fund raise | Business Upturn

AllTrak raises Rs 4.2 cr in pre-series around led by Inflection Point Ventures

United News of India (UNI) — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:23:11 +0000

Mumbai, Dec 7 : AllTrak, a healthcare Technology and logistics platform on Thursday said it has raised Rs 4.2Cr in a pre-series Around led by Inflection Point Ventures.

The funds will be allocated towards team expansion, technology enhancement, and logistics operations expansion across multiple cities in India.

AllTrak, B2B HealthTech company, offers end-to-end solution to diagnostic companies. AllTrak solutions include Technology SaaS platform, pan India shared logistics network and phlebotomist network to healthcare companies to serve their patients. Their ecosystem helps healthcare companies to grow at faster pace and creates a seamless solution for accelerated patient report turnaround. Their ecosystem empowers healthcare organizations, enhancing profitability, service quality, and client satisfaction.

Vikram Ramasubramanian, Partner, Inflection Point Ventures, said, “Following the challenges posed by the Covid pandemic, we have collectively recognized the vital significance of timely delivery of diagnostic healthcare samples that are essential for optimal patient care and effective treatment planning. With its timely delivery, AllTrak is a category creator and leader, showing a promising future in the diagnostics healthcare market.”

BeepKart raises $9 million in Series A led by Vertex Ventures

United News of India (UNI) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 11:52:24 +0000

BeepKart, a full-stack online platform of used 2-wheelers said that it has raised USD9 million in its Series A round led by Vertex Ventures South East Asia & India.

The round also witnessed participation from existing investors Stellaris Venture Partners and Chiratae Ventures who had led the USD3 million seed round of the company in September 2021.

Hemir Doshi, co-founder & CEO, BeepKart said, “A combination of an internal and external product-led strategy, operational excellence across the stack of activities and the right value system can help transform the used 2-wheeler market which is far more unorganized than the used-car market. The BeepKart team has patiently built out its playbook in Bengaluru, is profitable at a city level and is ready to gradually replicate elsewhere while continuing to learn. In essence, we are challenging the need to buy an expensive new 2-wheeler when a BeepKart bike is available to upgrade the consumer’s life.”

Piyush Kharbanda, General Partner, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India said, “India is the 2-wheeler capital of the world. A 2-wheeler is more than just a personal commute solution as millions of Indian families depend on them for their livelihood. The used 2-wheeler market, which by all accounts should be a thriving, well-orchestrated market, is plagued by issues that make it a classic market for lemons. We are excited to back Hemir and Abhishek in their endeavor to build a brand that solves for all issues that impact trust among buyers and sellers: price transparency, service delivery, product warranty, and many others. It takes a lot to deliver this, and the team’s razor-sharp focus on operating excellence is what sets BeepKart apart.”

The fresh round of funds raised by BeepKart will be channeled towards building the digital user journey further to earn customer love, internal products and systems that serve as competitive moats, brand and operational excellence while scaling the business geographically.

Fair Trust Plans to raise $2 million through Private Seed Round

United News of India (UNI) — Wed, 04 May 2022 08:26:09 +0000

Kolkata, May 4: The Fair Trust, an ecosystem building a new-age financial platform, on Wednesday announced the launch of the presale of The Fair Trust Token (TFT) through a Private Seed Round. The opportunity will be open for private investors and early TFT community members till the end of May 2022. Investors who wish to join The Fair Trust community can go to The Fair Trust website and make the investment. The company aims to raise $2 million through this round. The Fair Trust aims to provide liquidity to its community members and distribute the rewards to those investing in the projects. The goal of The Fair Trust is to build a financial platform that gives profit back to its stakeholders by providing them passive income and helping them secure their future.

Investors who participate in the Private Seed Round have the choice to either sell some or all of their tokens on the BSC exchange or stake TFT in the Fair Investment to earn passive income in the form of daily returns, monthly bonuses, and guaranteed quarterly dividends. They also have the option to deposit TFT in The Fair Loan vaults, the world’s first interest paying loan, and get an instant BUSD loan of 50% of the TFT value and in addition, earn interest on the TFT deposited.

