India's 1st Processor IP Company Incore Semiconductors Raises $3 Mn in Seed Funding from Sequoia India

Chennai-based InCore Semiconductors, India's first Processor IP company, has raised $3M in seed funding from Sequoia India.

The funding will support the company's mission to build innovative RISC-V processor cores and contribute to India's growing semiconductor industry. InCore will use the raised funds to enhance its portfolio of Core-Hub generators and reference SoC (System-on-Chip) platforms aimed at multiple segments of the embedded chips space.

To recall, prior to InCore Semiconductors, Sequoia India has invested in $2.325 funding round of MindGrove Technologies, also a Chennai-based semiconductor startup. 

InCore is building proprietary in-house developed family of RISC-V core generators. RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture based on established reduced instruction set computer principles. Unlike most other ISA designs, RISC-V is provided under royalty-free open-source licenses.

InCore’s RISC-V Core-Hub Generators are software tools that generate hardware designs based on proprietary RISC-V processors. These generators provide a quick and efficient way to create customized processor cores that meet specific requirements. They enable developers to configure the processor's microarchitecture to meet specific application needs, which is an extension of the RISC-V’s philosophy of configurable and modular architecture is essential in today's rapidly changing computing landscape.

Launched in 2018, by Neel Gala, G S Madhusudan, Arjun Menon, and Gautam Doshi, InCore enables its customers with turnkey processor IP solutions for strategic industrial segments like automotive, industrial automation, and general electronics.

Currently based at IIT-Madras Research Park, Incore’s team has earlier worked for India’s ambitious indigenous processors "Project Shakti" at IIT Madras, and are well-renowned experts in the R&D and industrial corridors.

Video Analytics Platform, Wobot Raises pre-series A Funding from Sequoia India

The AI-powered computer vision technology for CCTVs helps make monitoring of SOPs productive and automated for users across sectors 

Wobot Intelligence, an AI-powered video analytics platform has raised pre-series A from Sequoia India. Wobot’s tool connects to any existing CCTV or other forms of cameras and helps monitor process compliance while detecting and tracking anomalies in an organization’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). It offers video analytics for SOPs which include hygiene, safety, productivity, and customer experience to customers across industries. 

Founded by Adit Chhabra, Tapan Dixit, and Tanay Dixit, Wobot will use the funds for global expansion and strengthening its proprietary technology platform. It will also help the company make some key executive appointments, expand its sales and marketing efforts as well as broaden and accelerate product development to cater to more use cases and customers. 

CCTVs are common in factories, restaurants, workplaces, and several other sectors but are monitored ineffectively by humans in a big control room with multiple monitors. The vast amount of this data is unused and does not give any meaningful or actionable insight. Wobot is resolving this big gap with ‘smarter video analytics solutions that leverage deep learning to achieve more productive and automated monitoring. These solutions can be personalized and implemented across industries such as hospitality, manufacturing, pharma and retail among others.

Adit Chhabra, co-founder and CEO of Wobot said, “Wobot’s vision has always been to create a transparent and seamless workplace with 100% process compliance where the camera acts as a third eye and provides continuous feedback for employees on the job. This does not necessarily mean only pointing out violations but also giving a pat on the back for following the right SOPs and adhering to compliances." 

The market for CCTV installations was estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 11% YoY globally pre-Covid-19. It will grow even faster in the post-Covid-19 era. Covid-19 era has made businesses realise the value proposition of remote monitoring. Pre Covid-19, hygiene and safety of the workforce was a good-to-have now, it is a must have and companies are appreciating the importance of automation. For any future business continuity plans, video analytics will play a huge role and Wobot is well-positioned to take advantage of this opportunity”, he added.  

Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP said, “Computer vision has seen tremendous advances in recent years, resulting in widespread adoption for varied enterprise needs. This includes process compliance in areas such as security, manufacturing, and retail. Increased concern for hygiene and safety post-Covid-19 has heightened the importance of process compliance. Sequoia India is excited to partner with the Wobot team as they build a global SaaS business serving this enterprise need.”

How does it work?

Wobot employs deep learning techniques to detect any change in SOPs, automatically list them, and make them trackable for relevant stakeholders. Once plugged into an existing camera, this AI then detects people, objects, and activities. Basis an industry or company’s selected use cases, it raises alerts of any deviation from those processes. The alerts are received by the supervisor with a short clip for immediate and effective action. 

Examples of use cases; 

• In a kitchen - it can detect use of hairnet, gloves and 20-second hand wash compliance.
• At a construction site - It can detect the use of safety jackets, helmets and worker productivity
• In a manufacturing plant- It can Detect loading/unloading activity and duration or a specific task on an assembly line.
• In a hospital - It can detect PPE and hand wash compliance
• In a pharma lab - It can detect PPE gowning process
• In a restaurant - It can detect cleaning activity as well as order/wait times 
• In stores - It can detect customer service within a time limit or sanitisation activity.

