The week clearly belonged to financial services with 11 fintech deals out of the 48 we had recorded in PrivateCircle.co. Before we get to that busy sector, let us briefly look at more than 100 cr deals this week.
Mega deals
- The largest deal of the week was Reliance’s 1670 cr investment into Sanmina JV to manufacture electronics hardware in the country.
- The second largest deal was in specialized glass manufacturer Gold Plus as it received 600 cr investment from Kotak Special Situations Fund and Premjiinvest.
- Zetwerk secured a 227 cr funding from Mars Unicorn fund at a valuation of 22725 cr.
- Pocket FM raised 492 cr from Goodwater Capital, Tanglin Venture, and Naver to expand into other languages’ content and its AI capabilities.
- Video-based instant live tutor startup Filo raised 174 cr from Anthos and others in a large Series A.
- Personal care brand mCaffeine has raised Rs 152 cr from Singularity AMC and Amicus to fuel its organic expansion plans.
Finance deals
Now let us see the range of deals in the Finance sector.
- Largest among these was Belstar Microfinance raising 275 cr from Aurum Holdings Private Limited, Muthoot Finance Limited, and Maj Invest Equity.
- Curated student loan product startup Kuhoo has raised Rs 150cr from WestBridge Capital to further its partnership with banks and NBFCs.
- BNPL platform Snapmint raises 68 cr in a Series A round led by Prashasta Seth, Anicut Capital, and others to expand its network of merchants and further its EMI options to consumers.
- Junio that eases kids purchasing online and in app, raises 45 cr in pre-series A round led by UAE-based NB Ventures.
Downstream we saw more finance sector deals in:
- Open finance start-up Upswing (raised 30 cr from QED Investors)
- 100X.VC-backed Lending Platform Pocketly (raised 22 cr in Pre Series A)
- ClaimBuddy (raised 23 cr in preseries A),
- RupeeRedee NBFC (raised 8 cr in series B),
- WYLD (payment card for social media influencers, raised 2.6 cr pre-seed),
- KredNote (that solves credit challenges of small businesses raised a seed of 1.1 cr),
- and Chhotastock (an equity investment platform, raised seed as well).
In the commerce space, we saw JustDogs raising 53 cr from Sixth Sense and D2C travel accessories startup Acefour Accessories raising 11 cr in a seed round. Prozo Distribution raised 75 cr led by Sixth Sense Ventures for its b2b ‘retail as a service platform.
NCT, Mumbai, and Bangalore startups dominated the deals this week. Seed and Early stage deals were about 25 and the rest were in the growth/late stage (16). PE/VC deal volumes were buoyant, but we will keep a watch on values as they are trending down.