With the funds collected through the Private Seed Round, the platform aims to build a treasury backed by the community to fund the next generations of revolutionary blockchain projects spanning across various sectors including New-Age Banking, Artist Launchpad, Real Estate, Digital Marketplace, & Gaming to name a few. These projects will be used to give back to the stakeholders in the form of rewards. And will help to fund The Fair Investment and The Fair Loan.

The Fair Trust will kick start with three projects. The first project, The Fair Game will be the world’s first gaming platform. Where opponents can wager NFTs from various blockchains over skill-based games. The second project, The Fair Fund, is a platform. Where high worth value NFTs will be tokenized into smaller parts. To make it more affordable for individual investors. And build the largest tokenized NFT exchange. Lastly, The Fair Studio, is an NFT Launchpad for artists from various genres. Physical and digital art, photography, music, and videography. Micky P., Co-founder & CTO, The Fair Trust, said. “We are thrilled to announce the launch of our Presale. Through Private Seed Round. Pre-sale is a very crucial step for every startup. As it helps to bootstrap the vision of the founding team and make it a reality.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is one of the fastest-growing areas within the crypto space and is here to stay. Keeping stakeholders at the center. We are working towards building a new-age financial platform that gives profit back to its stakeholders. With the funds collected through the Private Seed Round. We will be building a highly inclusive community of new-age investors. Who wish to be a part of revolutionary blockchain projects and benefit from it”.

HDFC plans to raise Rs 5,000 crore through issue of non convertible debentures

Sanah Shah — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 12:20:43 +0000

HDFC Limited, one of India’s largest housing finance companies, on Wednesday 3rd March announced that it will raise funds up to Rs 5,000 crore by issuing non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on a private placement basis.

The issue will open on March 5, 2021, and close the same day, HDFC stated in a regulatory filing.

The base size of the issue of secured redeemable NCDs is Rs 2,000 crore. This includes an option to retain oversubscription up to Rs 3,000 crore.

“The object of the issue is to augment the long-term resources of the Corporation. The proceeds of the present issue would be utilised for financing/refinancing the housing finance business requirements of the Corporation,” it said.

The coupon rate on the bonds, set to mature on 8th Match, 2023, fixed at 5.30% per annum. The arranger of this issue is ICICI Bank.

HDFC stock closed today at Rs 879.80, up 8.62% on BSE.

Leverage Edu obtains Rs 47 crore in Series A fund raise

Sanah Shah — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:17:38 +0000

Leverage Ed-tech Private Ltd, which functions LeverageEdu.com, UniValley.com, Ivy100.com and virtual fair platform UniConnect, has completed its Series A fund-raise of ₹47 crore in led by Tomorrow Capital, it said Thursday 18th February.

Tomorrow Capital has invested ₹26.5 crore and existing investors Blume Ventures and DSG Consumer Partners have put in an extra ₹20.5 crore in this round, half of which had been instilled couple of quarters ago. With this, the company has raised about ₹60 crore in total of the three rounds.

Four-year old Leverage Edu aids students find the correct program, destination and think via college education with an employability lens.

Outbound student mobility has increased by multiples in the past decade, helping Leverage Edu to progress. It has assisted over 3000 students this season.

“India is one of the largest global suppliers of international students and yet the biggest brands helping students in their admissions come from destination countries like USA, Canada and Australia, who don’t understand the unique perspectives and problems that the Indian student faces. We believe it is inevitable that the next stellar brand in the global cross-border education space will be a home-grown one,” said Rohini Prakash, CEO, Tomorrow Capital.

Leverage Edu has two main components of its business. It advises students to select the right program, country based on their mentoring workshops, helping them apply to universities and colleges across the world through its student platform OneView, and following this provides them value-added services like education loan, VISA, forex, accommodation options. Secondly, on the university side, it has a SaaS-enabled platform called Univalley.com, which helps Universities find best-matched talent for their various programs.