Today, Wobot has become a cost-effective and autonomous way of monitoring hygiene, safety, productivity, and customer experience across various organizations. Wobot is a robust team of 60+ and has completed 10,000+ installations for customers including Kitopi, CultFit, Rebel Foods, Travel Food Services, EatFit, Blue Tokai, Apparel Group, Max Estates & Housing and more. 

In 2018, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) signed up with Wobot to monitor the food production process across its several base kitchens. Subsequently Wobot intelligence raised a seed round of funding from Titan Capital too. 

Since then Wobot has been continuously partnering up with clients across the country, Middle East and South East Asia where it aims to expand presence going forward. Further as the next phase of growth, Wobot aims to enter the US market as well as introduce more use cases for the healthcare and manufacturing sectors.

About Wobot:

Wobot.ai enables vision-based process compliance by plugging its AI-first SaaS tool into existing CCTV cameras. It has helped organizations in Food, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Retail, and Pharma to reduce the cost of monitoring, risk of non-compliance, and improve customer NPS. Customers can choose from industry-specific process compliance modules like hygiene, workforce/workplace safety, customer SOPs, and more. This allows for existing cameras to automatically list and deliver deviations to relevant stakeholders as well as provide a dashboard with insights. Wobot currently provides solutions to several organizations like IRCTC, Rebel Foods, CureFit, Max, Kitopi, and Smartworks among others.

Full-stack Agritech Platform DeHaat Raises $12 Mn in Funding led by Sequoia India

Agritech platform DeHaat announced that it has raised a USD 12 million (INR 83 crore) Series A round led by Sequoia India, with participation from FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. Existing investors Omnivore and AgFunder also participated in this round.

Based in Gurgaon and Patna and founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM and NIT alumni, DeHaat is a technology-based platform offering full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high quality agri inputs, customized farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce.

With an aim to becoming a one-stop solution that meet the needs of Indian farmers while helping them increase their profitability, the platform integrates a digital marketplace with a rural network of last mile service delivery centers. DeHaat’s annual revenue has grown by 3.5x since March ’19.The company plans to scale up to 2,000 rural retail centres for last mile delivery as well as farm produce aggregation and 1 million farmers on the network by 2021. DeHaat will use some of the new funding to automate its supply chain and build the next layer of data analytics to drive further supply chain efficiency.

Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO of DeHaat said, “We are excited to partner with Sequoia India and FMO as we drive towards one million farmers on the DeHaat platform. Sequoia’s deep expertise in B2B platforms and technology products combined with FMO’s expertise in agricultural value chain financing will help DeHaat accelerate its growth while delivering massive impact for the farmers we work with.”

Currently serving over 210,000 farmers across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha, DeHaat provides farmers with access to over 3,000 agricultural inputs, combined with AI-based customised crop advisory content of pest & disease management for major crops delivered via mobile app and call centers. The platform also aggregates corn, wheat, rice, fruits, and vegetables from farmers on their network and directly supplies to over 200 commodity bulk buyers, including retail chains, e-commerce players, FMCG giants, and SME food processors.

“Indian agriculture is a $350B+ industry powered by close to 100M small and independent farmers. This industry is on the brink of a massive transformation with ease of regulation, famers getting organized and increasing smart phone penetration and DeHaat is leveraging these trends to build the next-gen product in agricultural supply chain”, said Abhishek Mohan, VP, Sequoia Capital India LLP. “The tipping point that led to Sequoia India’s decision to partner with them, was the field visit, where the farmers expressed how proud they were to be associated with a platform they felt truly worked in their favour. This impact and deep brand loyalty stems from the leadership team’s razor-sharp focus, deep empathy and fine execution”, he added.

Jaap Reinking, Director Private Equity at FMO, said “Increasing economic uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a grave concern to all. Especially in these challenging times it is important to continue our support for innovative businesses in emerging markets, and focus on accelerating sustainable development. That is why we are proud to announce our partnership with Green Agrevolution - DeHaat through the FMO Ventures Program. We look forward to supporting this Indian Agri Tech platform with our expertise in agricultural value chain financing and rural development programs.”

DeHaat earlier raised a USD 4 million (INR 29 crore) pre-Series A round in March 2019, led by Omnivore and AgFunder, which was topped up in May 2019 with an additional USD 3 million (INR 20 crore) of venture debt from Trifecta Capital. Dexter capital was the exclusive advisor of this funding round.

About DeHaat:

DeHaat is a technology based platform offering full stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high quality agricultural inputs, customized farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce. For more information on DeHaat, please visit: http://agrevolution.in

About Sequoia India:

Sequoia India helps daring founders build legendary companies, from idea to IPO and beyond. Sequoia India operates in Southeast Asia and India where we actively partner with founders from a wide range of companies, across categories, including BYJUs, Carousell, Druva, GO- JEK, OYO Rooms, Tokopedia, Truecaller, Zilingo, Zomato and more. We spur founders to push the boundaries of what’s possible. In partnering with Sequoia, startups benefit from 47 years of tribal knowledge and lessons learned working with companies

like Airbnb, Alibaba, Apple, Dropbox, Google, JD.com, LinkedIn, Meituan and Stripe early on.

