D2C (direct-to-consumer) firms confront today is competitive production with R&D to continuously improve product offerings," said Pawan Kumar Gupta.

He added, "We want to use the cash raised to expand our local reach to additional markets and worldwide customers, as well as to significantly scale our operations. With the rise and spread of direct-to-consumer beauty and personal care firms, research and competitive manufacturing in the field are becoming increasingly important."

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Marj Technologies raise Rs 2.55 Cr led by JITO Angel Network

Marj Technologies has raised Rs 2.55 crore in a seed round led by JITO Angel Network, along with Agility Ventures, and an individual investor Mr Ashwin. 

"JITO Angel Network were the first ones to believe in our vision and back it up. Given the extensive industrial background of the investors, they were able to understand the market for our products and their synergy perfectly. The investors not only invested in the company but also brought in a significant number of quality institutional prospects for us to grow our business further," said Co-founder Avi Dahiya. 

The startup plans to use the funds for manufacturing intelligence platform and ecosystem, driving the decision-making in manufacturing plants based on gathered data using IIoT and providing AI-based macro and micro-level insights on top of it.

Sunil Kumar Singhvi, Vice Chairman, JITO Angel Network, said, "As Industry 4.0 Technology continues to advance, existing data can be harnessed to develop machine-learning solutions that deliver real value, optimise decision-making, increase flexibility, and attract top talent. We at JITO Angel Network believe that Marj Technology, with its next-generation tools and IP, will help a lot of manufacturers to automate their end-to-end processes."

BeepKart raises Rs. 7.5 Cr from InnoVen Capital

Asia-focused venture debt firm InnoVen Capital recently invested Rs 7.5 crore in BeepKart, a full-stack online retailer of used bikes. The investment underlines the VC's commitment to back disruptive startups.

Hemir Doshi, Co-founder, BeepKart, said, “We are delighted to partner with InnoVen Capital and look forward to a long partnership. Our focus is to deliver a brilliant user experience, and for a BeepKart bike to become the brand of choice for millions seeking value-for-money personal mobility. With our recent equity funding and venture debt, we are well-positioned to execute towards an aggressive growth path.”

Hundreds of customers are already vouching for BeepKart’s s used two-wheelers that are refurbished as good as new. BeepKart is taking a digital-first approach to solving for the lack of trust and broken customer experience that exists in the multi-billion dollar used two-wheeler market.

Tarana Lalwani, Founding Partner, InnoVen Capital, said, “While India is the largest two-wheeler market in the world, the used two-wheeler market remains fragmented and opaque. A full-stack business model delivers high value in vehicle ecommerce. Two-wheelers are a great use case for an online product journey. We look forward to partnering with BeepKart as they continue to build.”

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Insurtech startup HealthySure raises $1.2M led by Inflection Point Ventures

Insurtech startup HealthySure raised $1.2 million (approx Rs 9 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from We Founder Circle, Dexter Angels, Campus Fund, HEM Angels, and other private investors.

The startup will use the funds to fuel its mission of offering innovative and affordable group health insurance led solutions to the Indian workforce and their families.

Founded in April 2021 by IIM-Bangalore alumnus Anuj Parekh and ISB alumnus Sanil Basutkar, HealthySure is transforming the insurtech industry with tech-enabled employee healthcare protection and management solutions for Indian organisations.

It is working with over 70 organisations, covering more than 20,000 people under its healthcare solutions. The startup helps in simplifying health insurance for employed Indians, making it affordable and accessible.

Mitesh Shah, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures, said, “In this day and age, securing health insurance for every family is imperative as it helps to bear the huge cost of future health concerns, which, at times, can be extremely expensive and unaffordable. However, the penetration of voluntary health insurance in India is less than 10 percent for various reasons like difficulty in understanding the policy, affordability, trust factor, accessibility, and so on." 

He added, "To address this problem, HealthySure has created a seamless platform to reach out to larger masses, targeting SMEs, whose majority workforce doesn't have an insurance cover. We believe it is a huge market opportunity to be tapped, and HealthySure is rightly positioned for it.”