Rigi raises Series A round; Studio Sirah, GENLEAP, others raise early-stage funding
YourStory presents daily funding roundups from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Wednesday, January 25, 2023.
On Wednesday, Rigi—a community monetisation and management platform for content creators and influencers, said it raised Rs 100 crore (about $12.25 million) in an extension to its Series A round led by Elevation Capital, with participation from returning investors—Accel, Stellaris, and Sequoia—besides angel investors.
Rigi has raised a total of $25 million across three funding rounds. It last raised a Series A round worth $10 million in April 2022.
The startup plans to deploy the fresh capital to expand into new categories of content and geographies. At present, it focuses on gaming, skill training, health, and fitness, and launched in Indonesia three months ago.
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Studio Sirah raises $2.6M in pre-Series A led by Kalaari Capital, Lumikai
, a next-gen game studio that builds unique Indian-themed games, raised $2.6 million in a pre-Series A round led by Kalaari Capital and its seed investor Lumikai.
The gaming startup plans to utilise the funds to globally launch its flagship gaming title, Kurukshetra: Ascension, by June 2023. Besides, it will deploy the funds to build out its second title.
In September 2021, Studio Sirah raised $830,000 in its seed round led by Lumikai and a pool of angel investors.
Founded by brothers and avid gamers Abhaas Shah and Prateek Shah, the mid-core gaming studio aims to build a new white space in the gaming industry with its Indian-themed IPs, gaining huge popularity across the globe.
GENLEAP concludes pre-Series A round of Rs 27 Cr
, a DNA-based self-discovery and career life cycle management platform, has concluded its pre-Series A funding of Rs 27 crore (about $3.3 million) from Mike Holland (former CEO of Embassy REIT), Sanjay Dutt (CEO and MD, Tata Realty and infrastructure), Neeraj Bansal (Co-Head and COO – India Global with a Big Four Consulting Firm), Karthikeyan Balasubramanian, Deepak Kaul, and Manish Dhawan (Olam Food International).
New investors like Vikaash Khdloya, Sunil Bajaj, Yoguen Oukabay, and Mandeep Mehta (Group CFO with Policy Bazaar) also participated in the round.
This round follows its earlier Rs 60 crore ($7.4 million) seed round raised in 2021.
With the funds, GENLEAP will extend its global footprint, including entry into the US, Middle East, and European markets. It will also launch products, providing DNA-led solutions for personal career growth and development, health and wellness, relationship compatibility, disease susceptibility, and more.
Its labs will provide a global hub for the research and development of genomics and continue and expand its research in growing areas like behavioural genetics and more.
Founded in 2021, New Delhi-based GENLEAP combines genomics with the power of psychology to provide actionable insights and help people live happier, healthier, and more purposeful lives. Over 100 educational institutions are already using GENLEAPs genetic testing and interpretation platform with 500,000 students, including Amity, GD Goenka, and Gurukul schools.
Happiest Minds acquires Sri Mookambika Infosolutions
Digital transformation IT consulting and services company has acquired Madurai-headquartered IT services company Sri Mookambika Infosolutions (SMI) through a combination of upfront and deferred equity consideration totalling Rs 111 crore.
With 400+ offshore-based employees, SMI has an annual run rate in revenue of $9 million. SMI provides product engineering services to its US customers around enterprise applications and integrations, digital data platform services (analytics, data strategy, AI/ML, user experience), mobility services, and DevSecOps. Over the years, SMI has built deep domain expertise around healthcare.
PrivaSapien raises seed round from Omidyar Network
Privacy engineering deep-tech startup PrivaSapien raised $1 million in a seed round from Omidyar Network India. The company will utilise the capital to ramp up research and product development, besides accelerating sales and marketing efforts, the company said in a statement.
Founded in 2020, PrivaSapien helps businesses visualise privacy risks, mitigate them, and derive strategic business insights without violating user privacy. Its flagship product, Privacy X-Ray, offers an automated audit tool for businesses to assess privacy risk in a dataset. Another tool, Event Horizon, offers automated anonymisation of datasets.
The startup works with global technology partners in areas, including cloud consulting and system integration.
Apparel brand D'chica raises revenue financing from Velocity
Apparel and fashion brand raised Rs 1.62 crore in revenue-based financing from Velocity. The startup will use the capital to scale marketing and hiring efforts.
Founded in 2019 by Vani Chugh Kabra and Richa Kapila, D'chica's product range includes innerwear, sportswear, loungewear, and footwear for teens. The brand claims to have generated revenue of Rs 6.6 crore for FY22, with a target of Rs 13 crore for FY23.
The brand retails across ecommerce platforms, including Amazon, Myntra, Ajio, FirstCry, Jabong, Zivame, and others, besides exporting their innerwear range to the US, UK, and Germany. D'chica has an offline presence across Delhi-NCR and UP.
TriVeda Capital to raise Rs 200 Cr for realty projects
Real estate investment platform plans to raise a Rs 200 crore corpus to invest in plotted development projects for its Category II Alternative Investment Fund (AIF). The fund's investment strategy will focus on high-demand residential real estate assets, risk-mitigated execution, and downside-protected deal structures.
Founded by Ravindra Pai and Raj Inamdar, TriVeda Capital will manage funds from Indian and global high-net-worth individuals who want to invest in the real estate sector with reduced exposure to operational hassles.
Edited by Suman Singh