OLA's EV Unit Raises $41 Mn from Tiger Global, Matrix Partners

Ola Electric Mobility, the Electric Vehicle (EV) unit of ANI Technologies that owns the home-grown cab-hailing firm Ola, has raised close to Rs 292 crore (~ US$41 million) from global investment firms Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, and Sarin Family India LLC (family office of ex-Vodafone chief executive officer Arun Sarin), according to regulatory filing by the company sourced through the data and business intelligence platform Paper.vc.

Notably, this is the first time Ola Electric Mobility has raised external funding as an independent unit of Ola.

The board of director of Ola Electric Mobility has issued and allotted “1993 Series A compulsory convertible preference shares of face value of Rs 10 each of the company, at an issue price of Rs 14,61,523,” to the above investors, said the filing documents.

Tiger Global, Matrix, and Sarin are already investors in Ola, the parent company. Tiger Global is an early investor in Ola as it invested $10 million in cab-hailing firm in 2009 when Ola raised the Series A round, followed by Matrix Partners.

Incorporated as an independent entity in February 2017, with the aim of providing services across EV value chain, Ola Electric Mobility will raise a total of Rs 400 crore (~ US$56.5 million) in this round, which will be led by the same set of investors.

Last year Bhavish Agarwal, Co-Founder of Ola, announced its commitment to bring 1 million EVs on Indian roads by 2021. According to its "Mission- Electric" plan unveiled last year, the company had announced plan to place 10,000 e-rickshaws and e-autorickshaws in its service within a year’s time.

Recently, in December, Ola had invested $100 million in Vogo, a scooter rental startup based out of Bangalore, which will allow it to add Vogo fleet of two-wheelers to the Ola app to enable its users to rent the two-wheeled devices.

In May 2017, Ola launched Ola Electric in Nagpur, which was India’s first multi-modal electric platform that includes electric autos, cars, and buses. Ola and Mahindra had partnered with the Government of India in a first-of- its-kind programme to build an electric mass mobility ecosystem in Nagpur.

In April 2016, Pune-based Electric bike startup Tork Motorcycles had raised an undisclosed amount from a host of marquee investors including Ola founders Bhavish Agarwal and Ankit Bhati.

Via ~ Business Standard

Conversational Bot Making Startup Anaek Raises Seed Funding Via Matrix Partners

Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint.

The startup hasn't disclosed the amount of funding raised however a LiveMint report said the Anaek had raised roughly $1 million, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to strengthen its technology and product platform, the company co-founder Kanav Abrol told the media.

The startup has a suite of conversational bots to help companies in HR and office tasks like attendance management, expense filing, and assists in office administration tasks, among others.

Founded in 2016 by Ex-PepperTap executives Kanav and Ujjwal Grover, Anaek currently has only 10 employees and a majority its clients are in the US while India is relatively a smaller market for the startup.

“Instant messaging has permeated workplace communication across markets, paving the way for seamless employee interactions. Anaek’s enterprise chatbots help employees complete routine business processes in a simple and efficient manner,” said Tarun Davda, MD, Matrix Partners India.

The chatbots have already started proving to be the player of a huge deal for India, where cheap devices are accelerating the annual growth in smartphone adoption to a massive 36 percent each year for the next five years.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Increasing number of startups are trying to enter the conversational bot market with an aim of getting established in the bot commerce such as Indore-based Zipi and Niki.AI, which is backed by Ratan Tata, — are two major chatbot based startups from India.

Furthermore, according to a report published by Oracle, about 80% of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Last August, Bengaluru-based Touchkin, which has built a mental health chatbot ‘WYSA’, had raised $1.3M in Seed Funding in a round led by Kae Capital.

To recall, in November Phonon Communication had acquired Gurgaon-based Chatbot startup iDelivr.

Conversational Bot Making Startup Anaek Raises Seed Funding Via Matrix Partners

Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India, reported Live Mint.

The startup hasn't disclosed the amount of funding raised however a LiveMint report said the Anaek had raised roughly $1 million, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The startup will use the freshly raised funds to strengthen its technology and product platform, the company co-founder Kanav Abrol told the media.

The startup has a suite of conversational bots to help companies in HR and office tasks like attendance management, expense filing, and assists in office administration tasks, among others.

