[Funding roundup] Plum, BatX Energies, Navanc, Toqn raise capital

Skincare brand Plum raises funds from actor Rashmika Mandanna

Vegan skincare brand Plum has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from actor Rashmika Mandanna, who will also be the brand ambassador for the startup.

Rashmika’s investment follows a $35 million funding round led by A91 Partners in March 2022. To date, Plum has raised over $50 million from consumer-focused institutional investors. Since its first funding round in late 2018, Plum claims to have grown 15x.

At a current ARR of Rs 300 crore on a net revenue basis, Plum’s goal is to double that number over the next 12 months. The brand is planning to expand its online presence and offline footprint across India and further scale its production, launch new products and expand its leadership team.

BatX Energies raises $1.6 million in seed round

Lithium-Ion Battery recycling startup Batx Energies has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by JITO Angel Network. 

The investment will expand the startup’s footprints in the Indian and International markets. With a key focus on investment towards advanced R&D for producing battery-grade materials, scaling up their capacity, and setting up micro facilities (spokes) across the country, the company aims to source and process locally.

BatX Energies has developed a proprietary Zero Waste–Zero Emission technology to extract critical Rare Earth metals, namely Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, and Manganese from scrap Lithium-Ion batteries. These critical materials are the key drivers of global electric mobility. 

“With this investment, we plan to fill the demand and supply gap of Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, and Manganese in the EV industry reducing carbon emissions, for which we are constantly enhancing our technology and processes to treat all kind of Lithium batteries circulated in the global market,” said Vikrant Singh, Co-founder and CTO, BatX Energies.

Navanc raises $300k in seed round

Navanc Data Sciences has raised $300k in a seed round, which saw participation from Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED and QED Innovation Labs; Chattanathan D, Founder arya.ag; Samit Shetty, Founder of Chaitanya Microfinance and Former CEO of Navi Finserv; Subramanya SV, Founder of Fisdom; and Vinay Bhat led group of techie angels.

The funds raised in this round will help Navanc to ramp up the product to go to market and hire engineers. Navanc has previously been part of accelerator programs such as ShelterTech accelerator at Habitat for Humanity and Brigade Real Estate Accelerator Program (Brigade REAP).

Navanc provides complete information of the asset or property under consideration and aims to provide real time information on property’s credit worthiness. The product has been built with layers of data pooling from various sources like Geospatial insights, legal track check and crime reporting on properties. It has tied up with many start ups to get valid data like Skyserve.ai, CrimeCheck.ai, and others.

Toqn raises $225k in an initial funding round

Modular and sustainable jewellery brand Toqn has raised $225k from marquee investors. Toqn was founded by Divya Jain to make low cost jewellery for women.

“We aim to utilise these funds on our working capital, education and marketing, D2C ecommerce channels as well as design and product development for newer innovations. Our growth plan for the next 3 years is pipelined and these funds will allow us to build and scale the brand simultaneously. These include - experience stores across the country, airport kiosks and global expansion,” said Dhanush Sadaria, CTO, Toqn.

The focus on operations is to grow the design team and product offerings to keep up with the increasing market demand, and to create a supply chain system, data analysis for every product and its metrics, strike deals with traditional jewellery stores and jewellery houses for better accessibility and reach to a customer, an official statement said.