Mobikwick and Cardekho have joined the league of unicorns in India in 2021, following another week of funding mania in the startup sector. Unicorns are companies worth over a billion dollars that are privately funded. This week has been fantastic for Indian start-ups as they continue to seek finance from both domestic and international investors.

Leap.club

A professional network for women, leap.club has received $810,000 in a pre-Series A round led by Enzia Ventures, Kunal Shah and its users. Existing investors who participated include Titan Capital, Whiteboard Capital and Artha India Ventures.

“We have a bold mission and ambitious goals to build the best professional network globally with a strong focus on community and women. We want to hit 100,000 members in the next couple of years and launch globally. We already have members from 12 countries and will build complementary product verticals like I&d and jobs as we scale,” said the founders, Anand Sinha and Ragini Das.

Bijak

Bijak, an agritech startup funded by Sequoia Capital's Surge fund, is in advanced talks to raise $35 million (Rs 264 crore) in a round headed by Bertelsmann India. According to them, the current round values the two-year-old business at $200-$250 million.

In April of last year, Bijak raised $12 million in a Series A fundraising round headed by Russian venture capital firm RTP Global, at a valuation of $85-$90 million.

Omidyar Network, Omnivore Partners, and Better Capital are among the startup's investors. Surge is the second batch of Sequoia's business accelerator programme for 2019.

Bijak is a B2B platform for agricultural goods founded in 2019 by Nukul Upadhye, Mahesh Jakhotia, Jitender Bedwal, Daya Rai, and Nikhil Tripathi.

Creative Galileo

An edtech startup Creative Galileo has pumped $2.5 million in funding round. The funding round was led by Kalaari Capital, making it the first start-up to be backed by CXXO programme, the venture fund’s flagship for women entrepreneurs.

Founded in July 2020, the e-learning app for 3-10 age groups has noted around four million downloads and affirms to have five lakhs of active monthly users. Prerna A Jhunjhunwala, Creative Galileo’s founder claims, “It is the fastest growing early learning app in India”. The app has gained progression of in global markets, with 10 per cent downloads coming from countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, UAE and the US.

The new fund raised will be utilized for product management, expanding business, expanding connection with innovative animation houses and hiring.

AnKa SumMor

AnKa SumMor, Bengaluru-Based B2B sales and distribution start-up has hyped INR 11.6 crore in Pre-Series A funding round. It was organized by Inflection Point Ventures. Brijesh Agrawal, co-founder and director of IndiaMart and Pratul Shroff from Waao Partners, also participated in the round.

AnKa SumMor was founded by Ashok George and Rajiv Joshi in 2018. The start-ups provide department stores and warehouse for FMCG brands and challenger. It is a one stop contact to supply all retail networks in city.

AnKa SumMor is partnered with many brands such as Yellow Diamond, Bauli, Wai Wai, Tru Earth, Paper Boat, Om Bhakti, McVities and Yoga Bar etc.

Pristyn Care

Pristyn Care raises $90-110 million fund from Sequoia Investors US and Sequoia India which is already an investor in the company. The start-up may value $1.2-1.4 billion.

Pristyn Care is a Gurugam-based start-up, co-founded by Harsimarbir Singh along with doctors Garima Sawhney and Vaibhav Kapoor three years ago. They provide services like hospital paperwork, free-of-cost surgery consultation, diagnostics support, health insurance claim processing, cab pick-up and drop for surgery, and medicine home delivery. It controls more than 700 partnered hospitals along with 150 clinics and 200 surgeons for urology, vascular, laser, proctology, gynecology, and laparoscopic surgeries.

The start-up also operates over 40 cities across India such as Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, NCR (National Capital Region), Mumbai, and Bengaluru. It also aims at hospital admission, pre, and post-surgical follow-up and expert doctor advice.

FloCareer

Data Point Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Orios Venture Partners all participated in a $5.7 million Series-A funding round for FloCareer.

FloCareer will use the funds to further solidify its position as the leading video interview platform for gig workers in the United States and India.

FloCareer, a video interviewing platform that was launched in 2018, assists hiring organisations all over the world by completing technical rounds of interviews through gig workers. FloCareer combines the power of technology with the expertise of over 3,000 industry-experienced freelance interviewers around the world.

New Entry into Unicorn Club

MobiKwik

MobiKwik, an IPO bound fintech has entered into the $1Bn unicorn club after a few of its employees exercised employee stock option plans. Blackstone India head Mathew Cyriac led the secondary round.

As compared to his first investment earlier this year, Cyriac has invested almost twice in the current round. By November first week, MobiKwik is planning to go for an initial public offering (IPO) at a valuation of $1.5 Bn-$1.7Bn. It had filed its draft red herring prospectus for INR 1,900 Cr IPO.

Founded by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, in 2009, MobiKwik has raised over $165 Mn in primary rounds. Taku and Singh collectively own a 35 per cent stake in the startup. MobiKwik is a fintech platform that offers multiple financial services including insurance, credit and gold loans.

CarDekho

After concluding a $250 million round of fundraising headed by Leapfrog Investments, Girnar Software-owned vehicle portal CarDekho has joined the unicorn club.

According to sources, the pre-IPO deal includes $200 million in Series E equity and $50 million in debt. The fresh financing values CarDekho at $1.2 billion, exceeding the $1.2 billion threshold for a unicorn firm.

Canyon Partners, Harbor Spring Capital, Mirae Asset, Franklin Templeton, and current investors Sequoia Capital India and Sunley House also participated in the round.

According to persons familiar with the situation, the funds will be used to expand the company's used automobile, financial services, and insurance businesses, as well as extend into other areas. An emailed request for comment on the development received no response from CarDekho.

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