Biotech Company OmniBRx Raises INR 30 Cr in Series A Funding from SIDBI Venture Capital

OmniBRx (www.omnibrx.com ): A bioprocess engineering company announced a Series A equity raise of INR 30 crore from SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (www.sidbiventure.co.in).

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Ravindra Patel, founder and CEO of OmniBRx Biotechnologies said “We are thankful to the team at SVCL for believing in our vision and backing us on our expansion plans”. He further added that "Scalable and Efficient bioprocessing technologies, specifically the Single-use bioreactor platforms are in high demand worldwide for the production of vaccines and other biologicals. Innovation based technology solutions from OmniBRx has potential to meet these exponentially growing market demands of biologics and vaccines.

The CellBRx Single- use Bioreactors from OmniBRx is the world’s largest and most efficient vaccine manufacturing platform for large scale vaccines and viral vector Production. OmniBRx is also the creator of world's first integrated seed train development platforms in close-loop sequentially programmed bioreactor systems” Ravindra added.

With infusion of series-A funds, OmniBRx is all set to expand their business in the overseas market. The company would also invest in adding to its capacity and build best in class manufacturing facilities to augment its production capabilities and meet growing market demands.

Sajit Kumar. Sr. VP at SIDBI Venture Capital Limited quoted “We are happy to partner with OmniBRx. We believe that their focus and deep domain knowledge will help them to penetrate the global markets. This is our third investment out of “Ubharte Sitaare Fund”, fund for MSME’s focused on scaling up in the export markets. Wishing them all the best".

Delhi based Indus Capital a boutique investment bank, founded by Mr. Santosh Patra was the exclusive financial advisor to OmniBRx for this transaction.

About OmniBRx (www.omnibrx.com):

OmniBRx is an Ahmedabad based Bioprocess engineering company focused on design and development of novel single-use bioreactors (SUB's) for cell culture based bioprocessing applications i.e. Vaccines, Gene therapies and biologics production. The Company was incorporated in 2016 and successfully launched their innovative products like CellBRx and MiniBRx single-use Bioreactor platforms.

About SIDBI Ventures:(www.sidbiventure.co.in) 

SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL), incorporated in 1999, is a wholly owned subsidiary of SIDBI (www.sidbi.in), the Apex Financial Institution in India for the MSME sector. Over the years SVCL has set-up and managed several Venture Capital Funds / AIFs, “Ubharte Sitaare Fund” is the eighth Fund set-up and managed by SVCL.

Retail Tech Startup Mobisy Raises $3.5 Mn from SIDBI VC Arm and Others

Bangalore-based retail technology startup Mobisy, which helps companies increase their sales and streamline supple chain through its mobile first saas solution, has announced on Monday that it has received a second round of venture capital funding of $3.5 million ( ~ Rs 24 crores), led by SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL), a venture capital arm of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) specializing direct and fund of funds.

Other investors who participated in this round include existing investor Ojas Partners, Triton Investment Advisors and some individuals with high net worth.

Mobisy has two product offerings -- Bizom, a supply chain automation platform and Distiman, a mobile marketplace app that helps kirana stores (or small FMCG brands) order their inventory directly from distributors, delivered in under eight hours.

Founded in 2007 by Lalit Bhise, Riyaz Hyder, Shree Kulkarni and Vasudeva Manjunath, Mobisy enables orders from over 5 million retail outlets (about a third of India's retail ecosystem) and its goal is to build products that can positively change the lives of various stakeholders of the retail ecosystem. The freshly raised funds go towards furthering these goals and will be used for the startup's research and development and to power expansion plans through an intensified sales and marketing push.

Although ‘Amazon Business’ is a similar B2B marketplace for traders in India, Bizom does it at a micro level– by bringing distributors for small brands who are not present online. Major brands such as Parle agro, Nivea, Airtel, Idea, Paperboat etc. are amongst Bizom’s customers list.

In January 2017, Mobisy raised $382,000 (~ Rs 2.5 crore) in a bridge round from existing investor Ojas Ventures and two unnammed angel investors. Prior to this, Mobisy Technologies had secured $300,000 in seed funding from Ojas Ventures, in 2013.

Lalit Bhise, co-founder and CEO of Mobisy, said in a statement, "We look forward to leveraging their industry experience to penetrate deeper into our market and solve sales and distribution problems for consumer goods companies and their partners in India and abroad."