Digital lending startup KreditBee raises $75 million

Sanah Shah — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 08:20:31 +0000

Digital lending startup KreditBee has completed its Series C equity round valued at $75 million from Premji Invest, Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alpine Capital and Arkam Ventures, including both primary and secondary investment.

“We started with a dream to help the unserved and underserved segment who have always found it difficult to enter the formal lending sector, either due to lengthy offline processes or traditional underwriting methods. With a larger portfolio of loan products, our objective is to provide credit to over 180 Million New-to-Credit customers who were not provided formal credit earlier. This investment would help us take more positive steps towards achieving that”, mentioned Madhusudan E, Co-Founder & CEO of KreditBee.

The holding entity has raised more than $43 million cumulatively before in equity from marque investors comprising of ICICI Bank and Arkam Ventures.

On the topic of equity investment, Atul Gupta, Partner at Premji Invest stated, “We are impressed by the vision of KreditBee to formalize the path towards credit enablement for new-to-credit customers, their skilled team and responsible tech-enabled underwriting, and are pleased to partner with them in their next stage of growth.”

Meanwhile, Ashish Dave, CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investments (India) said, “The large scale at which the platform is able to disburse loans to customers showcases not just the stability and strength of its tech stack, but also a very appropriate credit scoring of customers using alternative data points, which forms a key for new-to-credit customers.”

The group launched the Bengaluru-headquartered finch lending startup, KreditBee in May 2018. It aimed at full-stack digital lending for young professionals. The platform is an expert in supplying digital personal loans and consumer durable loans to the salaried and self-employed. The platform attempts to branch out its product offering by advancing into digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans and credit line.

VerSe Innovations raised another 100 million through funding round

Sanah Shah — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 08:06:39 +0000

VerSe Innovation, a local language company based in India, announced on Monday 8th February 2021, that it raised over $100 million (about Rs728 crore) in a Series H funding round held by global investors Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar, and Glade Brook Capital Partners.

According to a statement, Canaan Valley Capital and existing investor Sofina Group also participated in this round. Avendus Capital was the primary financial advisor to VerSe Innovation on the transaction.

This follows closely from December when VerSe had raised $100 million from Google, Microsoft, and AlphaWave (unit of Falcon Edge Capital) to become India’s first technology for local languages.

’Made-in-Bharat-for-Bharat-by-Bharat-in-12-Bhartiya-languages-hosted-in-Bharat’ short video platform ’Josh’ remains to be the main area of interest for the Bengaluru-based startup. It attempts to put the fresh funds in the ongoing efforts to scale up its local language content offerings, create a content creator network and to influence artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the app.

”This will include the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of its content creator ecosystem, innovation in AI and ML and more importantly, creation of opportunity for India’s vast talent pool”, the statement said.

Josh began operations in September last year and is now one of the most rapidly growing short form video apps constituting of over 85 million monthly active users (MAU), 40 million daily active users and more than 1.5 billion video plays every day, according to the company. The only other local app with more users is Roposo which claims to have over 100 million MAUs. Among new apps which were launched after the TikTok ban, MX Taka Tak has over 70 million MAUs.

Local language support is one of the central features of Josh. It currently entertains 12 Indian languages and dialects such as Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bangla, Oriya, Punjabi and Bhojpuri.

In December, Roposo’s parent company Glance Digital Experience Pvt. Ltd. had raised $145 million (about Rs1,056 crore) funds from Google and Mithril Capital.

The ban on ByteDance’s TikTok in India in June last year left a void and led to the displacement of 200 million odd TikTok users in the country. The ban was made perpetual last month by the Indian government when they announced there is no hope of the platform making a comeback to India.

This may lead to more opportunities for brand endorsements to many of these homegrown short form video apps, which have observed huge growth in user base but are yet to achieve the same engagement levels as TikTok. As a result, many of the top brands have been doubtful about associating with them and their creators.

VerSe Innovation’s other property Dailyhunt is a local language news aggregator app with over 300 million users and content contributing in 14 Indian languages.