Founded in 2016 by Ex-PepperTap executives Kanav and Ujjwal Grover, Anaek currently has only 10 employees and a majority its clients are in the US while India is relatively a smaller market for the startup.

“Instant messaging has permeated workplace communication across markets, paving the way for seamless employee interactions. Anaek’s enterprise chatbots help employees complete routine business processes in a simple and efficient manner,” said Tarun Davda, MD, Matrix Partners India.

The chatbots have already started proving to be the player of a huge deal for India, where cheap devices are accelerating the annual growth in smartphone adoption to a massive 36 percent each year for the next five years.

Related Reading - Anatomy of Bots, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Increasing number of startups are trying to enter the conversational bot market with an aim of getting established in the bot commerce such as Indore-based Zipi and Niki.AI, which is backed by Ratan Tata, — are two major chatbot based startups from India.

Furthermore, according to a report published by Oracle, about 80% of the companies surveyed are interested in making use of chatbots within a period of next 4 years so as to take their customer service to another level.

Last August, Bengaluru-based Touchkin, which has built a mental health chatbot ‘WYSA’, had raised $1.3M in Seed Funding in a round led by Kae Capital.

To recall, in November Phonon Communication had acquired Gurgaon-based Chatbot startup iDelivr.

Student Accommodation Startup Stanza Living Raises Funding from Matrix and Accel Partners

Delhi-based student accommodation platform Stanza Living has raised funds in its first round of institutional funding via Matrix Partners and Accel Partners. According to one report, the amount of fund raised is ₹13 Crore.

The startup will use the funds to expand into new cities, upgrade its technology platform, and for hiring.

Founded in 2017 by Anindya Dutta and Sandeep Dalmia, Stanza Living is a technology-enabled, high-quality student accommodation concept which is seeking to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar student housing market by putting the student, as a consumer, at the heart of the product and service design, development and execution. From smart space planning in rooms to gamifying food, from creating common areas for engagement and community living to delivering reliable, predictable and standardized services to residents through back-end technology integration, Stanza is challenging the status quo when it comes to student community living.

The startup has around 100 students on its platform and plans to have 5,000 in the next two years.The cost per student ranges from Rs7,000 to Rs25,000, depending on the specifications of the accommodation.

"We are currently building another 300 housing spaces focused on students. We do not operate as a PG/rental aggregator, but instead focus on student accommodation services loaded with all facilities like internet connectivity, recreational spaces, housekeeping, and food services,” said Anindya Dutta in a statement to Livemint.

Operating in market that is estimated at $10 billion, the startup currently operates only in Delhi and looking to widen its scope to cities that are educational hubs in the country such as Kota, Pune and Dehradun.

Mumbai Based CreditVidya Secures $5 Mn From Matrix Partners

B2B financial data technology platform CreditVidya has raised $5-million (Rs 32-crore) in Series-B round of funding led by Matrix Partners. The current round of funding also saw participation from existing investor Kalaari Capital. Post this round, the total capital raised by CreditVidya touches about $7 million.

The company plans to use freshly infused funds to add a wide range of fraud and verification services to its existing big data underwriting platform. Not only this, to enable better implementation of the AI-based algorithms, the company is looking to scale up its employee base from 74 to 100 over the next 6-9 months.

Commenting on the development, Vikram Vaidyanathan, MD at Matrix Partners said, “Every bank and NBFC has now embraced technology-based sourcing and underwriting to help bridge the credit gap for first-time borrowers. We believe in CreditVidya's approach to enabling alternate data-based credit underwriting for this lending ecosystem. Their ability to find unique insights by acquiring and processing complex da ta while giving very simple tech solutions sets them apart.”

Founded in 2013 by Abhishek Agarwal and Rajiv Raj, CreditVidya is harnessing the power of big data and advance machine learning techniques to re-imagine, recalibrate and re-build credit scoring. Together, Agarwal and Raj bring a wealth of expertise from their backgrounds in credit risk management, data analytics, nd retail lending. The company’s clients includes banks and nonbanking financial institutions such as Fullerton India, Bajaj Finserv, IDFC Bank, Tata Capital and Shriram Housing Finance. It has also garnered interest from other verticals such as insurance companies, e-commerce companies and e-wallets.

