1. MoneyOnMobile Is Putting Its Money On Underserved Rural India. It recently announced to infuse $6.2 Mn fund into its Indian subsidiary, as part of its expansion plans.

2. Blume Ventures along with Silicon Valley-based Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Emergent Ventures has launched accelerator platform Arka Venture Labs. Arka Venture Labs will start off with a corpus of about $6 Mn (INR 40 Cr) with all three funds anchoring the investment.

3. Small volume, large amounts in H1 2018 funding show the way for startups. According to YourStory Research, the total funding raised (including PE investments, but excluding debt financing) was $5.03 billion across 420 deals in January-June. This is a decline from the corresponding period last year, when the total funding was $7 billion over 455 deals. The average funding value has stood at $12 million so far this year, as against $15 million in H1-2017.

4. Ex-CEO Of Mu Sigma, Dino Morea And 8 Others Back Photosharing App Vebbler. The other participants in the funding round included existing investors. The amount of funding is undisclosed. Vebbler’s founder and chief executive Sahil Bhagat said the funds will be used for senior-level hiring and marketing.

5. Amazon Pay Receive $33.5 Mn Funding Boost From The Parent Entity. Since May 2017, Amazon Pay has raised more than $100 Mn. With the latest funding, Amazon is looking to increase traction on Amazon Pay with cashback offers for shopping on its site.

6. Sequoia, SAIF And Nexus Invest $21 Mn In Unacademy. Unacademy plans to use the funding to onboard new educators on the platform. Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal (ex-founder and CEO of Flatchat) along with Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta. It was initially launched as an educational YouTube channel in 2011 and then as a free learning platform named Unacademy in January 2016.

7. Online Lending Startup StashFin Looks To Raise $4.3 Mn. StashFin has partnered with NBFC DMI Finance. Will use the funding for onward lending through its online platform. Further aims to augment its portfolio to meet the growing customer needs. It was founded in February 2016 by Tushar Aggarwal, for providing online lending options to the salaried individuals.

8. SME Lending Startup OfBusiness Raises $29.2 Mn In Series C. Creation Investments, Falcon Edge are the lead investors. Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Zodius Capital, also participated. Asish Mohapatra, the chief executive officer of OfBusiness, said he would leverage the ₹200 crore by four times to source funds from banks and other NBFCs for onward lending.

 9. Edtech Unicorn BYJU’S Looks To Raise $150 Mn Funding. Founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran, BYJU’S offers learning programmes for class 6-12 and test preparation for JEE, AIPMT, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT. They launched BYJU’s –The Learning App in 2015.

10. Subscription-Based News Company The Ken Raises $1.5 Mn Series A funding round led by Omidyar Network. The investment was led by Bharath Visweswariah. The Ken was founded by veteran journalists Seema Singh, Rohin Dharmakumar, Ashish Mishra and Sumanth Raghavendra. It provides one original narrative story every day (behind a paywall) for five days in a week. At the same time, it also publishes a free story every week on Wednesday and Sunday.

11. CIIE’s Bharat Innovation Fund Announces First Close Of $100 Mn Fund. The pre-Series-A and Series-A focussed $100 mn fund has secured around 50% commitments from marquee institutional investors. Bharat Innovation Fund invests at the seed or Series A stage which includes grants and venture capital.

12. Welcomecure Raises Undisclosed Amount From Riteish And Genelia Deshmukh. The healthcare platform will use funds for expansion. It claims to have patients in over 36 countries and conducts more than 45K consultations every day.

 

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