CarDekho Raises $110 Mn from Sequoia, Hillhouse and CapitalG

Jaipur headquartered automobile classified portal CarDekho.com has raised $110 million in Series C round of funding from Sequoia India, Hillhouse, CapitalG , the investment arm of Google's parent Alphabet, and Axis Bank.

Cardekho intends to utilize the raised funds in the used-car business, insurance and finance verticals. With latest fundraise, the comany's total funding currently stands at $185 million.

The startup works directly with more than eight car and motorcycle manufacturers that make up for 15-30% of their combined annual sales. CarDekho works with 5,000 dealerships across India. In addition, it works in collaboration with over 10 financial institutions across the country to facilitate used car financing.

“Our used-cars engine has scaled up tremendously and has also enabled us to incubate allied businesses like insurance and finance as they are one of the largest opportunities ahead of us,” Jain said.

The opportunity lies in extending formal credit and insurance coverage to the new-to-formal economy population and will continue to be a focus area for the company, he added.

Launched in 2008 by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain Cardelho also has a presence in countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia under the brand names of ZigWheels and OTO (in Indonesia). The company is reportedly valued close to $500 million however exact value couldn’t be ascertained.

CarDekho raised funding from Tata Group Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata in 2015. Along with its other group sites like ZigWheels, Gaadi, PowerDrift and BikdeDekho, CarDekho competes with companies including Droom, Cars24, CarTrade, OLX and Quikr.

In 2015, Carekho become a pioneer in introducing specialised portals like TyreDekho.com and TrucksDekho.com and CollegeDekho.com.

Cardekho has also made quite a few acquisitions including acquisition of Gaadi.com in 2014 and Zigwheels in 2015. In August last year, Cardekho's parent Girnarsoft acquired PowerDrift, an India’s largest YouTube channel for automotive content.

Girnar Software has also acquired Buying IQ (shopping engine), Drishya360s (virtual reality), Volob Technologies (AR-VR focused visual communications), Connecto (SaaS start-up), Help on Wheels, road side assistance startup.

According to market research firm Mordor Intelligence, the market for used car in India might hit $75-billion mark by 2023, with a CAGR of 15.2% during the forecast period of 2018-2023.

Source - Financial Express

Freshworks Raises $100 Mn from Sequoia, Accel and CapitalG To Become India's First Unicorn in Enterprise Software Space

California and Chennai-based Freshworks, a enterprise software product-based startup, has raised fresh $100 million in a series G round of funding co-led by its existing investors Sequoia and Accel Partners, with participation from CapitalG, a late-stage growth fund of Google's parent firm Alphabet.

With is funding, Freshworks is now valued at $1.5 billion.

Earlier in November 2016, the company was valued at $750 million when it had raised $55 million from Sequoia Capital India and Accel Partners. With today's funding round the total funding raised by the company brings to mere $250 million -- to become India's first Unicorn in enterprise software segment.

In addition to funding, Freshworks also announced that it has hired a former AppDynamics VP of finance and treasury Suresh Seshardi, who helped AppDynamics prepare for its IPO. AppDynamics however got acquired by Cisco instead of going IPO.

Additionally, the company also said that it has scaled to $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

Interestingly, Freshworks co-founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham indicated that Freshwworks may prepare for going IPO (which might be reason of hiring AppDynamics' Seshardi) and this funding will likely be the last private funding round for the company.

“Freshworks hasn’t started the IPO process but we do feel that we will eventually go public in the U.S.,” he said to TechCrunch.

“With that said, our primary focus right now is on growing the business and investing in our platform. When the timing is right, we’ll make that decision," added Mathrubootham.

Founded out of Chennai in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, Freshworks was earlier known as Freshdesk until it re-branded last year to reflect an expansion beyond its core helpdesk product. Now, Freshworks is the parent company behind its several enterprise software products which includes Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales, Freshcaller, Freshteam, Freshchat, and Freshmarketer.

The company's cloud-based suite of SaaS products is widely used by over 150,000 customers around the world including Honda, Bridgestone, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, Toshiba and Cisco.

With offices in California, London, Berlin, and Sydney, a larger chunk of Freshwork's employees are based out of Chennai, India, where it claims around 1,400 people working on product development.

Moreover, the company has also made a substantial amount of acquisitions in span of just two years. Freshwork's last acquisition was in August last year when it made its ninth acquisition - of Zarget, a leading marketing software startup that provides marketers and designers with a suite of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools helping them understand how users interact with their websites.

A month prior to that, it had a href="http://indianweb2/2017/07/20/freshworks-freshdesk-acquires-gurgaon-based-chatbot-startup-joe-hukum/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">acquired Gurgaon-based Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots.