Being a financial technology startup headquartered in Mumba, CreditVidya’s technology platform uses non-traditional data sources to provide credit scores to hundreds of millions of Indian customers.  The technology platform helps lenders accurately assess risk of new-to-credit and thin file customers.  Lenders benefit from increased approval rates, lower cost of underwriting and more effective product cross-selling and upselling.

Abhishek Agarwal, Co-founder, CreditVidya, said “By leveraging the India stack, we have managed to reduce the cost of underwriting for a small ticket loan by over 50% and reduced the turnaround time for loan disbursal from several days to under 30 minutes. Most of the work we have done so far is in unsecured products such as two wheeler loans, personal loans and consumer durable loans.”

Earlier in December 2016, the technology startup has partnered with Fullerton India to offer alternative data-based authentication and verification services. In June 2016, the company has raised $2 million in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital. Prior to this, CreditVidya has received angel funding from Siddharth Parekh from Paragon Partners and Silicon Valley-based angel investor Munish Mehta.  

Promising Fintech Startup Finomena Shuts Down Amid Funding Crunch

Bangalore-based fintech startup Finomena has shuts its shops after it failed to raise series-A funding and now it is no longer accepting new users on its website. The startup was funded by notable private equity firm Matrix Partners.

One can get an idea that how promising the startup was with the very fact that it is the only fintech company from India to have made it to "International Innovator of the Year award" by LendIt USA 2017, the world’s largest show in lending and fintech.

Launched in 2015 by IIT-Delhi graduate Abhishek Garg and Stanford graduate Ridhi Mittal, Finomena used to facilitate small ticket loans to students and young professionals for buying electronic devices and appliances and for same it had inculcated data and machine learning to reassess the creditworthiness of borrowers for the disbursal of loans.

Before starting finomena, both the co-founders were previously worked at places like Facebook, Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group and Bain Capital.

NOtably, Flipkart and other e-commerce firms also have a partnership with Finomena where the startup allows loan seekers to key in links of items on the e-commerce marketplace they want to buy with a loan.

"The company was in the market to raise series A funding since early this year, but that didn’t materialize. There were two buyout offers too. That failed because of valuation,” said a report by Moneycontrol.

The startup had raised its seed round from Matrix Partners and angel investors in March 2016.

The primary reasons for shut down of the startup is said to be high cash burn and moreover cost of acquisition was high for any plausible buy out.

"The startup managed to bring down the costs, but it wasn’t enough to bring up the average ticket size. Now in the second phase of expansion they need funds, but the cash burn makes it difficult," said an analyst.

The startup was addressing loan market for young professionals and self-employed people which has market size of around $50-60 Bn.

Finomena was different from P2P lending firms but was in competition with rivals such as ZestMoney, CashCare, Capital Float, and Lendingkart, among dozen other alternate loans startups that have cropped up in the country.

Last two years have saw a lot of early stage startups shutting their shops including some heavily funded as well like Stayzilla and Askme.

The year 2017 saw a serious funding crunch for young startups as according to a latest report by Tracxn, a startup analytics firm, the number of angel and seed investments made in the first half of 2017 (January to June) is down to 260, indicating a drastic drop from 419 in the first half of 2016. Whereas, Seed funding has seen a steep decline from 278 to 152.

Earlier in May 2017, News Corp, had released Startup Deal Report Q1 CY2017. According to this report, investors prefers late stage funding. The report states, angel and seed investments fell both in volume and value terms with deal volumes reduced to half with 120 deals in Q1 CY2017 in comparison to 245 deals in the same period last year.

Matrix Partners-backed Treebo Hotels Raises Rs 112 Cr in Series B Round

Treebo Group of Hotels, the Bengaluru-based technology-enabled chain of budget hotels, has raised Rs 112 Crore in its Series B funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII), the strategic investment vehicle of the international media company, Bertelsmann. The round also saw participation of existing investors, SAIF Partners and Matrix Partners India.

Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director of Bertelsmann India Investments, said, “Treebo is serving a huge unmet need in the budget travel space - that of reliable and affordable accommodation. Over the last one year, they have maintained razor sharp focus on delivering a great guest experience, and have extensively deployed technology in all parts of their operations to accomplish this objective. We are excited to partner them in a journey towards building the most loved consumer brand in the hospitality space.”

