Corporates invest in startups; D-NOME, OnArrival, Disprz raise capital

Established corporates are deepening their relationship with new-age startups by investing in them to participate in their innovation agenda.

Corporates such as Jindal Power, Amara Raja Batteries, and PETRONAS announced their investments into Indian startups like FuelBuddy and Log9 Materials on Monday to take the total funding to over $60 million.

Other developments during the day included Pine Labs acquiring a Bengaluru-based startup.

Meanwhile, the troubled GoMechanic is looking at a merger with Spinny, while sellers on Meesho's platform are protesting against the new return policy of the social commerce unicorn.

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D-NOME raises $1.5M in seed round

D-NOME, a synthetic biology startup, raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Ankur Capital and Campus Fund. Other investors in this round include 8X Ventures, 3iPartners/Impact Fund, and Seeders.

Founded in July 2021 by Divya Sriram and Sujoy Deb, D-NOME aims to build rapid, accurate, and point-of-care diagnostics for human infectious diseases and other applications using genomics and synthetic biology.

It aims to come out with a device-less PCR technology to enable precision and personalised medicine at scale.

“We believe in the One Health initiative, and through D-NOME, we are creating tools that enable us to achieve that. Our mission is to fill the gap in testing and enable personalised medicine at scale, something that has not been successful due to a lack of scalable and accurate diagnostic tools,” D-NOME co-founder Divya Sriram said.

At present, there are three main methods of testing—a routine, time-consuming culture test that requires infrastructure, rapid antigen/ antibody tests, which are quicker, but lack accuracy; and PCR/real-time PCR (RT-PCR) tests, which is the gold standard for accuracy, but is expensive and needs skilled labour.

The proprietary diagnostic technology platform of D-NOME aims to remove the need for multiple devices, protocols, and skilled human resources while delivering the results.

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OnArrival raises $175,000 from Antler India

Travel tech startup OnArrival has raised $175,000 in a pre-seed funding round from Antler India to provide solutions for the travel ancillary industry.

OnArrival is building a platform to enable travel sellers to focus on their core business, while other allied services, including insurance, visa, airport lounges, ground transport, carbon credits, etc., will be automated through its solution.

Founded by Ankit Sawant and Pawan Shetty, OnArrival has started to onboard OTAs and B2B aggregators as clients, focusing initially on integrated insurance and visa services.

Falca raises Pre-Series A round led by Mumbai Angels

Agritech startup Falca raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A round led by Mumbai Angels and other investors, which it will use for technology development, hiring, and market expansion.

Founded in 2018, Falca’s technology platform provides end-to-end services for farmers like quality inputs, marketing produce, renting machinery, and advisory. The startup has boarded more than 1.5 lakh farmers, over 60 agriculture-related manufacturers, and 100-plus corporate buyers enabling transactions worth Rs 250 crore.

Falca Founder Santosh Danegoudar said, “Our goal is to be the first choice for a farmer for any agricultural services they are looking for.”

Disprz raises bridge round of funding

Disprz, an employee skilling platform, raised an undisclosed amount in a bridge funding round led by Silverneedle Venture and its existing investors. The bridge round comes in between the Series B and C rounds, the startup noted.

In 2021, Disprz raised $13 million in a Series B round from Dallas Venture Capital, Mars Growth Capital, and others. The startup aims to utilise this capital for expansion into the US and the UK.

Founded in 2015 by Subramanian Viswanathan and Kuljit Chadha, Disprz leverages AI, cloud, and mobile technologies to map the skilling requirements of enterprises. The startup says it has crossed two million users globally.

“We are fast growing to become the leading provider of learning, skilling, and enablement solutions for enterprises in emerging Asia, having reached a significant scale in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East,” said Disprz Co-founder Subramanian Viswanathan.