VC funding’s steady recovery; Tailoring therapy for neurodivergent kids

Hello,

Tis’ the season of IPOs.

Ola Electric’s public issue was fully subscribed on day two, with the total offering subscribed almost 2X at the end of bidding for the day. The retail portion was subscribed almost 3X.

The Rs 6,145-crore IPO—one of the biggest this year—includes a fresh issue of Rs 5,500 crore and an offer-for-sale component of 8.4 crore shares. 

But there’s more to come. 

Omnichannel retailer FirstCry’s IPO is set to open for subscription today. Through the public offer, the company plans to raise Rs 4,194 crore.

While startups are renewing their confidence in the bourses, the stock market is in the grip of recession fear. 

BSE Sensex and Nifty crashed in trade on Monday, both plummeting nearly 3%. Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 share index plunged as much as 12%—most since the 1987 Black Monday crash—triggered by the fear of unwinding Yen-based carry trade.

Wall Street too was in the grip of a global stock rout as the Dow, S&P500, and Nasdaq fell more than 2% in early trading. Tech stocks took a major beating, with NVIDIA tumbling roughly 7% as the markets opened. 

The bloodbath—no other way to call it—even resulted in thousands of traders facing downtime on some online brokerages, including Charles Schwab and Fidelity.

The cryptosphere wasn’t spared either, with Bitcoin slumping 10% and Ethereum facing its most dramatic fall since 2021. 

However, the chaos became an opportunity for some crypto hackers. A blockchain wallet linked to a hacker that pulled off a massive crypto heist two years ago swapped a chunk of its ill-gotten gains for Ether, buying nearly 17,000 tokens!

Now that’s one ‘Den of Thieves’! 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• VC funding’s steady recovery
• Tailoring therapy for neurodivergent kids
• Eco-friendly airflow solutions

Here’s your trivia for today: How many times have the Olympics been hosted in Paris?

Funding

VC funding’s steady recovery

Venture Capital (VC) funding into Indian startups crossed the $1-billion mark on a month-on-month basis for three months in a row, auguring well for the ecosystem which seems to be slowly stepping away from the funding winter.

This psychologically important benchmark of $1 billion is important for the Indian startup ecosystem as it will boost the overall fund inflow.

Milestone:

• The total VC funding for July 2024 came in at $1.1 billion, which was a 103% rise compared with the same period a year ago when the amount stood at $529 million, according to data from YourStory Research.
• In terms of stage-wise funding, the early category continues to see the highest traction, garnering $447 million for the month, followed by the growth stage and then the late-stage category.
• In terms of sectors that received the highest funding in July, fintech garnered the highest amount at $145 million, followed by ecommerce at $141, and mobility stood at $120 million.

Funding Alert

Startup: Agrizy

Amount: $9.8M

Round: Series A

Startup: Latambarcem Brewers

Amount: $1.5M 

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup: CURRYiT

Amount: Rs 4.5 Cr

Round: Seed

Startup

Tailoring therapy for neurodivergent kids

In a world where neurodiversity is increasingly recognised and understood, the search for effective therapy options, tailored to each child’s unique needs, often leads to a frustrating maze of limited resources and inadequate solutions. 

This is where Butterfly Learnings comes in. Founded in 2021 by the husband-wife duo Abhishek Sen and Dr Sonam Kothari, the startup aims to address the deficiencies in children’s mental health and developmental support. 

Personalised support:

• Mumbai-based Butterfly Learnings offers a range of therapies tailored to each child’s needs, including Applied Behavioral Analysis, occupational therapy, speech therapy, oral placement therapy, and sensory integration. 
• The startup’s proprietary technology stack allows for detailed monitoring and analysis of therapy outcomes, ensuring that each child receives individualised attention and care.
• Sen and Kothari invested around Rs 2 crore to bootstrap the startup. Currently, it has a team of over 300 members, including over 250 therapists.

Women Entrepreneurs

Eco-friendly airflow solutions

About four years ago, when Tanya Goyal and Karan Bansal were living in an apartment in Jaipur with a low ceiling, they were frustrated with the ceiling fan options in the market.

That’s when they decided to come up with a device that would offer a seamless alternative to ceiling fans. What began as a small project to meet their personal needs quickly evolved into an innovative all-in-one climate solution: Karban Envirotech.

Multi-functional:

• To optimise the performance of the product, Karban Envirotech utilises CFD technology, allowing them to refine the airflow dynamics, ensuring maximum efficiency and effectiveness. 
• In April this year, the startup secured seed funding from marquee investors including Titan Capital, All In Capital, Rainmatter, and Anupam Mittal.
• Building on the success of Karban Airzone, the company recently introduced Karban Airzone Lite, a smaller version designed for more compact spaces. 

News & updates

• AI vs law: Elon Musk has revived his complaint against OpenAI after dropping a previous lawsuit, again alleging that the ChatGPT maker and two of its founders—Sam Altman and Greg Brockman—breached the company’s founding mission to develop AI technology to benefit humanity.
• 'Thousand Sails': Chinese state-owned enterprise, the Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology, launched the first batch of satellites for a mega-constellation designed to rival Space X's Starlink's near-global internet network. The project aims to deploy 15,000 low-Earth orbit satellites.
• NVIDIA rival: Groq, a startup developing chips to run generative AI models faster than conventional processors, has raised $640 million in a new funding round led by Blackrock. It is creating an LPU (language processing unit) inference engine which it claims can run existing generative AI models similar in architecture to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4o at 10X the speed.

How many times have the Olympics been hosted in Paris?

Answer: Three (1900, 1924, 2024)

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