Startup news and updates: Daily Roundup (September 29, 2023)

Funding news

Fairdeal raises $2M in funding

Retail intelligence platform, Fairdeal has raised $2 million in a round led by WaterBridge Ventures.

Fairdeal Market is building a data-led retail distribution network to provide a full-stack offline distribution service to direct-to-consumer brands. Co-founded by brothers Prateek and Yash Bansal, it is also helping regional and international brands to launch new products and enter new markets.

They have developed a retail intelligence platform that prioritizes offline distribution. Currently, the startup has a network of over 10,000 retailers. 

SigNoz raises $5.4M in funding

SigNoz, an open-source observability platform, has raised $5.4 million in a round led by SignalFire, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Jiten Vaidya (ex-CEO Platetscale), Tom Preston Werner (co-founder Github), Paul Copplestone (co-founder Supabase).

It previously raised $1.1 million in an undisclosed funding round. Co-founded in September 2020 by Pranay Prateek and Ankit Nayan, the platform can monitor metrics, traces, and logs for applications and infrastructure, facilitating faster issue resolution. The company is also planning the launch of its cloud service. 

Drip Project by Metaman raises an undisclosed amount in pre Series-A funding

Drip Project by Metaman, a luxury streetwear jewellery brand, raised an undisclosed amount for in a pre Series-A funding round. 

The latest round of investment was led by the Blume Founders Fund of Blume Ventures and saw participation from a diverse group of investors. It had several new investors including Ankita Vasista (StrongerHer Venture), Priti Sawant (Joules 2 Watt), Jayakumar Babu (CEO, Argo Trade), Vijaykrishna, Manohar, Arjun Santhanakrishna (Group CEO, GS Global), Ashwin Pai, Amit Bothra, Bharath Hegde, Aniketh Jain (CEO, Co-Founder, Infinities, and Vinod Gowda.

With this investment, the company will look to expand its product catalogue from 500 to over 1000 products, building more inventory and expanding its growth.

Other news

Contentstack reveals winners for Techsurf 2023

Contentstack, a digital experience platform (DXP) provider, recently concluded Techsurf 2023, the brand's annual pan-India college coding hackathon. 

Aman Gupta from Ganeshi Lal Bajaj Institute Of Technology And Management emerged as the champion, securing Rs 2 lakh for his exceptional coding skills. Ankur Kumar Raj from IIT Kanpur claimed the 1st runner-up position, while Ayush Dubey from KIET Group of Institutions and Aditya Kumar from JIIT secured the 2nd and 3rd runner-up spots, respectively. The runners-up were rewarded with generous cash prizes: Rs 1 lakh for the 1st runner-up and Rs 50 thousand each for the 2nd and 3rd runners-up.

VideoVerse appoints Hemant Agarwal as CFO

VideoVerse, a video technology company working in content creation and distribution, has appointed Hemant Agarwal as its chief financial officer.

Agarwal will oversee financial functions such as investments, acquisitions, global financial planning, analysis, accounting, treasury, and internal audit. With two decades of experience, he has held key positions in finance, manufacturing, supply chain, Indian controllership, and international internal audit.

Agarwal has held the positions of CFO and chief business officer (new business) at Sesa Care. He has 18 years of experience in driving financial strategies, fundraising, establishing new business ventures, facilitating growth, and upholding financial excellence. 

BOULT expands across 13 states with 2500+ stores in India

BOULT, a wearable brand in India, is expanding into offline retail markets across 13 states in India, including Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Jodhpur, Jalandhar, and Jammu. 

In the first phase, Boult plans to partner with over 2500 offline stores along with prominent national large format retailers like Reliance Digital and regional retailers like SS Mobile, Poojara Phonewale, Poorvika, Chennai Mobiles, Supreme, Big C, and Happy.

ETS busy PeopleStrong’s assessment and remote proctoring business

ETS, a private non-profit educational research and measurement organisation, has acquired Wheebox, the assessment and remote proctoring business of HR tech company PeopleStrong.

The deal was led by ETS Strategic Capital, the private equity investment and merger and acquisition execution arm of ETS, its subsidiaries and its partners. The acquired business will continue to operate independently as a majority-owned subsidiary of ETS. 

ETS, an independent nonprofit, aims to enhance education access through skills measurement. Partnering with Wheebox, a subsidiary of PeopleStrong, could amplify its reach and help it expand globally.

Vehant Technologies signs MoU with IIT Jodhpur  

Vehant Technologies, an AI/ML-based security screening solutions provider, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur (IIT Jodhpur) to work collectively on research-based projects. 

After IIT Mandi and IIIT Delhi, the third MoU was signed to strengthen industry-academia collaboration. The partnership will sponsor up to five MTech students in 2023-2024 and support PhD research in AI and ML, faculty consulting, and research projects. The project work will begin on September 29.

Vehant and IIT Jodhpur researchers will collaborate to develop enhanced applications based on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in security screening services.  

(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)