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

CoinDCX bags over $135 mn in Series D round at a valuation of $2.15 bn

Crypto trading platform CoinDCX has closed an oversubscribed round, over $135 million, in their Series D funding led by Pantera and Steadview with participation from prominent investors like Kingsway, DraperDragon, Republic, and Kindred.

The funding round also saw existing investors such as B Capital Group, Coinbase, Polychain, and Cadenza increase their investments in CoinDCX, pushing the firm’s valuation to $2.15 billion.

With this round, CoinDCX claims to have become the highest valued crypto company in India. It will continue to invest in strengthening education, innovation and compliance around Crypto and Web3 Industry.

CoinDCX also aims to triple its talent pool to over 1000 employees by the end of 2022 through its various outreach programs, research initiatives, and strategic investments.

InfoEdge & Village Global lead $30 mn seed round in Recur Club

B2B fintech platform Recur Club has raised $30 million in one of the largest seed rounds in the country. The round which was a mix of equity and debt was led by InfoEdge Ventures and Village Global.

Zomato and PB Fintech investor InfoEdge Ventures and Silicon Valley fund Village Global, have invested $2 million in equities of the parent company. Meanwhile, the remaining $28 million was raised in debt from Aditya Birla Finance, U GRO Capital, Incred Financial Services, and a few others. The transaction was advised by Capwise Financial.

Angel investors in the round included Kotak Investment’s MD S Srinivasan, AZB & Partners founder and Senior Partner Bahram Vakil, PointOneCapital’s General Partner Archana Priyadarshini and LogiNext’s founder Dhruvil Sanghvi.

The company said that it planned to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand its sales and engineering teams.

Recur Club works with all companies with predictable annual revenue from existing customers of at least $100,000. Financing begins from $10,000 for growth-stage companies. It caters to every company with predictable recurring revenue streams across SaaS, services, Ed-Tech, D2C subscription, media, insurance, among others.

“Recurring Revenue Companies (multi-trillion dollar market) have highly predictable cash flows with the only problem being lagging revenues vs their CAC spends. This gap was being funded by diluting equity or by offering huge discounts on revenue. We introduced an efficient way which works like your customers paid you today that has resulted in us to achieve 5x growth in the last 2 quarters with over 500+ companies and $150 million+ of listed ARR (expected to reach 2,000+ companies and listed ARR of $1 billion+ by end of 2022). a $28 million debt allocation which we have been able to raise to finance companies reiterates investor trust in our platform, team and underwriting,” said Eklavya Gupta, Founder and Co-CEO, Recur Club

Recur Club is working with companies including the likes of Avatar Ventures-backed Heal Software, Keka HR, Apis partner backed Xoxoday, co-living firm Hooliv, etc.

“Our ‘Club’ members get access to $500,000+ worth of specially curated deals from AWS, Microsoft, Hubspot. Our tech-first approach is a significant improvement in terms of speed, flexibility and convenience all of which translates into our vision of becoming a full-stack financial suite for founders,” added Abhinav Sherwal, Recur Club.

Loop gets $25 mn from General Catalyst and Elevation Capital

Loop, a healthcare and insurance startup has secured $25 Million in its Series B round co-led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital.

The round also saw participation from leading Silicon Valley investor - Vinod Khosla and Khosla Ventures, as well as a new investor, Optum Ventures.

This fresh investment comes just 6 months after Loop raised a $12 mn Series A round, bringing the total funds raised the startup to $40 million, till date.

The company said it will use the fresh funds to drive sales growth, product development, and strategic hiring in their efforts to scale their new health assurance delivery model to millions of people across India.

Loop claims to have recorded 30% month-on-month in FY 2021-22. The firm said it has seen a 5x revenue growth from the previous financial year driven by phenomenal adoption by new customers. At present, Loop provides health insurance and benefits to 1,30,000+ members across 300+ companies pan India. Their corporate team has grown from 50 to 250 and is currently operational in Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

Actor Anushka Sharma invests an undisclosed sum in Millet-based startup Slurrp Farm

Actor Anushka Sharma has invested an undisclosed amount in millet-based startup Wholsum Foods. With this investment, the actor has joined the company as an investor and brand ambassador.

Sharma will also advocate for Wholsum Foods' flagship brand Slurrp Farm and all future brands it will launch as it aims to become a house of brands.

As per the firm, as a new mom herself, the actor’s values strongly align with that of Wholsum Foods’ core purpose of developing millet-based products with zero junk ingredients.

This is not the first investment made by the actor. Anushka Sharma recently joined alternative meat startup Blue Tribe Foods as an investor and brand ambassador. Anushka and her husband, Virat Kohli, invested an undisclosed amount in the startup.

