Startup Street: Two New Unicorns, Virat Kohli's Coffee Bet, Ola's EV Hurdle And More

This month on startup street, India minted two new fintech unicorns. A couple of coffee startups raised funds, Swiggy hired bankers for its maiden offer and Zomato launched 10-minute delivery. Bharat Founders Fund was launched to invest in pre-seed-stage startups exclusively, while Ola hit a roadblock with its electric scooter. Here’s what went on...

Debt marketplace CredAvenue and Oxyzo Financial Services turned unicorn in March.

CredAvenue raised $137 million in a Series B round at a $1.3-billion valuation. Within 18 months of inception, it claimed that was the “fastest a fintech startup has turned a unicorn in the country”.

A couple of weeks later, OfBusiness’ lending arm, Oxyzo Financial services, raised $200 million in Series A funding at a valuation of more than $1 billion. That’s one of the largest Series A rounds in India’s startup industry.

Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra, the husband-wife duo, are chief executive officers of OfBusiness and Oxyzo, respectively.

Read more about the unicorn couple here.

In another round of fintech churn, Citibank’s investments head Niharika Tripathi joined Wealthy.in, a Bengaluru-based firm offering wealth management products. Tripathi, according to an emailed statement, will help scale the firm’s products and private wealth business.

Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs also announced a new funding round of $50 million from Vitruvian Partners, a London-based international investment firm. It has expanded its buy now, pay later offering in Southeast Asia.

Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that the startup has kicked off the process for an initial public offering in the U.S. and it could seek a valuation of about $5.5-7 billion. This could be one of the last rounds raised before it heads for the markets.

March also witnessed two coffee startups raise funds.

Blue Tokai raised an undisclosed sum announcing Negen Capital and Mauryan Capital as its latest investors.

"With their support, we're poised to double our revenue to Rs 200 crore by next year," Matt Chitharanjan, co-founder and CEO at Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, said.

Separately, Delhi-based Rage Coffee, a maker of packaged coffee, has onboarded Indian cricketer Virat Kohli as an investor and brand ambassador. “I see tremendous potential for the brand to become one of the most iconic coffee companies of our time,” Kohli was quoted as saying in a media statement.

In August, the startup had raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Sixth Sense Ventures.

While on the subject, Swiggy’s forthcoming initial public offering has gathered speed, with the food delivery company hiring bankers for the process, reported Economic Times. The company is reportedly seeking a valuation of up to $1 billion.

Swiggy declined to comment on BloombergQuint’s queries.

Rival Zomato announced 10-minute delivery for certain food items. Its board has also approved a loan of $150 million to Blinkit (earlier Grofers). “This loan will support the capital requirements of Grofers in the near term and is in line with our stated intent of investing up to $400 million cash in quick commerce in India over the next two years,” it had said in an exchange filing.

Zomato has also bought a 16.6% stake in food robotics company Mukunda Foods for about $5 million. “Their products enable restaurants to scale rapidly while maintaining consistency in food quality and customer experience across multiple outlets. Our investment will help Mukunda Foods scale faster, help reduce restaurant food prices, expand margins, and enhance customer delight,” it said in another filing.

Byju Raveendran, founder of India’s most valuable startup Byju’s, is investing $400 million in his edtech company to raise his stake by 2%, taking the founder group’s holding to about 25%, Bloomberg reported. The round values the startup at $22 billion.

Separately, Ashwin Damera-led online education platform Emeritus has received $350 million in debt funding from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The company, backed by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said the capital would be used for mergers and acquisition as part of a “robust global growth strategy”.

Founders and top managements of India’s leading startups have come together to invest in pre-seed-stage startups exclusively.

About 65 founders and senior executives will invest through Bharat Founders Fund. That includes:

• Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founders of Meesho.

• Cars24 Co-Founders Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, and Gajendra Jangid.

• Gazal Kalra, co-founder of Rivigo.

• Vamsi Krishna, co-founder of Vedantu.

• Smita Deorah and Sumeet Mehta of Lead School.

• Saurabh Garg, co-founder of NoBroker.

These fund will be managed by Investopad Partners Maanav Sagar and Sera Arora.

The fund, with 20 investments so far, will typically invest an average of $100,000-200,000 in various early-stage startups and companies that are still in the consideration stage.

Also, Tata Capital Healthcare Fund has announced the final close of its second fund with commitments of Rs 955 crore.

Visalakshi Chandramouli, managing partner at TCHF, said the fund would seek to achieve returns by principally taking equity positions in healthcare- and life sciences-related companies having significant business exposure to India.

