News

Yulu’s Indore launch showcases an industry-first franchise partner-led model for democratising shared mobility in India.

Chemistry pioneer Chemify has secured £36m in funding to develop its technology to make complex molecules on demand.

Glasgow-based Chemify today announced the Series A round led by Triatomic Capital, joined by new investors including Hong-Kong based Horizon Ventures, US-based Rocketship Ventures, Possible Ventures, Alix Ventures, Scotland-based Eos, and the UK Government Innovation Accelerator program. Existing investor BlueYard Capital also participated in the round.

Bloom, a zero-commission stock investing tool for teenage investors, reached 1 million downloads after launching in February 2022.

The startup founded by Allan Maman and Sam Yang provides a brokerage account and teaches those aged 13 and older how to build wealth through interactive lessons on investing, stocks and finance. So far, users have taken over 10 million lessons, Maman told TechCrunch.

In this episode, Nishchay Ag, co-founder and CEO of Jar, talks about how there is a massive addressable gap in India’s middle class with financial products that go beyond the top 30 million that everyone is targeting. Nishchay talks about how he and his friend Misbah Ashraf went from a few WhatsApp group pilots to 10 million users at Jar, in just two years, helping people save money by investing in gold, every day. With close to $65 million in funding, Jar is changing how millions of small-town Indians save, one user at a time

The exclusive partnership is a milestone achievement as it marks the first time a KSA corporate bank has partnered with a fintech

Silicon Valley startup CloudChef says its artificially intelligent software could be the future for restaurants

You don’t need a passport, private jet or even an in with the chef to eat dishes from the best restaurants around the world. You just need software and sensors.

A Palo Alto-based food tech startup has built the technology to impeccably recreate dishes from any chef and have it delivered to you. CloudChef, which launched Jan. 31, has started this feat of “food and aroma on the Internet” with a small yet impressive group of chefs in the Bay Area and India, including Thomas Zacharias, formerly of New York’s three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin and Mumbai’s Bombay Canteen, named one of the 50 Best Restaurants in Asia. And the chefs haven’t been able to differentiate their dishes from the CloudChef version in a blind taste test.

Yuma Energy to set up battery swapping infrastructure for electric two-wheelers; plans to scale up the network to 500 stations across multiple Indian cities by end-2023.

BENGALURU, India—Technology that can pull water out of thin air could help solve the world’s growing water scarcity problem, but most solutions are expensive and difficult to scale. Indian startup Uravu Labs says its low-cost modular approach could provide a blueprint for more affordable and sustainable atmospheric water harvesting. What comes out of the pipe, the company’s website says, is “100 percent renewable water”—renewably powered, harnessed from a vast and nearly inexhaustible source, and with no wastewater produced in the process

Mad Street Den, a leader in Enterprise AI, today announced a fresh round of Series C funding led by Avatar Growth Capital, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Alpha Wave Global (formerly known as Falcon Edge Capital). The investment will enable Mad Street Den to expand its artificial intelligence offerings across industries.

Wasabi becomes technology’s newest unicorn with backing from L2 Point, Cedar Pine, Cerberus, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and others

KitaLulus, an Indonesia-based career platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of series A funding in a round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Goodwater Capital, Rocketship.vc, and Gojek investment arm Go-Ventures.

A seven-month-old fintech app that is helping millions of Indians to begin their investment and saving journeys for the first time in their lives has attracted the attention of Tiger Global.

The Bengaluru-based Jar said on Thursday it has raised $32 million in its Series A financing round, just months after securing its seed funding.

The New York-headquartered investor led the new round, with participation from scores of investors, including Rocketship.vc, Stonks, Force Ventures, Arkam Ventures, Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson, Suleman Ali of Ali Capital, Shamir Karkal of Sila Money, Byron Ling of Cannan Partners and Joel John of Ledger Prime.

Lightspeed Venture Partners-backed edtech platform Teachmint, operated by Teachmint Technologies Pvt Ltd, has bought MyClassCampus, an educational enterprise resource planning software, which enables campuses with end-to-end digitisation of their operations, management and communication, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Fintech firm Khatabook said it has achieved a milestone of over Rs 1.8 trillion monthly recorded transactions across its platform – Khatabook, Cashbook, and BizAnalyst. Founded in January 2019, Khatabook claims it has 10 million monthly active merchant users, managing more than 344 million customers on its platforms. Khatabook is India’s fastest growing SaaS (software-as-a-service) company that enables micro, small and medium businesses to increase efficiency and profitability through safe and secure digital solutions.

Khatabook, a leading fintech start-up, has closed a $100 million Series C funding round, with a valuation now close to $600 million. The round was led by US-based VC firms Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures (MSV). Other investors in this oversubscribed series C round were Alkeon Capital, with continued investment participation from internal investors B Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, RTP Global, Unilever Ventures, and Better Capital. In addition, top Silicon Valley investors Balaji Srinivasan, Sriram Krishnan participated as independent investors among others in Khatabook’s series C funding round.