From the beginning, non-profits have been the backbone of our LP base, which means founders’ accomplishments make a meaningful difference. The majority of our profits – over $16 billion since 2000 alone – are returned to great causes, like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT. For more information on Sequoia's work in India and SE Asia, visit sequoiacap.com/india


About FMO

FMO is the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. As a leading impact investor, FMO supports sustainable private sector growth in developing countries and emerging markets by investing in ambitious projects and entrepreneurs. FMO believes that a strong private sector leads to economic and social development and has a 50-year proven track-record of empowering people to employ their skills and improve their quality of life. FMO focuses on three sectors that have high development impact: financial institutions, energy, and agribusiness, food water. With a committed portfolio of EUR 10.4 billion spanning over 83 countries, FMO is one

of the larger bilateral private sector developments banks globally. For more information: please visit www.fmo.nl

About Omnivore:

Omnivore is a venture capital firm, based in India, which funds entrepreneurs building the future of agriculture and food systems. For further information on Omnivore, please visit: http://omnivore.vc

About AgFunder:

AgFunder is an online venture capital platform that invests in agrifoodtech startups globally. For further information on AgFunder, please visit: https://agfunder.com

Tech Firm Salesken Raises $8 Mn in Funding led by Sequoia India

Tech firm Salesken on Thursday said it has raised USD 8 million in series A funding led by Sequoia India.

"The funding round was led by Sequoia India and also featured a secondary with investors such as Unitus Ventures and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation making partial exit," a statement said. The transaction was facilitated by Masterkey Holdings, it added.

The funds will be used for further development of Salesken's artificial intelligence-based conversation intelligence platform (Salesken.ai) and for expansion across the Asia Pacific and North America markets, a statement said.

Salesken helps companies with real-time intelligence during their sales conversations to help them win more deals. Sales teams using Salesken.ai receive intelligence on various aspects of the sales pitch, from lead qualification to navigating pricing discussions. They can also gauge the sentiments of their customers during the conversation.

Founded in 2018, by Surga Thilakan and Sreeraman Vaidyanathan, SalesKen is a group of technologists and training professionals -- headquartered in Bangalore -- who’ve come together to bring the best of AI and Data Sciences to sales performance.

[With major inputs from PTI]

InterviewBit Raises $20 Mn in Funding from Sequoia India, Tiger Global

Bengaluru-based InterviewBit on Tuesday said it has raised USD 20 million (over Rs 142 crore) in funding led by Sequoia India and Tiger Global among others.

InterviewBit, a Surge 01 (a Sequoia program) start-up, offers an advanced online computer science program for college graduates and young professional software engineers called Scaler Academy.

"The company will use these funds to scale up their enrolment and launch in new markets, while also investing in their curriculum and their live teaching product to enhance the student-teacher experience," a statement said.

InterviewBit co-founder Anshuman Singh said a lot of young engineers don't always have access and exposure to the relevant technical skills or recruitment processes of global companies.

"Our mission is to bridge that gap and help them grow in their careers. We are very pleased to be able to help young engineers expand their knowledge and coding skills and enable them to get top tier software engineering jobs at the best global tech companies," he added.

Founded in 2015 by Abhimanyu Saxena and Anshuman Singh, InterviewBit is an online platform that teaches skills needed for technology jobs, mentors students to crack recruitment processes and provides referrals to opportunities in the software industry globally.

It has more than a million registered software developers with over 3,00,000 monthly active users. Over 600 companies work with InterviewBit for their hiring requirements including Google, Uber, Amazon, Facebook, Flipkart, Myntra and Dunzo.

Fintech Firm Drip Capital Raises $25 Mn from Accel, Sequoia India and others

Accel Partners, Sequoia India and others have pumped US$25 million into the fintech-based trade financier Drip Capital in series B funding.

With this, the Palo Alto-and Mumbai-based company has raised U$45 million in equity and $55 million in debt, taking the total funding to $100 million.

The other investors who joined the latest round of funding include Wing VC and Y Combinator, along with Sequoia which are all existing investors, Drip Capital said in a statement Wednesday.

The current round of funding also has two other new investors--GC1 Ventures and institutional investor platform Trusted Insight, it added.

"The new fund will be used for global expansion over the next 12-18 months. Apart from India, we are already present in Mexico and the UAE and now we are looking to enter Southeast Asia as well," Drip Capital co-founder and co-chief executive Pushkar Mukewar said.

The company will use a part of the fresh capital in technology and expand its sales and marketing team, he said,
adding globally, it employs 120.

Mukewar said the company has already funded over USD 500 million worth of trade to 400 exporters its entry into the country in 2016.

"By FY20, we aim to fund USD 1 billion of trade originating from the country," he said. It offers exporters a credit line ranging from USD 0.1 million to USD 2.5 million through both unsecured and unsecured route.