Wholsum Foods currently clocks in Rs 55 crore of revenue run rate and aims to reach Rs 150 crore annual revenue run rate in March 2023. Sharma’s investment comes soon after a $7 million funding round led by Investment Corporation of Dubai, the sovereign wealth fund of the Government of Dubai, and Fireside Ventures. ra

Audio OTT platform Headfone secures $10M in Series B round

Headfone, an audio OTT platform, has raised $10 million in its Series B funding round led by Elevation Capital.

The round also saw participation from existing investor Hashed as well as prominent angels such as Ajit Mohan, Founding CEO, Hotstar; Biswa Kalyan Rath, Entertainer; and Anshumani Ruddra, Group PM, Google.

Headfone currently offers content in Hindi. The new funds will be used to diversify content offerings across languages and to expand across genres, it said in a statement.

There are currently 3 million monthly active users on its platform with 52 minutes as average daily time spent per active user on the app. There are a total of 800,000 content pieces on the platform, which has been growing at a 10% CMGR for the past 2 years, the firm added.

Fintech startup SaveIN gets $4 mn in seed funding

Buy Now Pay Later platform for healthcare, SaveIN, has raised $4 million in seed funding round from Y-Combinator, 10X Group, Leonis VC, Goodwater Capital, Nordstar, Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, Soma Capital and SCM Advisors.

The round also saw participation from one of Europe’s top angel investor Oliver Jung, Grant Park Ventures, Leblon Capital, Almagro GmbH, MyAsiaVC, Kube VC, Spenmo Founder Mohandass Kalaichelvan and serial healthcare entrepreneur Vimal Kavuru among others.

“We aim to utilize these funds for accelerating product development, strengthening in-house teams in engineering, product, data sciences, and sales while growing our network of healthcare practices across the country,” said Jitin Bhasin, Founder and CEO, SaveIN.

Within three months of launch of its flagship Care now, Pay later product, the startup said it has onboarded over 500 healthcare and wellness clinics across 5 cities of India.

EV charger manufacturer Tirex Transmission raises $2 million

Tirex Transmission, an EV charger manufacturer, has raised $2 million from an ultra HNI investor.

This fund will be used to fuel its growth and R&D efforts for international markets where the US is the first country of focus, according to a statement.

Tirex offers a complete range of fast and slow electric vehicle chargers for four-wheelers, commercial and passengers buses, trucks and more with a wide voltage range from 3.3KW to 360KW and all different connectors.

BlackSoil invests $1.5 mn in blue-collar recruitment startup WorkIndia

Blue-collar recruitment startup WorkIndia, has received $1.5 million in venture debt funding from BlackSoil.

The startup plans to deploy the funds towards extending its product to multiple geographies across India and strengthen its fraud detection technology.

It focuses on solving structural challenges faced by blue or grey collar employees or candidates by providing a one-stop platform for accessing jobs across the nation, precisely matched to their skills. WorkIndia has a presence across more than 600 cities, catering to over 1.5 million SMBs and over 25 million candidates.

Social crypto discovery startup Flippy raises $1.15M from Redstart Labs, launches operations in India

Social crypto discovery platform Flippy has launched its mobile app in India with an investment of $1.15 million in its seed round which led by Redstart Labs, a wholly-owned subsidiary of InfoEdge. The round also saw participation from Entrepreneur First, Justin Caldbeck, Alex Lin, and Anirudh Rastogi.

The funds will be used to focus on building a team of junior and senior-level engineering talent to scale flippy’s operations, the company said in a statement.

Flippy allows users to invest through relatable thematic baskets, making diversification possible with a single click. Users can access a range of informative content through this platform and view investment portfolios of successful crypto-space influencers. The company currently has 1000 users and aims to reach upto one million users in the next 18 months

The firm has partnered with leading crypto exchanges such as Bitbns, Krypto and Unocoin, and is in talks with CoinDCX, Zebpay and WazirX to allow users to link their trading accounts and complete their investments from the flippy platform itself.

Shobitam raises $1.5 mn in seed funding

D2C ethnic brand Shobitam has bagged $1.5 million in a seed funding round from Hearth Ventures and angel investors.

With $1.1 million in sales in 2021, the firm said its revenue has tripled compared to 2019. Shobitam claims to have grown 300 percent in the last two years and made Rs 9 crore in revenue.

IIMA’s CIIE.CO invests in OneImpact Technologies

OneImpact Technologies, an agri-fintech startup that helps dairy farmers with credit accessibility, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round from CIIE.CO.

The company aims to use the fresh funds to scale up loan disbursements to dairy farmers and validate proof of concept,serif; font-size: large;">OneImpact aims to help farmers with improved mechanisms for lending using digital technology, AI & ML capabilities for identification, risk profiling and diversification for credit portfolio.