Source - Techcrunch | Business Insider

Freshworks Raises $100 Mn from Sequoia, Accel and CapitalG To Become India's First Unicorn in Enterprise Software Space

California and Chennai-based Freshworks, a enterprise software product-based startup, has raised fresh $100 million in a series G round of funding co-led by its existing investors Sequoia and Accel Partners, with participation from CapitalG, a late-stage growth fund of Google's parent firm Alphabet.

With is funding, Freshworks is now valued at $1.5 billion.

Earlier in November 2016, the company was valued at $750 million when it had raised $55 million from Sequoia Capital India and Accel Partners. With today's funding round the total funding raised by the company brings to mere $250 million -- to become India's first Unicorn in enterprise software segment.

In addition to funding, Freshworks also announced that it has hired a former AppDynamics VP of finance and treasury Suresh Seshardi, who helped AppDynamics prepare for its IPO. AppDynamics however got acquired by Cisco instead of going IPO.

Additionally, the company also said that it has scaled to $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

Interestingly, Freshworks co-founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham indicated that Freshwworks may prepare for going IPO (which might be reason of hiring AppDynamics' Seshardi) and this funding will likely be the last private funding round for the company.

“Freshworks hasn’t started the IPO process but we do feel that we will eventually go public in the U.S.,” he said to TechCrunch.

“With that said, our primary focus right now is on growing the business and investing in our platform. When the timing is right, we’ll make that decision," added Mathrubootham.

Founded out of Chennai in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, Freshworks was earlier known as Freshdesk until it re-branded last year to reflect an expansion beyond its core helpdesk product. Now, Freshworks is the parent company behind its several enterprise software products which includes Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales, Freshcaller, Freshteam, Freshchat, and Freshmarketer.

The company's cloud-based suite of SaaS products is widely used by over 150,000 customers around the world including Honda, Bridgestone, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, Toshiba and Cisco.

With offices in California, London, Berlin, and Sydney, a larger chunk of Freshwork's employees are based out of Chennai, India, where it claims around 1,400 people working on product development.

Moreover, the company has also made a substantial amount of acquisitions in span of just two years. Freshwork's last acquisition was in August last year when it made its ninth acquisition - of Zarget, a leading marketing software startup that provides marketers and designers with a suite of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools helping them understand how users interact with their websites.

A month prior to that, it had a href="https://www.indianweb2.com/2017/07/20/freshworks-freshdesk-acquires-gurgaon-based-chatbot-startup-joe-hukum/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">acquired Gurgaon-based Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots.

Source - Techcrunch | Business Insider

Google's CapitalG Leads $21.5M Funding of Gurgaon-based Aye Finance

Gurgaon-based Aye Finance, a provider of loans to small businesses, has raised $21.5 million (~₹145.2 crore) in its Series C round led by CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), the venture capital fund owned by Google'a parent Alphabet Inc., reported LiveMint.

Other investors who also participated in this round includes existing investors SAIF Partners and LGT, who were part of a $10.5 million investment in 2016.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds into business operations and technology. Till date, Aye Finance has raised a total of $68.4 million in ten different funding rounds.

Founded in 2014 by Sanjay Sharma and Vikram Jetley, Aye Finance is a non-banking financial company (NBFC) that provides mortgage, hypothecation, and term loan services to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). It has 72 branches in 10 states across India.

Aye Finance offers micro-loans to small businesses in India that are not on the radar of banks and traditional financing companies, and also don’t qualify for programs run by the likes of Flipkart and Amazon.

Till date, Aye Finance has disbursed more than ₹500 crore to 60,000 small and medium businesses. It also claims to have around ₹350 crore in assets under management (AUM).

“CapitalG’s access to Google expertise in scaling businesses using analytics and technology will strongly supplement our approach. We intend to cover the large unaddressed MSME finance market that other finance providers have found difficult to service,” said Sanjay Sharma, managing director, Aye Finance in a statement.

According to Kaushik Anand, India head of CapitalG, MSMEs form the backbone of the Indian economy since they contribute a large portion of its GDP; however, they lack access to formal credit.

“Over the last few years, Aye has proven that their model is one of the most efficient ways to deliver credit to underserved MSMEs across industry clusters. We look forward to working with Aye and helping them use technology to address under-penetrated segments of the MSME credit market,” added Anand.

Notably, Aye Finance is second investment of CapitalG in India as earlier, in January 2017 it participated in $15 million funding round of Bangalore-based Cuemath, an after-school maths learning startup. Earlier, when CapitalG was Google Capital, it had invested in India's health-tech startup Practo.

In India, Google made its first direct investment in an Indian startup, picking up a minority stake in Bengaluru-based hyper-local concierge and delivery startup Dunzo.

Alphabet has three main investment arms through which it keep investing in startups built beyond the Googleplex, including GV, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Gradient Ventures, a VC fund focused on artificial intelligence, as well as strategic investments made out of its corporate arm and individual business units.