Founded in 2015 by Sidharth Gupta, Rahul Chaudhary, and Kadam Jeet Jain, Treebo currently has 125 hotels in 25 cities across the country in its network, making it the largest hotel chain in the sub 4-star category. The company plans to use the fresh round of funds for furthering its expansion, strengthening its marketing outreach, and reinforcing its technology leadership in the sector.

Rahul Chaudhary, Co-founder, Treebo said, “Bertelsmann is a highly respected name in the venture capital world. They are known for taking a long term view of their investments, and for supporting companies that are building sustainable, value-creating businesses. Further, their vast experience in Media will prove invaluable in helping build the Treebo brand. We couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this journey.”

Treebo offers guaranteed-quality accommodation to travelers in the Rs 1,000-3,000 price range. Its properties come with all essential amenities like clean linen, free Wi-Fi, complimentary breakfast, branded toiletries, and complimentary beverages, among others. On the hotel side, Treebo helps its partner properties drive high occupancies by improving their service standards, and by bringing them under the Treebo brand.

Explaining the model further, Sidharth Gupta, Co-founder, Treebo, said, “We pioneered the tech-enabled franchise model in the budget hotels space in India. We believe partner success is closely linked to guest experience. We have therefore built deep relationships with hotel owners by partnering with them for their full inventory, and not just a few rooms. We invest heavily in technology, analytics, quality control, and staff training to help our hotel partners. It is important for us that each and every one of our partners does well, and not just a few of them. This, we believe, is the key to ensuring a consistent, high-quality experience at all our properties.”

Mayank Khanduja, Principal, SAIF Partners, which was one of the early investors in Treebo, said, “When we first invested in Treebo it was because of the quality of the founding team, and the clarity of their approach. One year later, we are really glad to see the team sticking to the same approach, and seeing success with it. Treebo has become a trusted partner of the hotels it works with, and has shown the way to the industry by building an experience-focused brand, which others would want to emulate.”

Treebo has been at the forefront of innovations in the hospitality space. Recently, the company launched an app, called ‘Bumblebee’, to help hotels manage their day-to-day operations. This app, the first standalone tablet-based property management system seen by this industry, was a big shift away from the conventional desktop-based systems which are time consuming and limited in their functionality. Earlier this year, Treebo launched a unique, crowdsourced mystery audit program called ‘Friends of Treebo’ wherein registered members of this community stay at Treebo properties as its unannounced representatives, and give feedback to the company on their experience to enable quick corrective actions where required.

The latest infusion of funds takes the total capital raised by the company till date to Rs 150 Crore. Investec India was the exclusive financial adviser for the company for this fundraise. Treebo now plans to expand its footprint to more than 60 cities, and quadruple its current inventory from 3,000+ to 12,000+ keys across 450 properties, over the next 12 months. These cities will include a mix of business and leisure destinations. The company also plans to launch new brand extensions along the way, including a mid-scale brand and a leisure brand, while maintaining its core proposition of value-for-money across all these brands.

Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India, which co-led the first institutional round of funding in the company, said, “With its differentiated partnership model and unwavering focus on delivering a superior customer experience, Treebo has shown a tremendous ability to drive steady scale, and healthy unit economics at the same time. We are proud to see them emerge as the strongest player in this category. We welcome Bertelsmann to this partnership and look forward to building a great company together with the Treebo team.”

Matrix-backed Ridlr Raises $6M Series B Funding

India’s leading local transport app, Ridlr, has announced $ 6 million in series B funding by Times Internet as well as existing investors Matrix Partners India and Qualcomm Ventures.

Ridlr provides real-time public transport and traffic information across 24 Indian cities, serving an engaged community of over 2M users. Public transport ticketing has also recently been added to the platform. The new round of funding will be used for scaling up public transport ticketing in focus cities, growing user base, as well as hiring across key roles. Current partner agencies for Ridlr include BEST, NMMT and MMRC.

Commenting on the fundraise, Brijraj Vaghani, CEO of Ridlr said, “This is a significant milestone for Ridlr in its journey to become the leading local transport information and ticketing platform in India. This round is great validation of our growth, team strength and ability to execute. It gives us the confidence to continue to disrupt the local transport space.”

