India has slowly expanded its startup ecosystem over the past ten years as the government and business community collaborate to foster an encouraging climate for business owners. The government's support, the availability of financing, the expansion of the talent pool, and a culture that encourages entrepreneurship are some of the fundamental foundations the Indian startup ecosystem built. While finding capital was formerly a massive problem for entrepreneurs in India, things have changed for the better recently. India today boasts an increasing number of venture capital firms and angel investors, and during the past few years, the nation has witnessed a spike in startup funding.

This week, we saw Vodex raised USD 320k funding in a pre-seed round led by 100X.VC. 100X.VC was the first institutional investor to invest in Vodex; and ToolJet, an open-source platform for low-code developers, has received money from GitHub and M12, Microsoft's venture arm, the business announced.  Here is the compilation of top 10 startups that raised million dollar funds this week.

Vodex

Vodex raised USD 320k funding in a pre-seed round led by 100X.VC. 100X.VC was the first institutional investor to invest in Vodex. Post 100X.VC pitch day, Yash Kotak,Ram Kumar and Devansh Alijar further invested in the company. Vodex intends to utilise the capital for product development and business expansion.

Founded by Anshul Shrivastava and Kumar Saurav, Vodex is serving 30+ customers from 5+ countries. Leveraging state-of-the-art Foundation Models (LLM's) and Generative Voice AI, its voice bots simulate human interactions and deliver intelligent responses in a human-like voice. Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC, said, “The market is highly competitive, and Vodex has successfully carved its niche and unique brand identity over the period of time. It is working with a clear vision to become the industry leader in generative AI-powered outbound calling solutions by offering customization and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Gushwork.ai

Gushwork.ai, a managed marketplace of contractual workers who take up tasks in client companies’ sales and marketing workflows, has raised $2.1 million in a pre-seed funding round, led by Lightspeed. B Capital, Sparrow Capital, Seaborne Capital and Beenext also participated in the round. The startup plans to utilise the freshly-raised funds to drive its next phase of growth and build new product features, it said in a statement.

Gushwork.ai, with over 50 clients in its first three months of commencing operations, currently focuses on sales and marketing operations workflows. The set of clients which include Halsted Financial Services and Tratta.io are spread across India and the United States, with about 80% of them housed in the latter region, co-founder and CEO Nayrhit Bhattacharya told in an interaction. Currently, the New York-headquartered startup has onboarded about 30 contractual workers who it has trained in business and creative software tools such as Midjourney, ChatGPT Plus, Apollo.io to take up tasks of Gushwork.ai clients’ workflows on-demand. The workflows include tasks such as lead prospecting, email marketing, advertisement management, lead engagement on social media platforms, webinar moderation and marketing, social media management, among others.

Jimmy’s Cocktails

Radiohead Brands’ subsidiary, Jimmy’s Cocktails, has successfully extended its pre-Series A funding round to $3 million. The funding was led by Prath Ventures and saw participation from prominent investors, including Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Neel Bahl, and existing backers Keki Mistry, Vishesh Khurana, 7Square Ventures, Vidur Talwar, and Anirudh Somani. The cocktail and sparkling mixers company had previously raised Rs 14 crore ($1.8 million) in an investment round led by Roots Ventures in April of the previous year.

Co-founded by Ankur Bhatia and Nitin Bhardwaj in 2019, Jimmy’s Cocktails has expanded its product offerings beyond cocktails and sparking mixers by introducing ‘Hustle’ to venture into the energy drinks category. The Gurugram-based startup, which is now four years old, has witnessed remarkable growth with its valuation increasing threefold over the past year and 20 times over the last three years since its inception.

Dusminute

Hyperlocal grocery-store and managed services company, Dusminute, has secured INR 11.5 crore in a bridge funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The funds will fuel Dusminute’s expansion plans in Bangalore and further solidify its position as Karnataka’s leading convenience store chain catering to the grocery needs of affluent residents in gated communities. The bridge round saw participation from multiple existing investors and industry veteran angel investors syndicated by angel investor and banker, Bandana Kankani.

Dusminute’s hyperlocal omnichannel platform fills the gap between existing quick commerce and traditional e-commerce players, addressing issues like product quality, delivery time, and unit economics. Targeting the grocery needs of elite residents in apartment complexes, Dusminute aims to create a convenient and timely solution tailored to the requirements of these communities.

Telegram

Encrypted messaging platform Telegram has raised $210 million from several investors via bond sales. The investors include its founder and CEO, Pavel Durov. The fund raise comes as Telegram is still not profitable amid the economic downturn where funding is scarce. John Hyman, Telegram Chief Investment Adviser, told that the platform raised the capital by issuing bonds worth $270 million because "interest rates have gone up significantly since 2021, the bonds have a different issue price".

