Its not very often that we hear a parent company announcing the funding of it own product, but earlier last week, the startup media was abuzz with the news that Hike, the hybrid messaging app, had raised a whopping seven million dollars from Bharti Softbank (BSB).
The Qubole team announced the completion of the Series A funding round of $7 million from Charles River Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures as well as through angel investment from Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaram. This is Qubole’s third round of funding since the inception of the startup, the previous being seed rounds. The previous one With this investment, Qubole has amassed a total of over 8 million USD.
FedEx Express announced the launch of its Ship Site program in India — a business building alliance that offers increased access points for faster, easier and more convenient way to send shipments. The first alliance in the program is with Bangalore-based printing chain Printo. Through the partnership, customers will be given access to FedEx services at 12 high-street Printo locations in Bangalore. The launch of this Ship Site program with Printo comes as FedEx looks to increase its retail footprint in India.
Myntra, an Indian e-commerce platform for fashion and lifestyle products, today announced the acquisition of San Francisco based FITIQUETTE. Fitquette is a technology solution which is a virtual fitting room. FITIQUETTE’s technology innovation aims at solving size and fit issues for online shoppers. This acquisition will strengthen and expand Myntra’s technology platform and drive transformational change in the online shopping space in India by providing world-class experience to its customers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, except to note that the acquisition was part cash, part stock.
Founded by R. Narayan in 2011, Power2SME is a group buying site targeted at small and medium enterprises. It supplies inks, steel, polymers, paints and chemicals & additives to SMEs, procuring these in bulk from manufacturers. Power2SME started with a seed round from Inventus Capital and then Kalaari Capital recently infused a series A worth INR 10 crores. In an announcement today, Accel Partners has invested a funding round into Power2SME.
Satin Creditcare Network Limited (“SCNL”), a microfinance institution headquartered in Delhi has announced the successful completion of its round of funding to the tune of USD 7.6 million. The funding has been raised from MicroVest II, LP, ShoreCap II Limited (managed by Equator Capital Partners LLC) and Danish Microfinance Partners K/S (“DMP”). MicroVest has simultaneously purchased all equity shares from Lok Capital LLC, marking Lok’s complete exit from SCNL where it has been an early stage investor since 2008. Unitus Capital was the sole financial advisor to the transaction.
Indix today announced that it had secured $4.5 million in new funding from leading venture capital firms, Nexus Venture Partners and Avalon Ventures. Indix had previously raised $1.4 million in financing from seed investors, including Nexus Venture Partners.
2012 was an exciting year for the Indian startup ecosystem. The momentum built over the past couple of years intensified. Investor interest increased in Indian startups. More than 200 deals worth more than $700 million were sealed.
Qualitatively, emerging startups show high levels of maturity which should have a positive impact on funding.
Funding activity is by no means an indicator of success but is a good proxy for business viability tracking.
In this report, we provide a synopsis about the startup space in India in the first quarter of 2013 with our insights.
During the week ended 24 March, 2013, there were nine PE/VC deals worth $231.9mn compared to five deals worth $40.7mn in the previous week. The year 2013 has so far aggregated $830.3mn of PE investments across 85 deals compared to $2.38bn (130 deals) during the same period last year. PE Deals that happened during the week [...] Read More
Tribehired.com, a social recruitment website founded by Devan Singaram, today announced that it had closed around $ 560K of seed funding in a round led by TNF Ventures (TNF) through the Technology Incubation Scheme under the Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) within the Prime Minister’s Office. The round was supported by Singapore angel investors Ben Ball and Ben Chew.