“Ridlr seeks to give customers a seamless public transport commuting experience. This aligns with our investment philosophy of backing companies and products that pass the ‘toothbrush test’ i.e., products that are used by consumers on a daily basis. We are excited to partner with the Ridlr team on their journey of changing the way people commute in India”, said Miten Sampat, VP Corporate Development, Times Internet.

“Ridlr’s vision is to be the de-facto app for every urban commuter in India. Their approach of working closely with transport companies to bring real-time information and ticketing online, and their focus on their user community, makes them uniquely positioned to create impact in the lives of millions of users. We look forward to partnering with Brij and the team on this journey and welcome Times to this partnership”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Hotel Aggregator Stayzilla Gets $13M in Series C From Existing Investors Matrix Partners & Nexus Ventures

Online aggregator of budget hotels and homestays, StayZilla has raised over $13 million in a Series C round of funding from existing investors Matrix Partners and Nexus Ventures, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies. The funding round was split into three tranches of $8.8 million (Rs.58.5 crore), $1.9 million (Rs.13 crore) and $2.4 million (Rs.16.3 crore), between November 2015 and March 2016.

The raised funding will be used by the company to improve product and technology and marketing initiatives for the alternate stay business. It previously raised $20 million from Nexus Venture Partners and Matrix Partners in February 2015.

Stayzilla is a platform (website and app) for verified homestays and alternate stays. It has more than 55,000 homestay and alternate stay options across 4000 towns in India. The platform caters to both home owners and travelers looking for differentiated, unique stay experiences. It offers special selective ‘community’ feature on the app that matches hosts and guests by their preferences and shared interests. The firm was founded by Yogendra Vasupal, Sachit Singhi and Rupal Yogendra.

StayZilla competes with budget hotel accommodation service provider Oyo Rooms and online travel agencies (OTAs) including MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and Yatra as well as home rental provider Airbnb. The Indian travel market is expected to become worth $40 billion by 2020, as per Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chief technology officer of Airbnb.

Three days back, Stayzilla has hired Pankaj Gupta as Chief Product Officer and President of Technology. Pankaj was most recently at Twitter in San Francisco where he joined as an early employee and led the Personalization and Recommendations team. Pankaj will be shifting base from San Francisco to join Stayzilla at their Bengaluru office.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Accel and Matrix Partners Invests $1.5M Seed Round in SaaS Startup Zarget

[caption id="attachment_105863" align="alignnone" width="701"] Zarget's Co-founders[/caption]

Zarget, a SaaS-based Conversion Rate Optimization company, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from global venture capital firms Accel Partners and Matrix Partners, and angel investors such as, Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk. The startup has also announced the launch of the Zarget platform, the industry’s first conversion rate optimization software built as a simple-to-use Chrome plugin.

The new platform is a much needed solution for firms that previously used multiple software products to complete A/B testing, funnel analysis, and heatmaps. Zarget provides all of these tools in one platform with the added simplicity of a Chrome plugin, so users no longer need to waste time and valuable resources loading websites into an application.

The Zarget platform is purposely built for eCommerce and SaaS companies and intended for use by marketers, product managers and web designers who now have a single tool to manage site content and performance through a simple Chrome plugin. Zarget was founded in 2015 by three ex-Zoho employees Arvind Parthiban, Naveen Venkat, and Santhosh Kumar.

The first tool to optimize beyond login pages, Zarget is ideal for improving checkout pages and various SaaS website tools without any of the related security vulnerabilities. Heatmap support for interactive design elements such as sliding banners, drop-down menus and HTML5 moving elements is a core Zarget feature. This allows users to track visitors in real time, instead of the “snapshot” approach used by competitors that cannot capture visitor activities on dynamic elements. Funnel analysis capabilities within Zarget allow companies to see where visitors are dropping off from the website by configuring multiple pages together.

“Zarget has developed a true product innovation in the field of conversion rate optimization and aims to help companies enhance their customer experience online. We are very impressed with the founding team’s prior experience in building and scaling products globally and it is our privilege to partner with Arvind, Naveen and Santosh to help them realize their vision.” said Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Matrix Partners Raises $110M to Boost the Corpus of Its Second Fund

Matrix Partners has raised an amount of $110 million to boost the corpus of its second fund. The venture firm will now have a total corpus of about $400 million in its second fund, which was first set up in 2011. The corpus has been raised from the existing investors.