Google's CapitalG Leads $21.5M Funding of Gurgaon-based Aye Finance

Gurgaon-based Aye Finance, a provider of loans to small businesses, has raised $21.5 million (~₹145.2 crore) in its Series C round led by CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), the venture capital fund owned by Google'a parent Alphabet Inc., reported LiveMint.

Other investors who also participated in this round includes existing investors SAIF Partners and LGT, who were part of a $10.5 million investment in 2016.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds into business operations and technology. Till date, Aye Finance has raised a total of $68.4 million in ten different funding rounds.

Founded in 2014 by Sanjay Sharma and Vikram Jetley, Aye Finance is a non-banking financial company (NBFC) that provides mortgage, hypothecation, and term loan services to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). It has 72 branches in 10 states across India.

Aye Finance offers micro-loans to small businesses in India that are not on the radar of banks and traditional financing companies, and also don’t qualify for programs run by the likes of Flipkart and Amazon.

Till date, Aye Finance has disbursed more than ₹500 crore to 60,000 small and medium businesses. It also claims to have around ₹350 crore in assets under management (AUM).

“CapitalG’s access to Google expertise in scaling businesses using analytics and technology will strongly supplement our approach. We intend to cover the large unaddressed MSME finance market that other finance providers have found difficult to service,” said Sanjay Sharma, managing director, Aye Finance in a statement.

According to Kaushik Anand, India head of CapitalG, MSMEs form the backbone of the Indian economy since they contribute a large portion of its GDP; however, they lack access to formal credit.

“Over the last few years, Aye has proven that their model is one of the most efficient ways to deliver credit to underserved MSMEs across industry clusters. We look forward to working with Aye and helping them use technology to address under-penetrated segments of the MSME credit market,” added Anand.

Notably, Aye Finance is second investment of CapitalG in India as earlier, in January 2017 it participated in $15 million funding round of Bangalore-based Cuemath, an after-school maths learning startup. Earlier, when CapitalG was Google Capital, it had invested in India's health-tech startup Practo.

In India, Google made its first direct investment in an Indian startup, picking up a minority stake in Bengaluru-based hyper-local concierge and delivery startup Dunzo.

Alphabet has three main investment arms through which it keep investing in startups built beyond the Googleplex, including GV, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Gradient Ventures, a VC fund focused on artificial intelligence, as well as strategic investments made out of its corporate arm and individual business units.

Google Holding $11 Billion in Its Startup Investments

Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has shared a result from its years of sizeable startup investing for the first time on Monday: The holdings are worth about $11 billion, according to the company estimates.

A new accounting rule prompted Alphabet Inc. to disclose the fair value for its private stock holdings in earnings reports starting this year. The figure includes the company’s stake in some of Silicon Valley’s most highly valued startups, such as Uber Technologies Inc., Airbnb Inc. and Stripe Inc.

Previously, Alphabet reported private stock holdings based on the price it paid for the shares. Last quarter, the company said those holdings were worth $7.81 billion. After the accounting change this quarter, Alphabet valued them at $11 billion. That contributed $3.40 to the company’s earnings per share.

Alphabet’s largest stake on paper is likely Uber. GV (formerly Google Ventures), the company’s venture capital arm, led a $258 million investment investment in the ride-hailing startup in 2013 when it was valued at less than $4 billion. A recent deal led by SoftBank Group Corp. pegged Uber’s valuation at about $54 billion. Alphabet sold some shares in that offering, and then added some more in a legal settlement in February over self-driving cars, a transaction that valued Uber at $72 billion.

Alphabet has three main investment arms through which it keep investing in startups built beyond the Googleplex, including GV, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Gradient Ventures, a VC fund focused on artificial intelligence, as well as strategic investments made out of its corporate arm and individual business units.

Taken together, Alphabet is one of the most prolific corporate investors in startups. In 2017, Crunchbase data shows that these three main investing arms of Alphabet along with Google itself has invested in 103 deals.

Alphabet invests in privately held companies through a variety of entities, including GV and Google, as well as CapitalG, a private equity fund, and Gradient Ventures, a VC fund focused on artificial intelligence, as well as strategic investments made out of its corporate arm and individual business units.

Taken together, Alphabet is one of the most prolific corporate investors in startups. In 2017, Crunchbase data shows that these three main investing arms of Alphabet along with Google itself has invested in 103 deals.

In India, Google made its first direct investment in an Indian startup, picking up a minority stake in Bengaluru-based hyper-local concierge and delivery startup Dunzo. CapitalG, when it was Google Capital, has had invested in India's health-tech startup Practo.

In 2016, Google launched Project Sand Hill to track hottest startups in 30 Countries including India, Israel and China.

Source - Bloomberg