After a blockbuster last week, this week 5 of 2022 was a little tempered in deal activity. The week belonged to M&As in tech, which we will cover first before getting to other deals.
M&As in Tech
There were in total 6 M&A deals of which 3 were in the internet/tech space.
- The largest of the lot was probably, the messaging platform Gupshup acquiring Knowlarity Communications for an undisclosed amount. This deal paves way for Gupshup to offer richer experiences to customers in the conversation-based engagement market.
- We also saw Infibeam acquiring Uvik, the digital payment processing startup in a 75 cr deal.
- There was a rare sport and fitness acquisition with fitpage acquiring India Running which runs a platform to sell products and services preparing runners.
Other deals
- In other deals, we saw the asset-light logistics platform Loadshare raising 300 cr from Tiger and others to scale its operations. Several family offices had participated in this deal as well, which is a new trend that we have been seeing for a while. Adding color to the family office advisory and wealth management sector, was another deal in which Waterfield advisors raised a 45 cr round from undisclosed investors.
- In the financial services space, gold savings app Jar, raised about 240 cr from Tiger and others and again some significant participation by angels in this round.
- Bombay shaving company raised 210 cr form Gulf Islamic Investments and Malabar. The company already has global FMCG majors Colgate Palmolive and Reckitt in their cap table.
- There were more gaming deals this week, with Nautilus game development studio raising 40 cr from Korean gaming major KRAFTON, in a bid to deepen its markets beyond cricket. The other deal of interest in the sector, was Oneto11 a blockchain based gaming startup raising 19 cr from a clutch of institutional investors.
- On the tech side we had proptech startup POPT raised 15 cr from MRW ventures and others. While info security startup Scrut raised 22 cr from Lightspeed, Endiya partners, and others for scaling its virtual CISO offering primarily targeting compliance. In a smaller deal, enterprise AI startup CyborgIntell raised 8 cr in a pre-series A round.
- On the agritech side, we saw one deal where Eekifoods raised 15 cr from Avaana Capital and others to scale the tech, team and merchandise.
And finally, the ongoing recursive nature of startup funding startups to fund other startups. Infoedge backed Zomato backed Shiprocket invested 11 cr in Logibricks (h/t @sumanthr). Closing with that meta-max, we will bring you more deals next week.