Animall Technologies, a Bengaluru based startup that operates an online platform for buying and selling dairy and cattle, has raised Rs 102.62 crore in a Series B funding round from new and existing investors.

Locus, a startup that uses AI to help businesses map out their logistics, said on Wednesday it has raised $50 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence.

The new round, a Series C, was led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC. Qualcomm Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global Management and Falcon Edge also participated in the round, which brings the startup’s to-date raise to $79 million. The new round valued the startup, which was founded in India, at about $300 million, said a person familiar with the matter.

Online real estate rental startup NoBroker saw a windfall of funding from marquee investors Tiger Global and General Atlantic, amounting to nearly $129 million during the fiscal year ending in March 2020.

Flush with funds, the Bengaluru-based company, which saw 2.1X growth in scale during FY19, has scaled at a quick pace in FY20. However, the growth in the last fiscal has come at a significant cost.

Klarna, a Stockholm, Sweden-based financial service company, announced that it acquired a German company called Stocard.

According to German media sources, the deal was made for €110 million ($130M).

Indonesia-based fintech company BukuWarung, helping micro-SMEs (MSMEs) digitize their business, announced on Thursday to have raised $60 million in Series A funding

Quizizz, an Indian startup that is making learning more interactive so that students find it compelling to spend more hours studying, said on Wednesday it has raised $31.5 million in a new financing round.

Private equity major Tiger Global has invested $18.5 million in this round. Other investors include Quiet Capital, Rocketship VC, Nirman Investments, AL Trust, Better Capital among others.

How big is the market in India for a neobank aimed at teenagers? Scores of high-profile investors are backing a startup to find out.

Bangalore-based FamPay said on Wednesday it has raised $38 million in its Series A round led by Elevation Capital. General Catalyst, Rocketship VC, Greenoaks Capital and existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital and Venture Highway also participated in the new round, which brings FamPay’s to-date raise to $42.7 million.

A B2B ecommerce platform for industrial products, nearly 65 percent of Moglix’s business comes from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns in the country

There is a seemingly never-ending stream of ticketing companies, each with its own twist on how to bridge the divide between ticket buyers and the acts, teams or events which go on sale. The challenges are many, including imbalance of supply and demand, intervention by speculators, and mispricing both on the high and low side at the original point of sale.

Saudi B2B ecommerce marketplace Sary has raised $30.5 million in a Series B round led by VentureSouq, it announced today. The round was also joined by Silicon Valley’s Rocketship.vc, STV, and returning investors Raed Ventures, MSA Capital, and Derayah VC. It takes Sary’s total investment raised so far to over $37 million, making it one of the best funded startups in Saudi and the best B2B ecommerce marketplace in the region.

With the beginning of its journey in 2017, Yulu Bikes has been the driving force behind India’s shift in the mobility sector toward more sustainable electric vehicles. With its mission to make mobility affordable, accessible, and available to an ever-increasing consumer base, Yulu has been a key player in this development trajectory.

Taking on Amazon S3 in the cloud storage game would seem to be a fool-hearty proposition, but Wasabi has found a way to build storage cheaply and pass the savings onto customers. Today the Boston-based startup announced a $112 million Series C investment on a $700 million valuation.

Education technology startup Quizizz has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by Eight Roads Ventures along with participation from GSV Ventures, Rocketship VC and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Prime Venture Partners.

The round also saw participation from GSV Ventures, Rocketship VC and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Prime Venture Partners

The funding is led by Will Ventures, with participation from Rocketship VC

Mint Talent Group, which represents 180 artists, has partnered with ticketing platform Lyte to offer a reservation system for concerts that haven’t been announced yet

Lyte, a San Francisco, CA-based ticketing reservation technology platform for live events, raised an additional $5m as part of a Series B round initially announced in December.

BukuWarung, an Indonesian startup focused on digitizing the country’s 60 million small businesses, announced today it has raised new funding from Rocketship.vc and an Indonesian retail conglomerate.

A story of two characters ‘Miracle’ and ‘Move’, ‘Yuluing away to glory in the urban streets of India. The therapeutic duo has set out to liberate citizens from a mindset of convenience and callousness. And from human actions that is causing climate change.

Javed, a middle-aged man, worked as a driver before losing that job earlier this year as coronavirus spread across India, prompting New Delhi to enforce a nationwide lockdown and temporarily curb several business activities.

There are millions of people like Javed in India today who have lost their livelihood in recent months. They are low-skilled workers and are currently struggling to secure another job.

An Apple alum thinks he can help. Through his app startup Apna, Nirmit Parikh is helping India’s workers learn new skills, connect with one another and find jobs.

