Electric (vehicle) Week

Mega Deals

1. The largest of the deal this week was Shiprocket raising 1400cr from Zomato, Temasek, Lightrock, and others valuing it at 7186cr. Whether it will become a unicorn before the end of the year or not is the question.
2. CureFit raised 1088cr from Temasek, South Park Commons, Zomato, and others at a 11700cr valuation. We know where the IPO proceeds of Zomato are going in. This reminded me of the open letter from Infina Finance MD to InfoEdge on its Zomato investment. Now we can expect another letter from another investor to Zomato for investing in non-core assets.
3. Ola stable this week saw some massive funding action, with Ola raising 1049cr from Edelweiss and IIFL, possibly in pre-IPO deals. While Ola Electric got another 398cr from Temasek in Series C, taking the total amount raised to 5556cr. We noted Temasek being common across all the above deals.
4. Pristyn became a unicorn with its latest fundraise of 641cr from Sequoia, Tiger, Trifecta, and others. Tiger also led a round in Bizongo taking its valuation to 4512cr.
5. Agrostar raised 530cr from Evolvence, Schroder’s capital and others for building its tech platform and is already hinting at inorganic growth opportunities on the agri-input side business.
6. MoEngage raised additional capital of 226cr in a round led by Steadview capital, taking its valuation to 3775cr. Otipy raised 193cr from WestBridge, SIG, Omidyar Network, for scaling its farmer to consumer fresh food community.
7. On the software and tech side we noted a successful IPO of RateGain with a 1335cr raise, for its travel/hospitality SaaS business. Suki.AI raised 414cr from March Capital and others for further developing its AI based clinical / medical products. Softbank invested 376cr into SenseHQ talent engagement and staffing SaaS platform.
8. On the ed-tech side we saw upGrad acquiring Talentedge for 400cr giving impetus to its higher education business. With so much money raised by these larger learning platform businesses consolidation is looking inevitable.

Electric Vehicle deal

Beyond the Ola electric vehicle deal covered previously, we also saw EV Bike Startup Ultraviolette Automotive getting 113cr from TVS Motors and Zoho. There were also 2 other deals in the sector, where we saw Axiom being acquired by Magenta on the EV manufacturing side and Exponent energy raising a 37cr series A.

Other deals

Lending as a business seems to be an evergreen interest area for funders, recent one being LenDenCLub raising 75cr from Tuscan and Artha venture funds, and no brownie points for guessing that Kunal Shah also participated here.

Sector-wise concentration this week clearly was in the electric vehicles businesses, while learning platform and agri/b2b procurement also saw sustained action. Early stage deals dominated this week. Will be back with more deals next week…well may be some more unicorns before we wrap the year.