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

Headout bags additional $30 mn as a part of its Series B round

Travel-tech startup Headout has secured an additional $30 million in Series B financing round in addition to the $12 million raised in September last year from existing investor Glade Brook Capital.

This brings the total round size to $42 million. Nexus Venture Partners, FJ Labs, 500 Startups, along with angel investors like Sriharsha Majety (CEO, Swiggy), Ankit Sobit (CTO, Postman) and Ranjeet Pratap Singh (CEO, Pratilipi), among others too participated in the round.

The funds will be used to accelerate its journey to $1 billion in annual sales by expanding to 500 cities in the next 24 months, launching new verticals for domestic short-haul travel and building the next generation of technology products to make real-life experiences immersive and affordable. The company is actively pursuing acquisitions in travel, entertainment and AR to build the future faster, it said in a statement.

Headout claims to have delivered 800 percent growth since January 2021 by doubling down on domestic travel and local demand which used to be a minority segment in the pre-pandemic era. As per the company, it became EBITDA profitable in July 2021. So far, 10 million people from more than 190 countries have been on a Headout experience across 30+ cities.

PUBG maker Krafton invests in Nautilus Mobile

Mobile game development studio Nautilus Mobile, owned by JetSynthesys, has secured $5.4 million in a funding round led by the South Korean gaming company – KRAFTON, makers of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, popularly known as PUBG.

This is the company’s first investment in a game development studio in India.

“We are committed to enhance the video game ecosystem in India and this is yet another step in that direction,” said Sean Hyunil Sohn, India head of KRAFTON.

The funding will help Nautilus deepen its penetration in more markets globally and broaden its scope to other games in addition to cricket, Nautilus said in a statement.

“With the massive adoption of mobile gaming in India, fuelled further by the pandemic, the industry has reached an interesting juncture and we are all excited to jet speed into the future. KRAFTON has been a key player in the global mobile gaming space and we’re glad to join forces with them to take our Indian studio on to a global stage. With this partnership we aim to scale Nautilus Mobile’s already robust gaming portfolio bolstering their growth trajectory further," said Rajan Navani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, JetSynthesys.

In 2021, Krafton had invested $22.5 million in JetSynthesys’ e-sports venture, Nodwin Gaming. Other investments include game streaming platform Loco, storytelling platform Pratilipi and gamified dating app Frnd.

Nautilus Mobile was set up in 2013 and acquired by JetSynthesys in October 2020. Post this investment JetSynthesys will continue to hold majority stake in the company. Nautilus claims to have a community of 10 million monthly active users.

Disruptors Capital gets SEBI’s green signal to launch Rs 120 crore VC fund

Early-stage venture capital fund Disruptors Capital has received a nod from the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to launch its Rs 120 crore early-stage venture capital fund.

The fund approved by the SEBI as Category-I Alternate Investment Fund (AIF) will invest in tech startups across India, Southeast Asia and the Bay Area in the US, the company said in a statement.

“I noticed that the founders were struggling to raise institutional rounds due to structural gaps and lack of guidance during early stages of building their ventures. Disruptors Capital aims to bridge this gap for founders by supplementing capital with strategic guidance needed, in the early stages of breaking ground,” said founder Raj Snehil Juneja.

The VC firm’s typical ticket size is Rs 50 lakh-3 crore. It prefers to come in at the seed or pre-Series A level. It invests in startups at early or predictable revenue stages.

So far, their participation has spanned SaaS startups across enterprise in tech, edtech (Purple Tutor, Playto Labs), consumer tech (AndOr Communications) and deeptech/AI (Lincode.ai).

Of the investments it has made have so far, the ARR between $600,000 -2 million, with 70 percent of the revenues for all businesses coming from outside India.

Proptech startup POPT raises funds at a valuation of $2 mn

Homegrown prop-tech startup POPT has raised funds at a pre-seed valuation of $2 million from two Canada-based angel investors--MRW Ventures and Riar Holdings.

The company will use its initial funds for research and development activities, statistical analysis, standardisation, and to build a full-stack SaaS-based IT solution for retail buyers and sellers, developers, agents, and real estate companies.

Additionally, existing features like listing, filtering and searching, marketplace, and related sector services will be included with a better look and feel. POPT said it is working to set up aggressive and innovative USPs and will divulge its business model for agents, bankers, retail buyers and sellers, to position itself for services in housing, rentals and commercial property sector.

Founded in 2021, the company is bringing tech solutions in the real estate sector to help buyers, investors find the right property seamlessly and are also aligning and graduating the perspective of sellers, promoters, and buyers.

IndiaP2P gets pre-seed funding from Antler India

High-yield investment platform IndiaP2P has raised pre-seed funding from Antler India.

The company will use the fresh capital towards strengthening its technology backend and increasing supply of investment products to serve investor demand, it said in a statement.

The platform creates investment products for retail investors to earn yields up to 18 percent per annum. The platform employs proprietary technology along with sophisticated risk management practices, previously available only to institutional investors, in order to develop its retail investment products.

Brick manufacturing startup ZERUND raises capital from NEVF

Brick manufacturing start-up ZERUND has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A round from NEDFi Venture Capital.

The Assam-based startup has raised Rs 4 crore in funding till date.

“We have witnessed 85 percent month-on-month traction in terms of sales, and further to the demand are looking forward to expanding rigorously. By the end of this fiscal year, we are expecting to register 500 percent YoY growth,” said David Pratim Gogoi, Co-founder and CEO, ZERUND.

The brand plans to utilise the part of the raised investment to set up a new facility that will have five times more capacity than the current one. It expects to multifold its revenue from the new facility in place.

Kaagaz bags funding from Y Combinator

Document-scanning app Kaagaz has been accepted into the accelerator program by Y Combinator. The company also announced today that it has clocked 10 million downloads.

With over 2.5 million monthly active users, Kaagaz over the past 18 months has evolved into a Documents Super App with features such as Document Scanner, PDF Reader, PDF Editor, Design Creator & Cloud Storage.

With the recent funding from Y Combinator, Kaagaz aims to move swiftly towards its vision by making its feature set more diverse and rich. The Renal Project raises equity from Namita Thapar, Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta

The Renal Project, a chain of centres providing affordable dialysis services to chronic kidney disease patients in Western India has completed an equity capital raisefrom Thapar Vision.

Thapar Vision LLP is in the process of investing further capital into the company very shortly, a statement said.

100X.VC backed The Renal Project has a shop-in-shop model of collaborating with existing hospitals to set up dialysis centers in a capital-light manner and also provides at-home dialysis services.

First Published:Feb 3, 2022 9:13 PM IST