Startup news and updates: daily roundup (May 27, 2022)

Deeptech startup SatSure acquires Philadelphia-based Geospatial services company

Bengaluru-based deeptech startup SatSure has acquired Philadelphia-based firm, Old City Innovations (formerly Geospoc LLC, USA), in a cash and stock deal, marking its entry into the US market.

Founded in 2014 by Archie Menezes and Cara Kolson, Old City Innovations (OCI) provides geospatial services in the domains of mortgage, agriculture, insurance, and drone markets in the US. Some of its key clients are Syngenta, DMI, and Applied Residential. 

Post the acquisition, the key management personnel of OCI will be joining SatSure, which will take over the customers' contracts and leverage OCI’s expertise to expand its geospatial analytics business footprint in the US market.

“The US is undoubtedly the largest market for solutions with Earth Observation (EO) data at its core, and hence having our presence there is the next step in our plans to become a global force in the space industry as a full-stack EO company with a keen focus on customer’s decision intelligence,” said Prateep Basu, Founder and CEO, SatSure.

In February 2022, SatSure had raised $5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Baring Private Equity India and ADB Ventures, Asian Development Bank's venture arm. It had previously acquired Indore-based farm management SaaS tool CropTrails.

Founded in 2017 by the IIST and ISRO alumni Prateep Basu, Rashmit Singh Sukhmani, and Abhishek Raju, SatSure offers three main decision intelligence products, including SatSure Sparta — a platform for providing agriculture and climate-related insights as open innovation freemium model; SatSure SAGE — life cycle risk monitoring and business intelligence platform for agriculture financial services; and SatSure SKIES — a high-resolution satellite imagery-based infrastructure change detection platform.

Indifi Technologies witnesses 35 pc surge in credit demand from restaurants during IPL season

MSME lending platform Indifi Technologies said it witnessed over a 35 percent surge in credit demand from restaurants during the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) as demand for food orders spiked. 

Over 50 percent surge came through relatively smaller restaurants, with a turnover of less than Rs 3 lakh per month. 

“Digital-ready restaurants, being beneficiaries of this IPL induced externality (food demand), have been increasingly turning to digital lenders to supplement their working capital needs and meet the seasonal spike in orders. With the support of the delivery platform partners, we offer these restaurants a one-stop and presence-less access to multiple credit options,” the firm said in a statement. 

On the supply side, the startup is steadily increasing its partnerships, adding both NBFCs and banks, to cater to the entire breadth of the MSME market, it added. It claims to have a turnaround time, from lead to offer creation, of less than four days. The startup had introduced instant loan products in December 2022.

Blume Ventures incubated startup Passion Connect acquires CoEmerge

HR advisory platform Passion Connect acquired learning and development startup CoEmerge. 

Founded in 2015, Passion Connect, incubated by Blume Ventures, offers services across talent branding, acqui-hiring and acquisitions, and research and development. It has teams in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Pune, and has worked with startups backed by Blume, including Unacademy, Slice, HealthifyMe, Dunzo, and Cashify. The acquisition will help the team enter and grow in the learning and development (LnD) field.

CoEmerge is an IIM-A CIIE incubated startup that enables corporate learning and coaching and focuses on workplace upskilling and reskilling across domains and hierarchies. Its clientele includes Sony Pictures Network, Pernod Ricard, Landmark Group, Nasscom, Hero MotoCorp, India Today Group, CarDekho, etc.

Sunanda Banerjee, Founder at CoEmerge, will come on board as the Head of Learning and Development, and help Passion Connect move one step closer to becoming one of the only HR advisory units with a robust LnD vertical, focusing on founder growth, soft skills, EQ development, and leadership training, the company statement said. 

Passion Connect claims to have hired over 750 professionals across the ecosystem, facilitated acquisitions across leading startups, and run talent branding projects across industries like logistics tech, deeptech, insurtech, cleantech, and cloud communications. 

Delhivery granted patent for its proprietary product Addfix

Logistics startup Delhivery on Friday said it has been awarded a US Patent that would help it innovate in address verification and location mapping—‘System and method for validating geographic location accuracy for an address.’

The startup’s proprietary address disambiguation system—Addfix—takes unstructured, incomplete, or error-ridden addresses provided by customers and breaks them down into different geographical elements like country, state, city/town, locality, street, landmark, building, and postal code to give an accurate location for an address.

The patent will help Delhivery ensure faster, precise, more reliable deliveries, reduced-order returns, and cost efficiencies across last-mile operations.

8vdX raises $3M in seed round from Y Combinator

Tech-enabled venture debt marketplace 8vdX has raised over $3 million in a seed round from Y Combinator and other investors.

Founded by Ravi Chachra and Vijay Lavhale, 8vdX is part of Y Combinator's winter batch of 2022. The startup offers venture debt to help fellow founders minimise dilution across sectors and geographies. In the past three months, the platform has offered $2.8 million in debt to 16 startups, including two from India.

According to 8vdX, its platform provides founder-friendly acceleration capital with minimum dilution to startups accepted in the Y Combinator programme and supports them in achieving their Demo Day goals. As a marketplace, it also enables investors to participate in funding each batch and nurturing the growth of potential unicorns. Later, it also plans to offer venture debt to startups beyond Y Combinator.

Ravi Chachra, Co-founder of 8vdX, said, “Over the next 18 months, we will complete the build out of the technology platform, provide acceleration capital to 250 startups, and have an AUM of $75 million. We launched 8vdX with an aim to provide venture debt to startups across all sectors and geographies.”

Business accounting firm Vyapar acquires SaaS startup NeoDove

Bengaluru-headquartered business accounting firm Vyapar acquired SaaS startup NeoDove for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, the two companies look to step up their efforts to cater to the small-medium enterprises (SME) sector.

Founded in 2016 by Sumit Agarwal and Shubham Agarwal, Vyapar is a GST billing, inventory, and accounting software provider for small and medium businesses. Recently, the company had raised $30 million in a Series B round led by WestBridge Capital. 

The acquisition of tele-calling CRM (customer relationship management) and sales engagement platform Neodove comes on the back of meeting the growing demand for cutting-edge technologies for SMEs, the startup said in a statement.

“Building on our six years of success, the acquisition of NeoDove is our next big step to broaden the scope of problems that we solve for the MSMEs of India aligning to our larger goal of solving 360 degree problems of MSMEs,” said Sumit Agarwal, CEO, Vyapar. 

“Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of our economy. One of the major problems holding them back is that they lack access to proper technology,” said Ankit Kumar Agrawal, Co-founder, NeoDove.