Apart from fund raise, its Co-founder Rishi Navani is also leaving the firm, which will now be managed by Co-founder Avnish Bajaj along with managing directors Vikram Vaidyanathan and Tarun Davda. Bajaj is a Harvard Business School alumnus who Co-founded one of India's earliest eCommerce ventures — Baazee. com, set up Matrix Partners in 2006 along with Navani.

Bajaj also said that the firm expects to raise a third fund in the second half of 2017. With the newly raised fund, Matrix aims to invest across seed and Series-A deals in later-stage companies. It will target areas like online marketplaces, financial technology, software, logistics and healthcare technology, among others.

After leaving the venture, Navani will continue to work with several portfolio companies of Matrix Partners and he is likely to set up a new investment firm, which will focus on growth-stage investment in tech companies and, also invest in the public markets, as per people familiar with the development.

Recent investment of Matrix Partners India

• Earlier this month, BuddyBB, a location-based mobile application that helps people rent friends and family, announced its Series A funding of $ 2M led by Matrix Partners India.


• In March, Matrix Partners India has invested in the fin-tech startup Finomena.


• In February, OfBusiness, an online marketplace for business to business commerce, raised a Series A funding of $5M led by Matrix Partners India.


• In December 2015, India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) had invested Rs.400 crores for a significant minority stake in Cloudnine, along with existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sequoia India, who had invested in Cloudnine in its initial phase of growth and in the same month, Amazon, Vertex Ventures, Qualcomm and ru-Net Technology Partners and Matrix Partners India invested around Rs. 150 crore in series B round of funding in Housejoy.

Just yesterday, White Unicorn Ventures also announced its plans to raise a $20-million fund to invest in early-stage companies. The firm is in talks with investors in Germany and Silicon Valley for the purpose and aims to spend up to $5 million by the end of 2016, five times as much as it did last year.

Matrix Partners Raises $110M to Boost the Corpus of Its Second Fund

Matrix Partners has raised an amount of $110 million to boost the corpus of its second fund. The venture firm will now have a total corpus of about $400 million in its second fund, which was first set up in 2011. The corpus has been raised from the existing investors.

Apart from fund raise, its Co-founder Rishi Navani is also leaving the firm, which will now be managed by Co-founder Avnish Bajaj along with managing directors Vikram Vaidyanathan and Tarun Davda. Bajaj is a Harvard Business School alumnus who Co-founded one of India's earliest eCommerce ventures — Baazee. com, set up Matrix Partners in 2006 along with Navani.

Bajaj also said that the firm expects to raise a third fund in the second half of 2017. With the newly raised fund, Matrix aims to invest across seed and Series-A deals in later-stage companies. It will target areas like online marketplaces, financial technology, software, logistics and healthcare technology, among others.

After leaving the venture, Navani will continue to work with several portfolio companies of Matrix Partners and he is likely to set up a new investment firm, which will focus on growth-stage investment in tech companies and, also invest in the public markets, as per people familiar with the development.

Recent investment of Matrix Partners India

• Earlier this month, BuddyBB, a location-based mobile application that helps people rent friends and family, announced its Series A funding of $ 2M led by Matrix Partners India.


• In March, Matrix Partners India has invested in the fin-tech startup Finomena.


• In February, OfBusiness, an online marketplace for business to business commerce, raised a Series A funding of $5M led by Matrix Partners India.


• In December 2015, India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA) had invested Rs.400 crores for a significant minority stake in Cloudnine, along with existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sequoia India, who had invested in Cloudnine in its initial phase of growth and in the same month, Amazon, Vertex Ventures, Qualcomm and ru-Net Technology Partners and Matrix Partners India invested around Rs. 150 crore in series B round of funding in Housejoy.

Just yesterday, White Unicorn Ventures also announced its plans to raise a $20-million fund to invest in early-stage companies. The firm is in talks with investors in Germany and Silicon Valley for the purpose and aims to spend up to $5 million by the end of 2016, five times as much as it did last year.