The Week that Was: Indian Startup News Overview (14th June- 20th June)


The Week that Was: Indian Startup News Overview (14th June- 20th June)

India is an epicentre of cultural, grassroots, and frugal innovation. When you factor in a population of over one billion people, it becomes an exciting location for startups to develop scalable and repeatable business models. The favourable demographics and dynamic economy have elevated India to the status of ideal cradle for new-age startups. Despite the fact that many startups die prematurely, some are re-energizing the Indian economy to a significant extent, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. For several years, the Government of India has also encouraged entrepreneurial activities through its Startup India Initiative. As a result, a growing number of Indian entrepreneurs are entering the market, seeing the opportunity to capitalise on their unique ideas.

Last week was entirely focused to large fundings, with some startups raising funds from both new and existing investors. Text Mercato, a content technology and cataloguing startup, has raised $2.6 million in a pre-Series A round led by 1Crowd, Mount Judi Ventures, and Innospark Ventures to Vtion Digital Analytics, a SaaS-based data analytics startup, has raised $1.3 million in a new funding round led by Gurgaon-based YourNest Venture Capital.

Here is the compilation of top 5 startups that raised million dollar funds this week.

Text Mercato

Text Mercato, a startup focused on content technology and cataloguing, has raised $2.6 million in a pre-Series A round led by 1Crowd, Mount Judi Ventures, and Innospark Ventures.The round was also attended by Modulor Capital, Tremis Capital, and a few angel investors.The funds raised in the round will be used to expand the company's international footprint. Text Mercato, founded in 2011 by Kiran Ramakrishna and Subhajit Mukherjee, provides content writing and cataloguing services through its suite of AI products.

Over 50 brands, including Nykaa and Myntra, are served by the company, which processes over one million stock-keeping units (SKU) per month. Last year, it claims to have tripled its revenue.

Milky Mist

Milky Mist Dairy Food is in talks with private equity funds such as ChrysCapital, Kedaara, Multiples, True North, TA and Temasek to raise $100-120 million in what would be its first institutional funding, four people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

“The final binding bids are expected to be in towards the end of the month or early next month. The deal is likely to close next quarter,” said one of the people. The dairy and fresh foods firm has appointed Chennai-based investment bank Veda Corporate Advisors to help it with the funding process. Spokespersons for Temasek and Veda Corporate Advisors declined to comment. Spokespersons for Multiples, Kedaara, True North, TA, ChrysCapital and Milky Mist did not respond to emailed queries till press time Sunday. Milky Mist was set up by T Sathish Kumar, a high school dropout hailing from a family of farmers, in 1992. It began with selling milk and has entered value-added products such as milkshakes, flavoured yogurt, butter, cheese variants and UHT products. The company has a 55-acre plant in Perundurai, Tamil Nadu, and supplies through a retail network of more than 1,50,000 outlets.

PayGlocal

Payment solutions startup PayGlocal has raised $12 million in a new round of funding co-led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India. BeeNext and angel investors like Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, Citrus Pay and Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta, and Cred’s founder Kunal Shah also participated in the round.

Founded in 2021 by payment industry veterans Prachi Dharani, Rohit Sukhija, Yogesh Lokhande and Ruby Jain, PayGlocal enables merchants to accept cross-border payments in the currency of their choice, using their cards or non-card payment options. The firm has over 100 merchants on its platform and has raised nearly $17 million in funding so far, it said. "We have observed remarkable growth within just 14 months of launch and received phenomenal feedback for our platform from merchants who are happy with the increase in international payments success rate and a reduction in the risk associated with the processing of cross-border transactions,” Dharani of PayGlocal said. The startup will use the funds raised in this round to scale its business and launch new payment solutions.

Goat Brand Labs

Goat Brand Labs, an ecommerce roll-up firm, has raised $50 million in a mix of equity and debt financing. Winter Capital, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Vivriti Capital, and Oxyzo joined the round, as did the majority of existing investors, according to a statement from the company. Existing investors include Flipkart Ventures and Tiger Global.Even after the roll-up ecommerce frenzy had subsided, this deal was in the works.

The funds would then be raised by Goat through convertible share warrants. When the company's next round of funding is completed, investors will be able to convert their warrants into equity shares. In its statement, Goat did not provide any information about the use of share warrants. Roll-up commerce companies acquire or buy majority stakes in multiple online sellers that operate on Amazon and other online marketplaces, and with the aid of better management and shared expertise, help them sell better.

Vtion Digital Analytics

Vtion Digital Analytics, a SaaS-based data analytics startup, has raised $1.3 million in a new funding round led by Gurgaon-based YourNest Venture Capital. It intends to use the funds to accelerate its India expansion by scaling its advertising activation strategy and panel enhancement, as well as to drive global market expansion.Manoj Dawane founded Vtion in 2018 to provide real-time analytics data and media consumption measurement techniques for broadcast radio, bringing together various ecosystem stakeholders.

"Every day, the Vtion platform generates over 20 million unique events and is used by marquee brands in India for sharper segmentation and efficient message delivery," Dawane said in a statement on Wednesday.