A set of "well-known funds with stellar reputations" purchased the bonds, according to Durov. Durov said he personally bought about a quarter of the new Telegram bonds, investing "tens of millions into Telegram's growth".Telegram Messenger is one of the top-5 most downloaded apps in the world. In Summer 2022, it passed 700 million monthly active users. The company is based in Dubai.

Bureau

Identity decisioning startup Bureau has raised an additional round of equity money of around $4.5 million. This takes its overall funding to $20.5 million. Japanese tech giant GMO Venture Partners and GMO Payment Gateway led the round, infusing approximately $3 million, with the rest coming from existing investors. Through this strategic round, Bureau will also work closely with GMO Payments.

Bureau is backed by Quona Capital, Blume, Village Global and others, which had led its series A round back in 2021. The San Francisco- and Bengaluru-based tech startup offers identity verification services to Indian tech companies. It helps them verify whether customers are authentic and also helps reduce fraud attacks. Bureau has evaluated around 300 million identities till date.

In an interaction, Bureau founder Ranjan R Reddy said that the company is working with more than 90 customers across fintech, banking, and gig economy platforms, as well as gaming and matrimony websites. “We authenticate whether the customer who is onboarding on an app is a genuine one, is actually who he or she claims to be, and is sharing the right credentials,” Reddy said.

Prikus Tech

Bengaluru-based cybersecurity startup, Prikus Tech, has successfully secured approximately $6.2 million in a seed funding round. The funds will be utilized to drive the development of new products and expand the company’s global workforce, as per report.

Established in 2018, Prikus Tech specializes in providing Pen Testing Services, which involve conducting simulated cyber attacks to assess vulnerabilities within systems and mitigate potential cyber threats. In line with its growth plans, Prikus aims to introduce PrikSec, a unified Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) offering tailored for enterprises. Prameel Arjun, Founder and CEO of Prikus Group, emphasized the need for robust security measures amid the expanding application landscape and increased cloud presence of clients. He stated, “This poses a huge challenge for continuous security posture management, and traditional pen testing that is completely human-dependent fails to meet this speed and scalability challenge.”

RenewBuy

RenewBuy, a Gurugram-based insurtech startup, has successfully secured $40 million in a Series D funding round from Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc., a prominent Japanese insurance company. This investment is part of RenewBuy’s ongoing Series D fundraise, which has garnered interest from various high-profile investors and is anticipated to conclude shortly.

RenewBuy, established in 2015 by Balachander Sekhar and Indraneel Chatterjee, has achieved remarkable success in empowering insurance advisors through digital solutions. As a result, 70% of the company’s business originates from beyond the top 30 cities in India. Traditional insurance companies have traditionally focused on these major urban centers due to high fixed costs, making expansion challenging. RenewBuy, leveraging technology, has introduced substantial efficiency into the sales process and aims to provide consumers with better pricing options. With insurance penetration levels still low, the company foresees exponential growth over the next two decades.

ReDesyn

Real Time Angel Fund (RTAF), an early-stage investor, led an investment round to obtain Rs 3.5 crore ($426,584) for ReDesyn, a platform that assists digital content creators in making money from their audience. Sukhbir Singh, a vocalist, also participated in the round. With the additional capital, ReDesyn will be able to diversify its product offerings, grow its user base, and bring on new producers.

ReDesyn, founded by Shikhar Vaidya, gives creators and influencers a platform to connect and monetize their communities by promoting brands, products, and services through the creator's on-platform e-commerce store. The Real Time Angel Fund, in contrast, is a sector-neutral fund with an emphasis on consumer technology, healthtech, fintech, agritech, personal care, and SaaS. Additionally, it offers networking assistance to startups with technical know-how and international commercial connections.

ToolJet

ToolJet, an open-source platform for low-code developers, has received money from GitHub and M12, Microsoft's venture arm, the business announced. The investment's dollar sum has not been made public. Prior to its establishment in 2021, ToolJet raised $6.1 million from venture capitalists and angel investors including Nexus Venture Partners, Ratio Ventures, Better Capital, January Capital, and others.

ToolJet will use the funding to expand its personnel and develop its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within the platform. At ToolJet, Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil serves as both founder and CEO. Prior to that, Kalathil cofounded MobioPush, which Freshworks acquired in 2015. The M12 GitHub Fund cofounder and partner Priyanka Mitra stated, "We are committed to supporting ToolJet in their mission and are impressed by Navaneeth and the Tooljet team and their approach to low-code enterprise app building via the engagement of the open source community. We believe that low-code development is a key way for businesses to accelerate their innovation.