In the previous week, 18 Indian startups raised funding, of which 13 got an absolute of about $84 million. Among them, Lead School raised the highest funding of about $28 million followed by FarEye, which raised $13 million. Meanwhile, the funding of 5 Indian startups remains undisclosed. Here is the tea on the funding in Indian startups between August 17, 2020, to August 22, 2020.
FarEye
FarEye, a Delhi-based company, was founded in 2013 by Kushal Nahata, Gautam Kumar and Gaurav Srivastava. It is a digitalized SaaS platform which promotes effective logistics for different organizations by providing agility, visibility, and state of the art predictability on the movement of goods. The company has managed to raise additional funding of about $13 million as an extension to its Series D funding led by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership Firm.
Lead School
Lead School, a Mumbai based organization, was started in 2012 by Smita Deorah and Sumit Mehta with a mission to empower the country by making education affordable and accessible to every child. The company, along with its own schools, has also partnered with different private schools in order to improve the academic performance of the students and to turn them into capable, sincere and responsible citizens of the country. The startup has raised a funding of about $28 million in a Series C Funding Round from WestBridge Capital.
Pixxel
An Indian space technology startup, Pixxel was founded in 2019 by two BITS Pilani graduates Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal in Bangalore. The company focuses on building a constellation of earth imaging small satellites in order to provide a unique dataset. The constellations of satellites will provide worldwide coverage every 24 hours in order to assist different organizations in predicting global phenomena in real-time. Pixxel manufactures satellites of a size less than the size of a shoebox (weight near 16kg). This will cut down the expense to just one-fifth or in some cases even one-tenth when compared to existing competitors in the business. The company has received $5 million in Seed Funding Round led by Blume Ventures, GrowX ventures, and Lightspeed India. The round also witnessed support from Inventus Capital India and other Angel Investors including Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson.
FPL Technologies Pvt Ltd
FPL Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Pune based startup, was founded in February 2019 by Anurag Sinha, Rupesh Kumar, and Vaibhav Hathi. The company has launched an app called OneScore in order to disrupt the credit card market and urge clients to move to their portable mobile applications for all collaborations, keeping away from sales or marketing agents for client acquisition. The company has raised funding of around $10 million by Series A Funding Round led by its current benefactors — Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. Along with a few Angel Investors, Hummingbird Ventures also joined the list of investors in this startup.
Repute
Repute, a data and identity management platform based on blockchain technology, was founded by Deepak Dhar and Sandesh Chidanand. The company helps the communities develop by building an ecosystem where individuals have the correct tools; instruments that permit the partners and as well as clients to share information in a basic and secure manner. The company has managed to raise a funding of about $1.7 million in the Seed Funding Round led by Global Founders Captial or GFC.
Trell
A lifestyle video app, Trell, was launched in 2016 by Arun Lodhi, Prashant Sachan, Pulkit Agarwal, and Bimal Kartheek Rebba in Bangalore. The Trell app allows users to create and share short recordings by adding different filters and effects in the video recordings. Users get an opportunity to explore short recordings by other users. The users also can like, download, and share the video with other people. Trell provides a vivid list of genres for creating a video, for example, food, beauty, film reviews, comedy to name a few. The app received funding of $11.4 million in a Series A Funding Round led by KBTN Ventures and Samsung Ventures in this round of funding for Indian startups.
Smarter Biz
Smarter Biz, an artificial intelligence-based customer experience platform, was started in February 2014 in Bangalore by Rajesh Bernard. The company’s artificial intelligence-based mobile CRM arrangement bridges the gap between sales and marketing teams by catching each lead created from each source upfront (incoming and outgoing calls, work orders, live meetings, emails, inquiry on site, SMS from JustDial and so on); subsequently enabling the organizations to monitor the success rate of the business and help the business in growing. The company received funding of around $1.1 million in Series A Funding Round from Startup Xseed Ventures, MI Aravind, Daksh, Artiman, Ravi Vishwanath, Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ranjan Biswas, and MJ Aniketh.
Mitron
Shivank Agarwal and Anish Khandelwal launched Mitron App in April 2020. It is a short video-production application that has a UI fundamentally similar to its rival TikTok. It allows users to make short, 15-second recordings. The app can be directly downloaded from the Play Store. Mitron has raised $5 million in a funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners. Along with this, the existing partners 3one4 Capital and Lets Venture Syndicate led by Angel Investor Arun Tadanki participated in the funding round.
GrayQuest
GrayQuest, launched in 2017 by Rishabh Mehta, is a fintech startup concentrated on making a value proposition for India’s education industry. The startup, in partnership with other educational institutes (from K12 schools to universities), has provided customers with a flexible and convenient fee payment experience. The flexible fee payment system has become a part of around 150+ educational institutions and the company is looking forward to the addition of different other educational institutes. GrayQuest has secured about $1.2 million in pre-Series A Funding Round led by Foundation Holdings. Mahansaria Family Office, Jeejeebhoy Family Office, Ashok Wadhwa’s Family Office, Samir Bhatia, and Rohit Dhoot also became a part of this funding round.
Captain Fresh
Captain Fresh, a Bangalore based company, was started in April 2019 by Utham Gowda who was an investment banker. It is a platform that supplies fish and other seafood directly after taking it out from freshwater. The startup works hand in hand with top brands and the pioneers present in the online meat and fish space. It started activities in Bengaluru and is now serving more than 120 retail organizations across all formats. The B2B startup has managed to raise funding of around $2.3 million in Series A Funding Round led by Ankur Capital. Other investors like Incubation Fund and Silicon Valley-based Angel Investors also participated in the funding round.
Daalchini
Daalchini has redefined tiffin services and was launched in 2017 by Prerna Kalra and Vidya Bhushan. It provides homemade, pure instant and healthy food through a smart vending machine called Daalchini Hut. Daalchini runs on three pillars – the Daalchini App, DaalchiniHuts (IoT vending machines), and an innovation-driven supply chain. Their USP is a consistent supply chain that guarantees quality and instant delivery of homemade food. The company has secured a funding of around $0.6 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by existing benefactor Artha Venture Fund. Angel Investors including Ajay Kaul, Ashutosh Valani, Priyank Shah, Narendra Karnavat, and Amit Lakhotia also took part in this round for funding in Indian startups.
Masai School
Bangalore based startup, Masai School, was started in June 2019 by Prateek Shukla, Yogesh Bhat, and Nrupul Dev. It is open to people who want to learn to code. The students can enroll themselves for 6 months in courses like full-stack web development programs along with personality development and soft skills. They can pay the course fee after getting the job. The startup has secured a funding of about $2.5 million in its Pre- Series A Funding round led by Unitus Ventures. Along with Unitus Ventures, different other investors like India Quotient also took part in the funding round.
Able Jobs
Able Jobs was launched in May 2019 by Ravish Agrawal, Swatantra Kumar, and Siddharth Srivastav. It provides support to companies that are actively hiring, from finding the best candidate to the point at which they join the organization. The company also provides a training program under which the candidates are given training according to the job roles specific to companies. The company has raised a funding of $1.7 million in its seed Funding Round led by multi-stage investors SAIF Partners.
