The week that Was: Indian Startup News Overview (10th April-15th April)


The week that Was: Indian Startup News Overview (10th April-15th April)

The Indian startup economy has been booming in recent years. This week has seen a lot of activity on multiple fronts, including the formation of new startups, the amount of funding and the number of venture rounds, the influx of global investors and startups, the development of regulatory infrastructure, global mergers and acquisitions, and internationalisation. There are numerous entrepreneurial success stories. Today, India has 26 unicorns, with few more members joining the club in 2022. In the midst of all of this excitement, it's worth considering how the Indian startup ecosystem got to where it is now. They say that history repeats itself, but our intentions are more focused on understanding the patterns of evolution.Therefore, in this weekly review article we present you another list of startups that performed excellent this week.

Ava Labs

Ava Labs, which was founded in 2018, also raised a $6 million round in 2019 from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain. According to PitchBook, the company has 170 employees and  people are familiar with the discussions, Ava Labs Inc., the lead developer of the Avalanche blockchain, is in the process of raising a new round of funding. Its new valuation would make it one of the world's most valuable cryptocurrency startups. The company was founded and led by Cornell University professor Emin Gun Sirer, is raising $350 million at a valuation of $5.25 billion, as per to one of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the round has not been made public.

Avalanche is attempting to compete with Ethereum and Solana by providing fast transaction speeds and low transaction fees for applications ranging from trading and lending to gaming. It has gained popularity among users and developers, who attended the Avalanche Summit in Barcelona in March. According to the tracker DappRadar, there are nearly 250 active apps running on Avalanche, with many of them in decentralised finance or gaming. As per CoinMarketCap.com, the elated AVAX token has a $21.5 billion market cap and a price increase of about 19 percent in the last

EPNS

Ethereum Push Notification Service raised $10.1 million (roughly Rs 76 crore) in a token round, with a $131 million average valuation. As per CoinMarketCap, EPNS's native virtual asset token Push had a fully diluted market capitalisation of $128 million at the time of writing this article. The funding will be used by the EPNS team to expand the notification protocol beyond the Ethereum ecosystem, beginning with the Polygon network, strengthening products, and increasing its team size from 30 to 60. It intends to reach a million users. Tiger Global, ParaFi, Sino Global Capital, Polygon Studios, Woodstock Ventures, DCX Ventures, and Alpha Wave Capital were among the investors in the round led by Jump Crypto. EPNS, founded in 2020 by Richa Joshi and Harsh Rajat, is developing a web3 communication protocol. The protocol allows any smart contract, decentralised application (dApp), or traditional server to send notifications tied to a user's wallet addresses.

Myraah

Indian technology start-up, Myraah, has raised $350,000 as pre-seed funding led by CEO & Co-founder of Xceedance, entrepreneur and technology enthusiast Arun Balakrishnan; Gurgaon based angel investor’s Xcelerator Venture Partners and other angel investors. This fund will help Myraah build a Web 3 platform that allows anyone to create their Web 3 digital identity and manage their digital assets such as files, pictures, music, videos, notes, documents, NFTs, domains and websites. Myraah's Web 3 platform will enable netizens to claim ownership and monetize the content they create on the internet.The firm has already invited their 70,000+ user base to try out the Web 3 platform.This year, the company intends to onboard 500,000 users to subscribe to its Web 3 products and services. Arun Balakrishnan, entrepreneur and technology enthusiast, said of his investment in Myraah, "I have always taken a keen interest in start-ups working with transformational technology."Myraah's Web 3 platform, I believe, has the potential to change the internet space in India by giving users control over their content."

Uniphore

Uniphore, a conversational automation platform, announced on Wednesday the acquisition of Colabo, an AI-powered knowledge automation solution, for an undisclosed sum. According to the company, Colabo specialises in extracting and utilising information from structured and unstructured documents in real time. Uniphore, Colabo's AI solution powers customer engagement solutions by combining knowledge from any digital and physical content into a seamless, personalised omni-channel experience."This acquisition brings together unique capabilities to arm enterprises with new tools that provide quick resolution to consumer queries and empower agents with real-time, actionable information," said Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO of Uniphore.

Lazypay

PayU's 'buy now, pay later' service LazyPay has announced a partnership with Zepto, a 10-minute grocery delivery platform backed by Y Combinator, to expand into the rapidly growing quick commerce market."With this partnership, LazyPay forays deeper into the hyperlocal/quick-commerce segment, further strengthening its merchant base of over 38,000," the company said. The partnership, when combined with LazyPay's rapid adoption of the BNPL solution, will redefine the grocery shopping experience for Zepto customers." The partnership, as per the company, could help accelerate Zepto's client adoption by leveraging LazyPay's large customer base. Zepto will benefit from LazyPay's near-perfect success rate, which will reduce cart abandonment, in addition to quick checkouts.