“The investment strategy of TCHF is predicated on the following two themes—domestic healthcare and life sciences consumption (focused on the Indian consumption story in healthcare and life sciences related businesses, to make up 60% of TCHF II’s investments), and healthcare and life sciences competency (focused on leveraging India’s expertise in the healthcare and life sciences sectors to deliver products to world markets, to make up 40% of investments).”

In a first, Dubai-based Cypher Capital has launched a $100-million blockchain and crypto-focused seed fund, allocating 40% of the fund for investments in Indian firms.

Ola’s foray into electric vehicles has faced challenges around delayed deliveries and software issues. It has now hit a serious roadblock.

A video of the company’s electric scooter catching fire in Pune was widely circulated on social media with users raising questions over safety standards.

Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and chief executive officer at Ola, said the company is investigating the incident and will take appropriate action.

In other news, Ola Electric appointed former LG Chem Power CEO Prabhakar Patil to its board of directors. It also invested in Israeli battery technology company StoreDot.

“The investment is the first of many such deals as Ola looks to ramp up its core R&D in advanced cell chemistry and manufacturing, battery technologies and new energy systems,” it said.

Ola will have exclusive rights to manufacture batteries integrating StoreDot’s fast charge technology in India. Ola is among four companies that have won bids under the country’s $2.4-billion (Rs 18,100 crore) production-linked incentive for making battery cells.

The company also plans to acquire Avail Finance, a lending platform founded by Tushar Aggarwal, brother of Bhavish Aggarwal. Ola has around 9% in Avail Finance.

• Serial internet investor Info Edge acquired a 76% stake in dating app Aisle for Rs 91 crore.

• Ather Energy, an electric scooter brand, announced a partnership with Bharat FIH, a Foxconn company, to develop and manufacture key components for Ather scooters.

• Kuku FM, which claims to be India’s biggest audio content platform, has secured Series B funding of $19.5 million in a round led by South Korean gaming giant Krafton Inc. Existing investors, including 3one4 Capital, Vertex Ventures, and India Quotient also participated. Founder Bank Capital and Verlinvest joined as new investors. With this latest round, Kuku FM has secured a total of $25 million since its inception in 2018.

• Pocket Aces-backed live streaming and e-sports platform Loco raised $42 million.

• Gifting platform Ferns N Petals raised Rs 200 crore from Lighthouse Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to invest in improving its systems and technology to enhance customer experience for all gifting occasions.

• Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec has appointed Saurabh Agarwal as managing director for India, as the Canadian pension manager looks to invest more in Asia’s third-largest economy. The Montreal-based fund has invested over $7 billion in renewable energy, roads and real estate developers in India as of the end of last year. CDPQ has partnered Piramal Enterprises Ltd. for private credit finance, and is an investor in Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

• Tiger Global, Jungle Ventures led a $12-million funding round in employer review platform Infeedo.

• Jewerly retailer Bluestone raised $30 million at a $410-million valuation.

• Shark Tank-featured Growfitter raised $1 million in pre-Series A led by Inflection Point Ventures.

• Mudrex, a Bengaluru and San Francisco-based Y Combinator-backed crypto investing platform, announced the launch of SIP feature that will allow users to invest in Coin Sets—the mutual fund equivalent of cryptocurrencies.

• Walmart-backed PhonePe acquired freelance micro-entrepreneurs platform GigIndia for an undisclosed sum.

• EverSource Capital took a majority stake in Lithium to scale technology, fleet and pan-India charging infrastructure. EverStone claimed this was the biggest deal in the EV passenger mobility segment.

• Kunal Shah-backed fintech startup BankSathi got its IRDAI insurance licence. It will now start offering a diverse portfolio of financial products to customers through more than 5 lakh financial advisers.

• Stanza Living raised $57 million in debt financing from Kotak Mahindra Bank, RBL Bank. Alteria Capital also participated. The company plans to use proceeds for current, future projects as well as multi-city expansion. It last raised $100 million in equity funding.

• Singapore-based internet unicorn Glance InMobi has acquired Indian gaming company Gambit Sports Pvt. “The acquisition intends to bring together Glance’s scale (45 million monthly active users in Asia) and Gambit’s expertise of gaming ecosystem.” Gambit owns the gaming platform Nostragamus, which hosts fantasy sports, poker, rummy, quiz.

• Spacetech platform Pixxel raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Toronto-based venture capital firm Radical Ventures.

• B2B edtech platform Classplus secured $70 million in a Series D round co-led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global at a valuation of $600 million.

• E-commerce site CityMall raised $75 million in Series C funding at a valuation north of $310 million.

(Source: official media releases)