Sajit Kumar from SIDBI Venture Capital Limited, said in a statement to Economic Times, "We believe that Mobisy's real-time insight-driven solutions for our country's consumer goods retail ecosystem have the potential to streamline what is currently a very high-touch, inefficient system. This can mean better results for everyone in the ecosystem, from brands to distributors to retailers. We were particularly impressed by the team's passion to create products that bring the benefits of digitization to people who may otherwise have remained on the margins of Digital India - small kirana store owners, distributors and small & medium consumer goods brands," added .

Notably, Mobisy was ranked the third fastest growing technology company in India at Deloitte Technology Fast 50, 2017 and 43 in the inaugural FT 1000 High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific list.

Speaking about SIDBI, Mobisy is SIDBI's second investment in retail tech segment, as earlier in last August, Gurgaon based retail tech startup FieldAssist had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from SIDBI.

In January this year, Gurgaon-based Corporatedge, a leading provider of Serviced Office Infrastructure in India got funded by SIDBI India Opportunities Fund to support the expansion of the company’s Serviced Offices business.

To recall, very recently Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has stopped releases of funds to SIDBI, who's its fund manager, during FY18 and FY19, due to unspent balances.

SIDBI has so far committed Rs 1,285 crore to 27 local venture capital funds under the FFS scheme, of which Rs 141 crore -- only about 11% -- has been disbursed to these funds till April 2018.

Via - Economic Times | Top Image - ProjectDeepDive.org

SIDBI India Opportunities Fund Invests in Gurgaon-based Corporatedge

Corporatedge, a leading provider of Serviced Office Infrastructure in India gets funded by SIDBI India Opportunities Fund to support the expansion of the company’s Serviced Offices business. With this funding, the company aims at expanding to over 6 locations across India.

Formed in 2012 as a privately held company, the company provides fully serviced offices, virtual offices, meeting rooms and co-working spaces for companies ranging from start-ups to multinational conglomerates. Since inception, CE Serviced Offices Private Limited (Corporatedge) has been passionately focusing on service delivery and premium yet value for money offering in the Serviced Offices vertical.

The company has two operational serviced office offerings in premium locations in Gurgaon. Corporatedge launched its first Centre with 40 office suites and 178 workstations spread over 16,000 sq ft – at DLF Cyber City in 2013. In 2016 another premium offering was set up at Corporatedge Horizon Centre, spread over 25,000 sq ft. with 60 suites and 280 workstations at DLF Two Horizon in April 2016. Corporatedge has created a mark in the Business Center industry with MNCs and international firms largely working out of their state of the art modern facilities. They have a total of 500 desks operational and have grown their capacity by 60% in the last quarter of 2017.

Positioned as a Premium offering in the Serviced Offices space, ‘Corporatedge’ is known for its Premium offering as – Location, Address, Product-mix, Infrastructure, Interiors, Technology and Service support. With the India Growth story gaining momentum and the country’s brand equity in the business world being stronger than ever, the demand from foreign companies, domestic companies, and startups within the country for serviced offices will continue to grow over the next several years. “We want companies to have a premium workplace environment experience, second to none in the world. The world wants to do business with India and in India. And they will demand the best service standards and settle for nothing less”, says Mona Shukla, Founder, and CEO at Corporatedge Serviced Offices.

“We are humbled by the support of SIDBI IOF Team. Our commitment of an excellent service, followed by manageable growth has made us reach this far. With this round of funding, we see ourselves grow into a national entity. We dream to be a global entity soon and this would be a major milestone in our journey”, adds Mona.

SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL), incorporated in 1999, is an investment management company and a wholly owned subsidiary of SIDBI (www.sidbi.in), the Apex Financial Institution in the country for the MSME sector. Over its life, SVCL has managed funds focussed on different themes including Startups/ early stage technology businesses, manufacturing SMEs, service entities, agribusinesses, financial inclusion companies, etc. However, the common string in all investments has been the focus to identify strong & ethical leadership teams capable of executing innovation-based business models or robustly scalable businesses.

Acupro Consulting, a boutique investment banking outfit based out of Gurgaon acted as exclusive advisor to the Company in this transaction.

Corporatedge is all set to create a new benchmark in Premium Serviced Offices category and as Mona says, “We are ready for Business”.