[Funding roundup] Open joins unicorn club; BarRaiser, Twixor, Frendy and others raise capital

Fintech startup Open becomes India's 100th unicorn, raises $50M in Series D led by IIFL

SME-focused neobanking platform Open on Monday announced $50 million in its Series D round from IIFL, along with existing investors Temasek Holdings, Tiger Global Management, and 3one4 Capital.

To date, the Bengaluru-based startup has raised over $140 million in funding, backed by global investors — including Temasek, Google, Visa, Tiger Global, Beenext, Recruit Strategic Partners, 3one4 Capital, Speedinvest, Tanglin Venture Partner Advisors, Angellist, and Unicorn India Ventures, to name a few.

Within six months from raising its Series C round of Rs 735 crore ($100 million) led by Temasek, the startup bagged its Series D round — at a valuation of $1 billion — making it India's 100th unicorn.

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[Funding alert] Fintech startup Open becomes India's 100th unicorn, raises $50M in Series D led by IIFL

Smart interviewing platform BarRaiser raises $4.2M in seed round

BarRaiser, an AI-powered smart interviewing platform, has raised $4.2 million in seed financing. The seed funding round was led by 021 Capital and Global Founders Capital, with participation from other angel investors.

The capital will be used to expand the company’s geographic presence and enable BarRaiser to scale its engineering and data science teams to meet the growing demand for its SaaS and Interview community product (BarRaiser+).

BarRaiser’s mission is to help companies hire exceptional talent faster, while conducting structured and fair interviews.” says Avinash Saxena, BarRaiser CEO and former founder of Roposo, a social video app. “We are working with 250+ leading tech companies and are seeing continuously growing demand across the globe. This financing round will help us expand our reach and make additional investments in technology that helps close the gap between talent and opportunity.” 

Mira Kapoor invests in Wellbeing Nutrition

Wellbeing Nutrition, a one-stop shop for all things organic and whole foods multivitamin nutrition, has announced Mira Kapoor as an investor in the brand.

Started in 2019 by Avnish Chhabria, Wellbeing Nutrition is an innovative research-driven leader in plant-based wholefood nutrition, headquartered in Mumbai.  Backed by research in the USA carried out by a team of doctors, scientists and nutritionists, the brand has created multiple technology innovations in nutrition like Melts Oral Thin Strips, Multi-Layered Effervescent tablets and their latest Launch Slow 2-1 (Omega + Multivitamins) embodying an 8-hour delayed-release capsule technology.

The company works with over 150+ organic farms and clinically approved suppliers globally to source the cleanest plant-based ingredients.

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The brand currently sells across 2000+ stores in India and over 5000+ stores across the world in USA / UK / UAE and Germany.

Recently the brand also partnered with Disney to launch an all organic and natural line of multivitamins and omega for kids that was developed by paediatricians and doctors in the US.

Twixor raises $2.4M from Season Two Ventures, Axilor Ventures and The Chennai Angels in Series A round

Twixor, a low-code no-code (LCNC) conversational AI and process automation platform has announced raising $2.4 million in Series A round from Season Two Ventures (an Indo-US corridor VC firm), Axilor Ventures and The Chennai Angels. The platform was entirely developed at the IIT Madras campus and has a significant presence in India, with offices in Chennai and other parts.

A Singapore-headquartered company with an R&D centre in IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai, Twixor helps businesses build hyper-personalised engagement solutions. It simplifies the way organisations integrate consumer interactions/engagements in their business processes to give enterprise customers better AI-driven cognitive experiences. With six global patents in its kitty, the CX automation platform powers accelerated conversations by driving seamless, low-friction, multi-lingual, and app-less interactions and transactions. The platform is developed by the IIT Madras campus and has a significant presence in Chennai and other parts of India. The company is looking to aggressively scale up its reach and operations. The new funds will be utilised to further their innovation journey, strengthen strategic partnerships, global expansion, and hire talent. 

According to the startup, it will shortly launch its global SaaS platform: ‘Twixor AIM’, a no-code omni-channel messaging engine, and ‘Twixor Compute’, a low-code process automation engine.

Frendy closes its Series A round, at Rs 23 Cr ($3M)

Frendy, a community group buying platform increased the size of its Series A fundraise, closing at Rs 23 crores ($3 million). The company had raised a smaller tranche from investors in December 2021. Frendy’s new round has seen the renewed participation of the Desai Family office and new investors via Let’s Venture Angel Fund led by MARV Capital from New York, Centera Fund UK and Angel investors such as Shalabh Mehrish of Vinson Cap Advisors, Jon Piebenga, Partner, Social Venture Partners Charleston, Brian Giarocco, Ground Swell Capital, Raza Hasnani MD, Africa50 Fund, Kunal Shah – MD, Nomura, Arthur Farme - CEO Grupo H Brazil, Vivek Baliga - MD, BMO & Chetan Vig MD, Teachers Pension Fund, Vikas Lunia, Lunia Capital.

Founded by Sameer Gandotra a Wharton MBA and Gowrav Vishwakarma a Tech Entrepreneur, the startup has a team of 100 professionals including its in house technology team. The startup has seen amazing traction and has expanded in stealth mode with operations in 25+ Tier 2-6 towns and over 4,500+ products. The company has recently expanded its reach by foraying into Rajasthan with Madhya Pradesh next on the cards.

The Company has achieved a revenue of Rs 43 Crores in its very 1st year of operations with break-even unit economics.

Cooee raises £300K in pre-Seed round to democratise AI for digital user engagement

Cooee, the AI platform that helps mobile apps boost customer retention with personalised engagement, has received £300,000 in pre-seed funding from investors including Jenson Funding Partners, the venture capital firm, as well as several angel investors from the United States, India and UK.

Cooee delivers one-to-one personalised in-app and push notifications that help businesses increase revenue and reduce churn. It uses AR, computer vision and machine learning to create unique engagements for every customer in real-time rather than the traditional approach of bucketing different users infinite segments and delivering campaigns on a fixed schedule.

It is a low-code platform built with ease of use in mind, so companies can embed the service within their app in minutes using a simple integration. With every engagement delivered, Cooee continuously learns and improves automatically.

Truscholar raises funds from SucSEED Indovation

Asset Chain Techlligence Pvt. Ltd. (known as TruScholar), has secured an undisclosed Capital led by Hyderabad headquartered SucSEED Indovation Fund, a deeptech oriented early-stage fund. Other Angel Investors from Padup Ventures, Vinners Group and TiE Angel community have joined the investment round as well.

With the motto of “Becoming Intel Inside of Education World by powering all Learning credentials over blockchain and helping them to retain their skills passport; Truscholar aims to become revolutionary solution to help Universities/ Institutes/ Edtech startups to issue a verifiable and immutable copy of digital certificate and Badges to their Learners to cherish it for their lifetime.

Truscholar have boarded 140+ top educational institutions, universities, event organizers, ed-tech/e-learning and corporates in the country, who are using them consistently for issuance and verification of certificates and badges, since Aug 2021. As a result, they have issued over 25,000 digital certificates and successfully verified and authenticated over 11,000 certificates/credentials.