Drip Capital uses technology to provide working capital to small companies and entrepreneurs who account for 50 percent of merchandise exports from the country and employ tens of millions.

Globally, he claimed there is a trade finance gap of USD1.5 trillion globally, the majority of which is among small business exporters in emerging markets, which means so much of trade potential is foregone for lack of funding.

The company focuses on 10 industry segments such as agro commodities, readymades and industrial goods, and stay away from gems & jewellery and perishables (fruits and vegetables), Mukewar.

Trade finance is a paper-based industry dominated by banks that primarily focus on large, established corporate customers. As against this, it uses electronic data and technology to underwrite and finance cross-border B2B deals.

Drip Capital has strategic partnerships with many key export promotion organizations, including the Federation of Indian Export Organizations and the Engineering Export Promotion Council. PTI HV

Fintech Startup Khatabook to Raise $20 Mn in Funding from DST Partners, Ribbit Capital and Sequoia

Mumbai-based Kyte Technologies, which owns and operates digital accounts ledger app KhataBook, is set to raise $20-$25 million (Rs 138-Rs 172 crore) in series-A financing round, which will lead by DST Partners, a personal investing vehicle for the partners at Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global.

Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and a couple of Chinese funds will also contribute to the round, reported Times of India.

Besides, more than 20 angel investors including prominent investor Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, the founder of Citrus Pay, and Kunal Shah, CEO of Cred, are also likely to participate in the round, said the report.

Expected to be finalised in the coming weeks, the Khatabook funding would be one of the largest series-A funding rounds for a homegrown startup this year.

Founded in 2018, by IIT-Bombay alumni Ravish Naresh, Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar and Ashish Sonone, Khatabook replaces traditional udhaar bahi-khata (accounts book/ledger) by its digital app, which shop owners can use to record credit and debit transactions for their trusted customers and can maintain their customers'​ accounts securely. The app is claimed to be free and comes with features such as SMS updates to customers on every transaction, Automatic Backup, WhtasApp payment reminder to customers and download of customers' PDF Report among others.

While Ravish was one of the Co-founders and COO at Housing.com, a property listing websites. Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar and Ashish Sonone, were co-founders of Knit Messenger, a messaging application that made it easy for teachers to connect with parents and students.

Part of Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital's Surge, Khatabook has so far raised just over $3 million from Y Combinator, Sequoia and InfoEdge, the parent of naukri.com and 99acres.com. The startup also counts Citrus Pay founders - Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta, and Square's Gokul Rajaram as its angel investors.

Khatabook services SMBs that operate in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan cities and is available in a wide variety of Indian languages, including the popular Hinglish dialect. The app recently crossed 120,000+ weekly active merchants and is growing at 40% MoM.

Healthcare Startup of Ex UrbanClap, Mobikwik Head 'Pristyn Care' Raises $4 Mn from Sequoia India

Gurgaon-headquartered Healthcare startup Pristyn Care, that aims to disrupt surgical industry in India, has raised US$4 million (about Rs 27.7 crore) in Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital India.

Founded in 2018, by Harsimarbir (Harsh) Singh, a former UrbanClap Business Head and Mobikwik Head Of Strategy (Fintech Products), along with two Gold Medallist doctors (former Medanta, Max, CK Birla Hospital), Pristyn Careis building an Asset Light Surgical Ecosystem by leveraging technology and a set of simple yet powerful processes and operations. The startup wish to build an platform which can organize the world of day care procedures using some of the most advanced tech developments in the field of healthcare.

Pristyn Care, which offers patients elective surgeries across proctology, urology, gynaecology and ENT, will use the funds to expand its footprint, invest in technology and strengthen its medical capabilities and team of professionals, a statement said.

"There is a significant need to improve day-care procedures in India. We believe there is a huge opportunity in the healthcare sector," Pristyn Care co-founder Harsimarbir Singh said.

Pristyn Care follows an asset light model, leveraging the medical infrastructure of existing partner hospitals and equipping them with medical equipment.

Currently operational in 20 clinics across Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Prustyn plans to expand its clinic network to 50 by December 2019.

Last month, an another healthcare startup, CapBuild Clinical Skills, which too is based out of Gurgaon, had raised undisclosed funding from HealthStart India, an early stage investment micro VC and health sector accelerator. CapBuild offers state of the art hospital analytical skills.

Sequoia India, which is a India and Southeast Asia focussed VC fund from US-based Sequoia Capital, has made four investments last month and three were from India. Its recent investments since 1 May include Awfis Space Solution, Singapore-based Biofourmis, Healthkart and logistics startup blackbuck.

In April, Sequoia India participated in $17 million Series B funding round of Mad Street Den, the maker of Vue.ai, a platform for intelligent retail automation. At the same time, Mobile Premier League (MPL), a mobile eSports Platform raised US$35.5 Million in a funding round led by Sequoia India, Times Internet, and GoVentures.

