(Weekly funding roundup Aug 15-21) VC inflow remains rangebound

Venture capital funding into Indian startups for the month of August, till now, has largely been bolstered by solitary large transactions, without which the overall funding would have been much smaller.

This week, Navi's $100-million fundraise helped VC funding touch $187 million, a marginal improvement from the previous week's total funding of $146 million. The funding largely spanned the segments of financial services, data centres, deeptech and consumer, across 16 deals.

Each of the three weeks of August has seen one single transaction lifting the overall funding: River Mobility’s $120 million in the first week, $93 million raised by Yulu in the second week, followed by Navi's fundraise in the third week. The rest of the deals were small-value transactions.

VC funding usually relies on large deals for momentum, but these are fewer in number, revealing the challenge in the Indian startup ecosystem, which continues to face difficulties in raising large amounts.

Key transactions

Sachin Bansal's financial services company Navi Limited raised $100 million in funding from Prosus, marking its first institutional round.

Hyperscale data centre operator CtrlS raised Rs 250 crore ($26 million approx.) from Zerodha Co-founder Nikhil Kamath and Sreeram Reddy Vanga.

Geospatial technology startup NeoGeoInfo Technologies raised $20 million from Neev II Fund and Aavishkaar Capital, the investment arm of Aavishkaar Group.

Rezolv, a lending technology startup raised $12.5 million from Norwest, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, and 3one4 Capital.

Babycare platform Peeko raised Rs 67.4 crore ($7 million approx.) from Chiratae Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners, and angel investors.

Butterfly Learnings raised Rs 65 crore ($6.7 million approx.) from Inflexor Ventures, Enzia Ventures, Insitor Impact Asia Fund, and IIMA Ventures.