Here’s a lowdown of the top deals from the startup space.

Volopay raises $29M in Series A from Winklevoss twins and global decacorn

Corporate cards and payable management start-up, Volopay, announced on March 1 that it had raised $29 million in Series A, a mix of equity and debt, from the Winklevoss twins - Cameron and Tyler along with a global decacorn among others to enter the Indian market.

The round included participation from JAM Fund, Winklevoss Capital Management, Accial Capital, Rapyd Ventures, fintech veterans Jeffrey Cruttenden - CEO of Acorns, Sweta Rau - Founder of White Ventures, Amrish Rau - CEO of Pine Labs and Jitendra Gupta - Founder & CEO of Jupiter, along with Antler Global and VentureSouq.

The part of Series A funds will be put towards their forthcoming market launches, building and innovating new technology to complement their existing product.

“The market opportunity is massive. With India churning out several unicorn-level enterprises every year, it is indeed making a big wave on the global frontier. And this is only the beginning. Accelerating their growth would require an efficient expense management tool that is simple yet scalable, something that Volopay has always aimed for,” said Rajith Shaji and Rajesh Raikwar, Co-founders, Volopay.

With a 150+ member team in Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Volopay’s clientele included the likes of CoinDCX, Livspace, MPL, InVideo, and MX Media.

Education focused fintech startup Kuhoo raises $20M seed fund from WestBridge Capital

Student loan fintech platform Kuhoo has raised $20 million in its seed funding round led by WestBridge Capital.

With the institutional funding, the startup said it is looking to partner banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) as well as top colleges to provide credit to students.

Kuhoo provides digital loans to students applying to universities in India and abroad. At present, it focuses on providing loans for higher education courses, including engineering, business administration, executive education, online courses, among others.

The company competes with the likes of Propelld, which also focuses on providing education loans to individuals, and Sequoia-backed Eduvanz, which lends to individuals looking to reskill and upskill themselves.

Fintech company Snapmint bags $9M in Series A round

Snapmint, a fintech startup has raised $9 million in its Series A funding from a clutch of marquee investors and industry leaders led by Prashasta Seth, CEO and CIO of Prudent Investment Managers.

The round also saw participation of 9 Unicorns, Anicut Capital, Negen Capital, Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma, Usama Fayyad - Chairman of Open Insights and head of Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University, among other angel investors.

With this round of investment, the startup plans to expand its network of merchants, launch a suite of innovative BNPL products and power the purchases of over 450 million consumers in India, it said.

“This investment will boost our expansion plans as we look to grow our merchant partners 50x pan-India and bring a unique shopping experience to our customers,” said Nalin Agrawal, Co-founder, Snapmint.

It has over 4 million consumers on its platform and claims to have clocked over 4x growth in the last six months.

ENGG Online secures $3.5M in pre-series A round for its AR/VR-based SaaS training solution

FEAST Software (ENGG Online), an incubate of Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT-Bombay, has secured equity financing of around $3.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by HNIs, professionals and founders themselves.

Prime Securities Limited was the exclusive Investment Banker to this transaction.

The company will use the funds towards manpower, cost of content development, delivery, and infrastructure required for the expansion of operations.

The firm has company developed a SaaS-based platform for tutors/trainers with a unique pedagogy of experiential learning using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).

“This funding will be used to complete our development of top skills (welding, auto-mechanic, electrician, fitter, mason, etc), for the First Year Engineering Courses at degree & diploma colleges and to develop Safety modules for Industry,” said Naishadh Paleja, Founder and CEO of FEAST Software.

FincFriends closes Series B funding round with $1.1M

FincFriends, a captive NBFC of RupeeRedee has closed its second round of equity funding with $1.1 million raised from existing stakeholder – Digital Finance International (DFI).

Incepted in 2018, FincFriends had previously raised $6 million in 2019 from Digital Finance International, its parent company. FincFriends Private Limited, which is one of the first 100% digital NBFCs registered with RBI. The capital will be utilized in diversifying the NBFC’s portfolio in lending and serving more customers, it said in a statement.

The company is looking to raise capital to expand its customer base, improve offerings and increase the depth of its digital NBFC’s portfolio.

Social currency card startup WYLD gets $350K from Better Capital and others

Social currency card company WYLD has raised $350,000 in a pre-seed funding led by Better Capital.

The round also saw participation from entrepreneurs such as Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta of Image Marketing that sells boAt products, Aditi Shrivastava (Pocket Aces), Malini Agarwal (Miss Malini), Nikunj Lotia (BeYouNick), Pranay Swarup and Julie Kriegshaber (Chtrbox), Rohit Raj (The Glitch), Ankit Kedia (Capital-A), Singularity Ventures, Ganesh Krishnan (Plan B Innovations), Shrishti Sahu, Karthik Bhatt (Force Ventures) and others.

The company will use the fresh capital for tech advancements, developing its payment card and building a robust go-to-market strategy.

WYLD is a phygital payment card and mobile app for active social media users to help them monetise their social influence with every purchase.

Social Alpha, Villgro & Brigade REAP invest $375K in Strawcture Eco

Construction startup Strawcture Eco has raised $375,000 in a seed funding round led by Social Alpha, Villgro Innovations Foundations, and Brigade REAP.

The company said its revenue has grown by 100% in the last two years despite the Covid-19 situation. Some of its key clients include ICICI Infrastructures, Heritage Experiential International School, Jayadeva Hospital, and SELCO Foundation for numerous healthcare projects.

The firm develops high-engineered eco-friendly construction panels out of agricultural residues such as bagasse, paddy straw, and wheat straw

The seed investment will enable the startup to support product development, as well as expand sales and distribution channels to scale up to 18 cities across India, it said in a statement. The company also aims to reduce the carbon emission in the construction sector by 50%.

HairVeda gets pre-seed funding from angel investor

HairVeda, an Ayurveda haircare brand has raised an undisclosed pre-seed funding from angel investor Prashant Kaushik.

This company intends to utilize these funds towards expanding its online reach through marketing and promotion and eventually growing its product portfolio, it said in a statement.

“Our team and stakeholders are looking forward to grow further and collaborate with strategic investors to make HairVeda globally available in USA, Canada, Mexico and many more countries. We also plan to launch our skincare portfolio in 2022,” said Varun Vashisthaa, Founder, HairVeda.

(Edited by : Priyanka Deshpande)

First Published:Mar 1, 2022 7:01 PM IST