Intelligent Retail Platform Vue.ai Raises $17 Mn from Falcon Edge, Sequoia India and Global Brain

Mad Street Den, the maker of Vue.ai, a platform for intelligent retail automation, today announced it has raised a $17 million Series B led by Falcon Edge Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital India and Global Brain, a GP of KDDI Innovation Fund.

The new round brings the company’s total capital raised to $27.5 million. After experiencing a fourfold annual revenue increase, the funds will be used to grow the team, deliver on the product roadmap and scale the company’s existing customer base that already includes leading retailers from across the globe like Macy’s, Mercadolibre and Tata.

Last September, the AI startup had received undisclosed amount in strategic investment from KIDDI Corporation of Tokyo, Japan. The funds have been routed through KIDDI’s investment arm, KDDI Open Innovation Fund 2, managed by Global Brain.

Retailers have entered an era where consumers expect a seamless brand experience thanks to behemoths like Amazon and Alibaba who are using AI to personalize products and services for shoppers. The battle to stay competitive comes at a tremendous cost to retailers who are projected to spend more than $7B billion on AI over the next 3 years. By offering a one-stop shop across the value chain, Vue.ai is the first AI solution to automate critical functions across departments heavily dependent on human intuition, unifying data about products, people and processes.

Vue.ai combines seven different products to offer retailers a unified system used as a ‘neural network’ for decision-making. Using a centralized data brain, the platform digitally maps a retail product’s DNA, then translates product information into language that teams can easily understand. With better accuracy and insights, retailers can easily decode the qualities of their merchandise, make intelligent updates on the fly, and deliver unique experiences along every step of the customer journey.

“The future of retail is entertainment. The experience economy we see today is the start of that era,” said Ashwini Asokan, CEO and Founder of Vue.ai. “Brands are shifting to designing worlds that consumers want to be a part of and that has to integrate with the new ways people shop. Vue is the electricity that powers all these complicated and important retail functions so retailers can focus on the business of entertaining you"

"The Vue.ai team is on a mission to put AI and intelligent automation in the hands of teams across the globe in ways that improve productivity and growth multi-fold,” said Anandamoy Roychowdhary, CTO and Director of Sequoia Capital India. “We’ve seen incredible growth in how they’ve brought this value across multiple functions in the retail industry in just two years since we started this journey with them. Sequoia India is excited to partner with Falcon Edge in this round, enabling Ashwini and Anand to scale Vue.ai globally.”

California-headquartered firm which has an office in Chennai, Vue.ai was launched by husband-wife duo - Ashwini Asokan and Anand Chandrasekaran in 2016 as the first AI brand from its parent company Mad Street Den. The team is comprised of neuroscientists and AI experts from IBM, Intel and DARPA. The company serves major retailers across the US, UK, India, Middle East and Latin America.

The company has recently announced Human Model Generator, an AI that can generate garment-to-model images & predict how the garment fits.

eSports Platform Mobile Premier League Raises $35.5 Mn from Sequoia India, Times Internet, Other

Mobile Premier League (MPL), the fastest growing mobile eSports Platform in India today, announced a Series A investment of USD 35.5 Million, led by Sequoia India, Times Internet, and GoVentures with participation from other investors including RTP Global, BeeNext, Base Growth, and Venture Highway. The funds will enable the newly launched mobile gaming platform to invest in product and user growth in India.

“Our goal is to build India's largest Mobile eSports Platform which is accessible to all. MPL today provides users access to all formats and types of competitive games. Like with everything else, Competitive Gaming in India will be mobile first and MPL wants to be the platform of choice for the user. In the 7 months since launch, the user love we have received is testimony to that. We are thankful and excited to have investors who share the same bold vision.” said Sai Srinivas Kiran G, Co-Founder and CEO of Mobile Premier League.

“Sequoia India is very happy to back Sai and Shubh a second time, and believe solidly in their vision of creating the largest esports platform for India and other emerging markets,'' said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore. “We’re thrilled with the early progress at MPL. With their industry leading growth and engagement metrics, MPL has the potential to become a major mobile internet company in India.” he added.

MPL is currently one of the Playstore's top ranking apps across categories with over 25 million installs making it the fastest growing app in India. A large part of the platform’s success can be attributed to its highly engaging and social gaming content.

“MPL has captured the imagination of gamers on smartphones like no other platform out there. Skill based competitive casual games are highly engaging social experiences, and we believe MPL will be a leader in this category globally” said Miten Sampat, VP Corp Dev, Times Internet.

Mobile eSports is becoming popular by the day and MPL aims to break barriers of access to make mobile gaming a household sport across the country.

Speaking on the association Samir Sood, Founder, Venture Highway said “E-gaming has witnessed an exponential growth in India with the rapid penetration of digital infrastructure. In a short timeframe, MPL has shown tremendous growth, capturing a sizeable chunk of this market. We are excited to partner with MPL, in its vision of becoming the go-to-platform for mobile gamers, not just across the country, but beyond.”

