Unicorns
First comes the unicorns, Ola Electric raises Rs 1,485cr led by Falcon and SoftBank at Rs 22,275cr valuation, Meesho raises Rs 4,235cr in Series F round; valuation doubles to Rs 36,407cr, Tiger Global leads Rs 1,486cr in Series F round in OfBusiness at Rs 22,290cr valuation and a new unicorn add Vedantu joins unicorn club after Rs 742cr funding in Series E round from Temasek-backed ABC World, others. That puts a total of about 8000 crores into unicorns for the week. Sense of size: This amount of funding into unicorns is close to what Karnataka collected as GST during the month of September 2021.
Thematic deals
3 themes that came glaring at us this week were lending (6 deals), learning platforms (6 deals), and EV infrastructure (2 deals).
CredAvenue raising Rs 667cr in Series A round led by Sequoia Capital and SOSV and Venture Catalysts leading Rs 12 cr Pre Series A round in The Money Club indicate that debt offerings and their design based on the need and behavior of users and startups in the area is here to grow (p2p or otherwise, individual/corporate, collateralized or not). There was also these unique Strip Finance type that raised Rs 3.5 cr in a seed round where NFTs are given as collaterals.
Learning platforms albeit smaller deals (by value) seem to be having large momentum in deal volume, with the pandemic being so long and models to try seem never-ending. In this week alone apart from the massive Vedantu deal we have 88 academics developing India-specific content for the K-12 segment raises 22 cr, Striveon trying the group learning methods, Pravika taking a stab at the exam and test preparations or Mentza attacking everyday learning with audio raising 2 cr from Inflection point. Downstream we note Unacademy showing commitment to Relevel with a 142 Cr infusion to give further impetus to finding jobs for the learners.
EV big news seems to come from the Olas and TVSs, but the elephant in the room is the charging infrastructure, there were significant deals in the area as well. One deal by BP Ventures leading a Rs 185cr Series A round in EV ride-hailing and charging startup BluSmart and another deal in the Flexible energy stack from Exponent energy. We clearly see signs of industry veterans in logistics, EV manufacturers, and specialized mobility-focused funds coming together for the critical need.
Other deals
There were 2 accelerator/entrepreneurship support programs that came to a close with demo/pitch days including 100X Vc (8 startups) and Entrepreneur First (6 startups). And that’s a wrap folk.
Click here to read more about Navigating Challenges for fundraising.