Indian unicorns are thriving in today's fast-paced and dynamic economy.These startups not only create innovative solutions and technologies, but they also create large-scale employment. Despite the fact that many'soonicorns' were waiting in line, the year 2022 saw a record set for new entries into the coveted unicorn club.While the promising Indian startup ecosystem, on the other hand, is facing significant challenges, which can be attributed to current global macroeconomic condition.

The week was fantastic! As we saw some major fundings are happing across India. Blume Ventures has made the final close of its fourth India-dedicated fund with a corpus of $250 million to Blox, a technology-based real estate buying platform, raised $12 million or nearly Rs 100 crore in a series A funding round .

Here are the list of 5 startups that excelled this week!

Blume

Blume Venture's Karthik ReddyEarly-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures has made the final close of its fourth India-dedicated fund with a corpus of $250 million, its biggest so far and more than double the previous fund.

Indian limited partners — predominantly large family offices and the Small Industries Development Bank of India — accounted for 40% of the money raised in Fund-IV, with the rest coming from overseas family offices, foundations, sovereign funds and corporates.

The final close of Blume’s Fund-IV comes at a time when venture funds focused on investing in the region have been raising record capital despite a global macroeconomic downturn and a year-long funding crunch, compounded by the public market rout of technology stocks in the US.

RENEE Cosmetics

Ahmedabad-based makeup brand RENÉE Cosmetics has raised $25 million in Series B funding round led by Evolvence India. The round also saw participation from Edelweiss Group and existing investors Equanimity and 9Unicorns. The deal was facilitated with the support of Spark Financial Holdings.

With this funding, the company is moving towards building its mission of making RENEE Cosmetics a globally-recognised Indian beauty brand. This also leads to creating a $100 million valuation for the brand in a little over two years of operations, which is inclusive of a total of $35 million across three rounds of funding, RENEE Cosmetics said in a statement.

Ashish Agarwal, Managing Partner at Edelweiss Group, said, "We are thrilled to partner with RENÉE Cosmetics. Their products have path-breaking packaging-form innovation that delivers convenience and quality. Under the leadership of Ashutosh, Priyank, and Aashka, RENÉE is well-positioned to become a leading cosmetics brand."

HealthKart

Foodtech platform HealthKart said it has raised $135 million in a funding round led by Temasek, with participation from A91 Partners and Kae Capital. The omni-channel nutrition retailer said the funds raised will be deployed towards the growth of in-house direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, increase offline distribution, expand international operations and make select acquisitions.

"Driving fitness and preventive health by addressing the nutritional gaps is a systemic trend which is taking off in a big way in India. With HealthKart's R&D capabilities and omni-channel distribution infrastructure, we are excited to lead the way," said Sameer Maheshwari, Founder and CEO, HealthKart.

At more than Rs 1,000 crore annual revenue run rate, HealthKart has two leading brands - MuscleBlaze and HKVitals. MuscleBlaze now has 25 per cent share of India's sports nutrition market while HKVitals has 20 per cent share of online health supplement market, the platform claimed.

OneGreen

Eco-friendly e-commerce platform OneGreen raised $1.5 Million in its Pre-Series funding round led by Venture Catalysts, India's 1st integrated startup incubator. The round also saw participation from Sandhar Technology, Shoumyan Biswas (Ex-Flipkart) Sunil Kamath (CBO, Koo), Varun Duggirala (Founder Glitch), and Varun Laul (Board member,XpressBee).

"Enabling businesses that are driven by the pursuit to make a difference in the lives of people is the need of the hour. OneGreen presents an opportunity to create a holistic impact on India with unique offerings that are eco-friendly, conscious, and cater to the cause of creating a future that is cooperative, sustainable, and accountable. We look forward to leveraging our resources and expertise to grow OneGreen into one of the largest e-commerce platforms for verified health & wellness products," shared Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Founder, Venture Catalysts on leading the round.

Ranked as the World's No.2 Early Stage Investor by Crunchbase, 2016 established Venture Catalysts has its presence across 47 Indian cities and international locations such as Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, UAE, UK, and USA. The entity invests in 2-15 crore range for startups through HNIs, Family Offices, CXOs, etc.

Blox

Technology-based real estate buying platform Blox has raised $12 million or nearly Rs 100 crore in a series A funding round - the largest in the proptech sector in India. This funding round was backed by its existing investors from Silicon Valley, new strategic investors and angels including Kunal Shah, founder of CRED. The company is planning to utilize the funds raised for market expansion, boosting the product portfolio, and building data infrastructure across customers, brokers, and developer segments.

Blox is a fully integrated online real-estate service that allows customers to make their home-buying experience as seamless as possible. It provides instantaneous site visits along with complete transparency and convenience through its comprehensive home-buying experience. It assigns a relationship manager to every homebuyer to assist with virtual and physical site visits across the city.

“We are stoked to receive this round of funding from our existing Silicon Valley investors, new strategic investors, and angels, along with Kunal Shah. It reaffirms their faith in our vision to lead India’s property technology transformation and disrupt the $100 billion real estate market. Blox was conceptualized with the aim to democratize real estate by keeping customers at the center of the equation and making real estate purchases joyful again, by delivering the end-to-end purchase process,” said Blox Founder and CEO, Aditya Jhaveri.

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