QR Code-based Payment App BharatPe to Raise $17 Mn from Sequoia India

In one of the largest Series A round of funding in Indian Startup Ecosystem, Bangalore-based BharatPe is in the final stages of raising nearly $17 million (about Rs 120 crore) from investors led by Sequoia Capital India, valuing
the payments startup at $60-65 million, reported Economic Times.

Founded in April 2018, by former CFO of Grofers, Ashneer Grover (IIT Delhi 2004), and Shashvat Nakrani, BhratPe is a QR code-based payment app building the largest offline merchant network in India by making mobile payments acceptance free and ubiquitous.

BharatPe empower the merchants to accept UPI payments for ‘FREE’ through the BharatPe QR. Merchants can sign up instantly and start receiving the funds immediately in their bank account. BharatPe makes payment acceptance simple by offering merchants a single interface for all UPI apps such as PayTM, PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, Mobikwik, Freecharge, True Caller and 100 other UPI apps. 

"BharatPe is a fin-tech company and not a re-seller. We are not an aggregator or payment gateway in the traditional sense. BharatPe works closely with our partner banks to develop custom APIs to enable an extremely simple product for the merchants. Our QR technology and deep integration at the bank end is our secret sauce," says the company website.

In February last year, ICICI Bank acquired a minority stake in payment startup, Tapits Technologies, a Mumbai-based early stage startup that helps merchants accept digital payments through Aadhaar biometrics.

In May last year, another new payment startup, ToneTag, had raised $8-10 million from a clutch of marquee, strategic investors led by Amazon Inc. and Mastercard,. ToneTag uses encrypted sound waves to make offline, proximity-based contact-less payments on any device.

In June, Chennai-based Hip Bar raised Rs 27 crore from alcoholic beverages company, United Spirits Ltd (USL). Hip Bar claims to be India's first drinks delivery app with an RBI-approved mobile wallet that enables customers browse adult beverages, order them and have them home-delivered.

InsureTech Startup Turtlemint Raises $25 Mn from Sequoia India

Mumbai-headquartered online insurance distribution platform Turtlemint has closed a $25 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital India along with contribution from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.

This startup will use the latest funds to further scale up their digital network across India.

So far, Turtlemint has raised a total of $31 million in funding over three rounds, according to the data by Crunchbase.

Founded in 2015, by Kunal Shah, Anand Prabhudesai and Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, Turtlemint provides recommendations to customers based on proprietary algorithms and data analytics. It caters to about 25,000 licensed insurance experts (PoSP’s), across 700 cities, to help customers select and complete their insurance purchase using their proprietary MintPro app.

“A lot of customers, while depending on online research to learn more about the available policies, ultimately prefer to buy their insurance from an intermediary they can personally interact with. We developed MintPro to bridge this online-offline gap," said Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, one of the Co-founders of Turtlemint.

"This model has helped Turtlemint to provide insurance for customers and has widened career opportunities for insurance agents across Tier II cities in India," he said.

Anand Prabhudesai, Co-founder, Turtlemint, said that the app helps PoSP’s sell multiple insurance policies from different companies to their clients — ranging from life to health to motor insurance — through a simple online process that requires no paperwork. “It’s all done on their smartphones,” he said.

Commenting on the funding, Harshjit Sethi, Principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said: “Turtlemint has pioneered a new model that is not only bringing new agents into the insurance domain but is also helping them become more productive and effective with their customers by making them digitally savvy. Sequoia India is excited to partner with them from the early stages — the company is growing at a very fast clip and is well on its way to transforming insurance distribution in the country.”

Anup Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, said that the digitization of the insurance value-chain is a huge opportunity and benefits all the participants — customers by providing access to the right products, agents through significant business growth and productivity and insurers through improved transparency. “We have been impressed by Dhirendra’s and Anand’s vision and execution of transforming the insurance ecosystem by working in close collaboration with agents and insurers; and are privileged to have partnered with them from the concept stage,” he said.

Turtlemint competes with MintWise, Coverfox Insurance, and BankBazaar.com. However, other players such as PayTM amd flipkart are also entering online insurance market.

Paytm, which began operations in 2010 as a digital wallet service, has now diversified into financial services, and is looking strongly to cash in on insurance premiums. In February 2017, Paytm registered two insurance entities, Paytm Life Insurance Ltd and Paytm General Insurance Ltd with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

In May last year, Acko Technologies, an Insur-tech startup based out of Mumbai, had raised $12 million in a funding round led by Amazon Inc.

In the same month, Gurgaon-based digital-only insurance platform Toffee Insurance had raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Kalaari Capital, Omidyar Network and Accion Venture Lab.

Source - Business Line

Sequoia India Ex-CMO Raja Ganapathy Launches Fund for Early-Stage Tech Startups

Raja Ganapathy, the former chief marketing officer at Sequoia Capital India, has just launched Spring Marketing Capital, a fund he co-founded along with advertisement professionals -- Vineet Gupta, ex-group CEO of DDB Mudra and Arun Iyer, ex-chairman of Lowe Lintas.