UltraTech Cement declares issue of USD denominated bonds to raise Rs 3,000 crore

Sanah Shah — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 06:04:08 +0000

Ultratech Cement, subsidiary of the Indian multinational conglomerate has announced that the board has approved a proposal raise up to Rs 3,000 crore through issuance of US dollar-denominated bonds.

The company stated in a late evening regulatory filing on 3rd February, “The finance committee approved raising funds by way of issuance of foreign currency (USD) denominated bonds (Notes) aggregating up to USD 400 million, corresponding to Rs 3,000 crore, to be offered and sold within the United States to qualified institutional buyers in one or more tranches.”

Ultratech Cement said the proceeds from the issuance will be utilized as refinance for existing rupee debt, with the remainder reserved for regular ongoing capital expenditure requirements and general corporate purposes.

The cement company based in Mumbai is trading at Rs 6140 at 11:20 AM, 1.08% higher as against the previous close of Rs 6074.70. Their momentum is very bullish in nature; above short, medium and long term moving averages. The company is currently 2.88% from its 52-week-high.

The company declared that it is debating listing of the notes on the Singapore Stock Exchange, depending on market conditions.

Zee Media Corp raises Rs 230 crore via non-convertible debentures

Sanah Shah — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:58:11 +0000

Zee Media Corporation on Wednesday 3rd February 2021 said that it has raised Rs 230 crore through issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement basis.

“The board of directors of the company at their meeting has approved the allotment of 2,300 unrated, unlisted, secured, redeemable non-convertible debentures bearing a face value of Rs 10,00,000, each for cash at par, aggregating to Rs 230 crore on a private placement basis,” the company said in a regulatory filing.

Zee Media Corporation stated that a fixed coupon of 9% per annum will be payable on the NCDs on half-yearly basis beginning from 31st July 2021.

Shares of Zee Media Corporation were trading 1.89 per cent higher at Rs 5.38 apiece on BSE. The company is experiencing bearish momentum with short, medium and long term Moving Averages being low.

The Board of Zee Media Corporation had approved the terms of raising of the fund through issuance and allotment of up to 2500 unrated, unlisted, secured, redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) bearing a face value of Rs. 10,00,000, each for cash at par, aggregating to up to Rs. 250 crore in one or more series, on a private placement basis in accordance with the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 and Rules framed thereunder and applicable SEBI regulations on 23 December 2020.

Byju in talk for $200 million fund raise at a valuation of $12 billion

Divya Joyce — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 08:54:37 +0000

Online education startup Byju’s is close to raising $200 million in fresh capital from US investment firms BlackRock and T. Rowe Price at a valuation of $12 billion, said a person familiar with the matter. BlackRock is an existing investor in the firm.

Byju’s has other investors including Tencent, Prosus , Owl Ventures, Sequoia, Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital, and General Atlantic at a valuation of $10.8 billion. The capital being raised would be used for global expansion as well as to finance acquisitions to strengthen its offerings. Earlier this year, it acquired code-learning startup WhiteHat Jr in a $300-million cash deal.

BlackRock, Sands Capital, and Alkeon Capital joined as new investors, as part of the same round later, with valuation climbing to $11.1 billion.

With the pandemic accelerating the adoption of online education in India, the sector has seen an increase of nearly four times in investments at $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2020, compared to $409 million in the whole of 2019, according to data from Venture Intelligence. Since the lockdown, Byju’s has added over 25 million new students on its platform. The app has over 73 million registered students and 5.1 million annual paid subscriptions. It has also introduced an online tutoring programme Byju’s Classes to cater to the after-school learning needs of students. Learning programmes in multiple vernacular languages like Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, and Gujarati have been introduced during the lockdown too.

The surge in investor interest also catapulted Byju’s into India’s second-most valuable startup, also earning it the decacorn status—the handful of startups that are valued at more than $10 billion.

“Byju’s is not only eyeing international expansion actively but also looking at strategic inorganic growth,” said a second person, requesting not to be named.

Companies such as Byju’s and Unacademy are benefiting from the willingness of families to spend a big chunk of their income on education and tutoring to give their children an edge amid rampant unemployment.