The weekly venture funding into India startups little more than doubled in the third week of December, as compared to the previous week, owing to the large deal sizes in the bracket of $25 million and above.
In fact, before the year ends, Zenoti — a Hyderabad and US-based SaaS startup — entered the coveted unicorn club, indicating a possible beginning of a trend, where SaaS startups continue to gain stronger traction in 2021.
A total of $134 million was raised from the 13 deals (three in early-stage, four in growth-stage, and one in late-stage) that were signed during the week, compared to the $61 million raised in the previous week.
Key deals
LeadSquared, a Bengaluru-based sales automation SaaS platform, raised $32 million in Series B funding round led by private equity firm Gaja Capital. Existing investors Stakeboat Capital and Jyoti Bansal also participated.
Bengaluru-based sleep and home solutions startup Wakefit.co raised Rs 185 crore Series B funding led Verlinvest and existing investor Sequoia Capital India.
Global fund Steadview Capital bought $25 million worth of secondary shares from an early investor in logistics startup Delhivery.
Other deals
Arya — a Noida-based post-harvest agritech and agri-fintech startup — closed its Series B round of $21 million in a mix of equity and debt.
Staff management solutions provider PagarBook raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. It also saw participation from India Quotient.
TReDS platform M1xchange raised $4.5 million in funding from BEENEXT Asia, Singapore, and existing investor Mayfield.
Pickrr Technologies — the Chennai-based SaaS startup — raised $4 million funding led by Guild Capital and Omidyar Network India.
Lingerie brand Clovia raised $4 million in Pre-Series C round of funding led by a clutch of investors, including Golden Birch Investments and SheCapital Venture Fund.
Maths learning app startup Countingwell raised a Pre-Series A funding round of $1 million from Delhi Private School, UAE, Interstar, and other angel investors.
Callify.ai raised seed funding of $560,000 led by Malpani Ventures. Other investors such as Venture Catalysts, Calega Ventures, The Chennai Angel Network, etc., also participated in the round.
Merchandise startup Cover it Up raised Rs 3.5 crore in a seed round led by angel investors Sanjay Wadhwa, Manish Mardia, Madan Lal Gundecha, Vimal Jain, and Nishank Sakaria.
BiteSpeed, a Gurugram-based conversational commerce platform for ecommerce brands on Shopify, raised $275,000 in seed funding led by Whiteboard Capital.
Tyre maker Bridgestone India invested in fleet management startup Fleeca India, which will strengthen its position in the digital-based mobility solutions.
India connect
Zenoti — the Hyderabad and Bellevue, US-based enterprise cloud platform for beauty and wellness industry — raised a $160 million Series D funding round at over $1 billion valuation.
LOGIQ, a US and Bengaluru-based observability platform for IT administrators and DevOps teams, raised $1.8 million in its first institutional seed funding round led by Leo Capital.
A developer blogging community Hashnode raised $2.1 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge.
Global online learning platform Brainly raised $80 million in a Series D round led by Learn Capital with participation from Prosus Ventures and General Catalyst Partners.
M&A
Mumbai-based online higher learning edtech startup upGrad acquired recruitment and staffing solutions company Rekrut India for an undisclosed amount.
Edited by Suman Singh
Link : https://yourstory.com/2020/12/startup-funding-venture-investments-saas-unicorn-upgrad-clovia
Author :- Thimmaya Poojary ( )
December 18, 2020 at 08:23PM
YourStory