Spring Marketing Capital is a combination of both, a startup fund, as well as a marketing consultancy to help established companies in their branding efforts.

The fund will invest $1 million to $2 million in a single company over a 3-year period and intends to invest in roughly five to seven companies in a year.

Through its fund, corpus of which is yet to be disclosed, Spring Marketing Capital intends to invest in early-stage technology companies and work directly with the founders to help shape the startup's marketing and branding strategy.

A couple of months back it was reported that the team at Spring Marketing Capital is initially looking to raise $30 million (Rs 215 crore) for the fund and now it is announced that it has already received funding commitments from multiple startup founders in India and a few venture capitalists and is on track to raise around $20 million by June of this year.

About its investment strategies, Spring Marketing clears that instead of leading a funding, it would rather intends to invest by contributing in series A or a pre-series A stage funding rounds led by VC. The fund aims for an exit around two to three years after its investment at a subsequent liquidity event

Additionally, for its first year, Spring Marketing will also be offering marketing and creative consulting solution to the investments it will make.

In an interview to Economic Times, Raja Ganapathy said, "We will work closely with the founder to understand not just the role of the product or service in the consumer's life but also the founder's vision for the company and accordingly shape the marketing and branding strategy."

"The entire spectrum from crafting the value proposition to go-to-market approach to online/offline communication is our responsibility, execution can be outsourced but will still be supervised by us," he added.

Student Co-living Startup Stanza Living Raises $10 Mn in Funding led by Sequoia India

Delhi headquartered Stanza Living, a tech-enabled co-living concept startup which is re-imagining student housing in India, has raised a total of Rs 73 crore (USD 10 million) in an investment round led by Sequoia India. This is in addition to Rs 13 crores (USD 2 million) that the company had raised in its first round of institutional funding from Matrix and Accel Partners in November 2017.

With the funding in place, Stanza Living will focus on strengthening its three key business pillars of technology, people and network of operations. The startup is also aiming to strengthen its position as one of India’s largest student co-living companies.

Technology is at the centre of Stanza Living’s business and is one of its core differentiators. The fresh funding will be channelled to bolster the company’s tech engine that drives effectiveness in project management, efficiency in business operations and enables personalised service delivery. Stanza Living will further leverage the funding to expand to multiple markets and strengthen its core leadership team while onboarding specialised talent across functions.

Commenting on the funding, Anindya Dutta, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living, said, “The student housing segment in India offers immense potential but remains largely unorganised. We are determined to transform this segment by offering a professionally-managed co-living experience that mirror international standards. We currently operate 15+ residences in Delhi NCR with a total capacity of 2000 beds. The funding will enable us to unlock multiple opportunities that we’ve identified across important educational hubs and exponentially grow the Stanza community across the country.”

“Marquee global players investing in Stanza Living underlines the confidence the investor community has in our business model,” said Sandeep Dalmia, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living.

“We understand that a student’s lifestyle is extremely distinct. Our industry-first, full-stack business model fundamentally enables us to design our co-living spaces and tailor our services to cater to their specific needs and desires. It allows us to set up and manage end-to-end operations which we believe is absolutely critical to ensure an unmatched experience for our residents,” he added.

“Stanza’s team and their execution is impressive, and Sequoia India is delighted to partner with them in their vision to provide quality housing to students in India. Student housing is an established asset class in the west and we believe Stanza, with its scalable business model and strong economics, can create the asset class in India”, said Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Gourav Bhattacharya, Director, Matrix India, commented “We are very excited about the progress the Stanza team has made over the last 12 months, and think they have a unique opportunity to create a large company by organizing the student housing space. Their approach is a win-win for students and parents through better experience, as well as supply owners through better economics. We are delighted to continue supporting Anindya and Sandeep on their journey."

Abhinav Chaturvedi, Principal at Accel added, "We are delighted to continue our partnership with Stanza Living. In a short period of time, Stanza has become the go-to place for student accommodation in Delhi/NCR. The new money will help expand the Stanza brand to other parts of the Indian market."

Stanza Living is challenging the status quo when it comes to student community living through dedicated programmes like ‘Stanza Springboard’, which focuses on providing career enhancement opportunities, and ‘Stanza Social’, centred around year-long community engagement events as well as exclusive discounted access to a curated list of restaurants, brands and experiences.

In July this year, StayAbode, an another co-living spaces startup, had raised funding for an undisclosed amount from Anupam Mittal (CEO, People Group) and Vineet Sekhsaria (Head, Real Estate investing, Morgan Stanley) and Japanese gaming company Akatsuki Inc.

Last November, Stanza Living had raised ₹13 Crore in its first round of institutional funding via Matrix Partners and Accel Partners.

Stanza Living was co-founded by Sandeep Dalmia and Anindya Dutta in 2017. Dalmia is an alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering and IIM Ahmedabad. Prior to Stanza, he was a Principal at Boston Consulting Group. Dutta was previously a Real Estate investor with Oaktree Capital and prior to that, he worked at Goldman Sachs In London. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad.