Outsourcing corporate technology to the cloud was popular before Covid-19 — now it’s even more popular.

While cloud services — valued at $233.4 billion in 2019 growing at 26%, according to IDC — is a critical source of growth for industry leaders Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, there are startups offering competitive cloud storage services — one of many offerings by the big three — that are growing much faster than these industry leaders.

A case in point is Boston-based Wasabi Technologies, a provider of object storage services that compete with AWS’s S3 at 20% of the price. Whereas the industry grew at an average 31% rate in the most recent quarter, Wasabi’s revenues soared 5.5-fold between January 2019 and January 2020 and are expected to triple in 2020.

Springboard, an online education platform that provides upskilling and reskilling training courses to people looking to learn in-demand roles, has raised $31 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand to more geographies

Crosschq, pioneers of a new software category for the recruiting industry called Human Intelligence Hiring™, announced today a new round of financing that includes investment from Tiger Global Management and Rocketship.vc. This latest round comes immediately following a strategic financing from Slack and SAP.iO in June which also included re-investment from GGV Capital and Bessemer Ventures.

Urgently expects increased miles driven to propel year-over-year growth of mobility and roadside assistance volumes to as much as 130% this summer, as pandemic restrictions lift and consumers take to the road for leisure travel.

Bengaluru-based last-mile micro-mobility platform Yulu on Monday announced that it has raised a fresh funding of Rs 30 crore led by US-based VC firm Rocketship and existing investors.

Three Indian startups have made their way to coveted 2020 list of 50 future Unicorns. These are fintech platform-CRED, edtech firm- Vedantu and B2B ecommerce company-Moglix. Unicorns are startups with a valuation over $1 billion.

Camera Kit enables Triller users to interact with special Snapchat Lenses inspired by artists and songs

Today German fintech startup Stocard, one of the world’s leading mobile wallets and one of the largest B2C startups in Europe in terms of number of users, officially launches in the UK and unveils a mobile payment feature as it reaches 50 million users globally.

We may be in the thick of a pandemic with all of the economic fallout that comes from that, but certain aspects of technology don’t change, no matter the external factors. Storage is one of them. In fact, we are generating more digital stuff than ever, and Wasabi, a Boston-based startup that has figured out a way to drive down the cost of cloud storage, is benefiting from that.

Privacy.com offers a free way to generate one time use card numbers – but you can also do so much more.

Founded by IIT and IIM graduates Amit Kumar Agarwal, Akhil Gupta and Saurabh Garg, the Bengaluru-headquartered start-up now offers a range of services apart from real estate such as packers-and-movers services, a visitor and community management app called NoBrokerHood, and home-services such as home-cleaning, home-painting and air-conditioning repairs, among others.

Khatabook,  a startup that is helping small businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept payments online with an app, has raised $60 million in a new financing round as it looks to gain more ground in the world’s second most populous nation.

Paperspace, a leading provider of AI cloud computing, today announced Paperspace Gradient is certified under the new NVIDIA DGX-Ready Software program. The program offers proven solutions that complement NVIDIA DGX™ systems, including the new NVIDIA DGX A100, with certified software that supports the full lifecycle of AI model development.

Springboard, the online learning platform that bridges the skills gap, announced today a COVID-19 relief scholarship fund that will award up to $500,000 to prospective students whose lives have been directly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. This relief scholarship is in addition to the $1.2 million already awarded and is now available to current students and prospective students applying to the next cohort starting on May 26.

A product roadmap clarifies the why, what, and how behind what a tech startup is building. This week, we take a closer look at B2B ecommerce platform Moglix and how it is using technology to digitally transform the supply chain of India’s manufacturing sector.

Startups and SMEs are in a precarious situation now more than ever. Companies are struggling to manage volatile demand, fleet and resource efficiency, and rising costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Locus, a global B2B SaaS company that automates human decisions in supply chain, has launched a free tool ‘QuickStart,’ a self-serve lite version of the product suite for startups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to address these very problems.

Thanks to video-streaming apps and services, couples who choose to get married while self-isolating can share their special moments with family and friends.

NoBroker, a Bangalore-based startup that helps those looking to rent or buy an apartment connect directly with property owners, has extended its previous financing round to add $30 million to it.

Karma, a Swedish food-waste startup, has done a good job of convincing thousands of deal-hungry consumers to use its hot pink app to buy edible items that would otherwise become garbage.

In addition to being an entrepreneur and VC, Anand Rajaraman is a computer science professor at Stanford with a trained eye for how new organizations can apply deep learning and other AI/ML techniques across various industries.

Having the opportunity to sit down with Anand, founding partner at over six organizations, and hear his perspectives on the current state of data and algorithms in the VC landscape, was time well spent.