Stanza Living is a tech-enabled co-living concept which is re-imagining student housing in India by transforming it into an experience product, in-line with evolved hospitality sectors like hotels and serviced apartments. From smart-space planning in residences to gamifying delivery of food for operational effectiveness, from exclusive community engagement programmes to delivering reliable and standardized services through technology integration, Stanza Living operates with a full-stack business model that puts students at the heart of its product and service design, development and execution. The company currently operates in Delhi-NCR and plans to expand its presence across multiple student markets in the country in the coming months.

In India, Stanza Living competes with Delhi-based Placio, StayAbode, StudentAcco and also Zolo, which caters to PG segment. Placio had raised $2 million in pre-series-A funding from Prestellar Ventures, a Singapore-based private equity, while Zolo had raised $5 million from Nexus Venture Partners, in January 2017.

[Top Image - (L-R) Sandeep Dalmia and Anindya Dutta, Co-Founders, Stanza Living]

Student Co-living Startup Stanza Living Raises $10 Mn in Funding led by Sequoia India

Delhi headquartered Stanza Living, a tech-enabled co-living concept startup which is re-imagining student housing in India, has raised a total of Rs 73 crore (USD 10 million) in an investment round led by Sequoia India. This is in addition to Rs 13 crores (USD 2 million) that the company had raised in its first round of institutional funding from Matrix and Accel Partners in November 2017.

With the funding in place, Stanza Living will focus on strengthening its three key business pillars of technology, people and network of operations. The startup is also aiming to strengthen its position as one of India’s largest student co-living companies.

Technology is at the centre of Stanza Living’s business and is one of its core differentiators. The fresh funding will be channelled to bolster the company’s tech engine that drives effectiveness in project management, efficiency in business operations and enables personalised service delivery. Stanza Living will further leverage the funding to expand to multiple markets and strengthen its core leadership team while onboarding specialised talent across functions.

Commenting on the funding, Anindya Dutta, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living, said, “The student housing segment in India offers immense potential but remains largely unorganised. We are determined to transform this segment by offering a professionally-managed co-living experience that mirror international standards. We currently operate 15+ residences in Delhi NCR with a total capacity of 2000 beds. The funding will enable us to unlock multiple opportunities that we’ve identified across important educational hubs and exponentially grow the Stanza community across the country.”

“Marquee global players investing in Stanza Living underlines the confidence the investor community has in our business model,” said Sandeep Dalmia, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living.

“We understand that a student’s lifestyle is extremely distinct. Our industry-first, full-stack business model fundamentally enables us to design our co-living spaces and tailor our services to cater to their specific needs and desires. It allows us to set up and manage end-to-end operations which we believe is absolutely critical to ensure an unmatched experience for our residents,” he added.

“Stanza’s team and their execution is impressive, and Sequoia India is delighted to partner with them in their vision to provide quality housing to students in India. Student housing is an established asset class in the west and we believe Stanza, with its scalable business model and strong economics, can create the asset class in India”, said Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Gourav Bhattacharya, Director, Matrix India, commented “We are very excited about the progress the Stanza team has made over the last 12 months, and think they have a unique opportunity to create a large company by organizing the student housing space. Their approach is a win-win for students and parents through better experience, as well as supply owners through better economics. We are delighted to continue supporting Anindya and Sandeep on their journey."

Abhinav Chaturvedi, Principal at Accel added, "We are delighted to continue our partnership with Stanza Living. In a short period of time, Stanza has become the go-to place for student accommodation in Delhi/NCR. The new money will help expand the Stanza brand to other parts of the Indian market."

Stanza Living is challenging the status quo when it comes to student community living through dedicated programmes like ‘Stanza Springboard’, which focuses on providing career enhancement opportunities, and ‘Stanza Social’, centred around year-long community engagement events as well as exclusive discounted access to a curated list of restaurants, brands and experiences.

In July this year, StayAbode, an another co-living spaces startup, had raised funding for an undisclosed amount from Anupam Mittal (CEO, People Group) and Vineet Sekhsaria (Head, Real Estate investing, Morgan Stanley) and Japanese gaming company Akatsuki Inc.

Last November, Stanza Living had raised ₹13 Crore in its first round of institutional funding via Matrix Partners and Accel Partners.

Stanza Living was co-founded by Sandeep Dalmia and Anindya Dutta in 2017. Dalmia is an alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering and IIM Ahmedabad. Prior to Stanza, he was a Principal at Boston Consulting Group. Dutta was previously a Real Estate investor with Oaktree Capital and prior to that, he worked at Goldman Sachs In London. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad.

Stanza Living is a tech-enabled co-living concept which is re-imagining student housing in India by transforming it into an experience product, in-line with evolved hospitality sectors like hotels and serviced apartments. From smart-space planning in residences to gamifying delivery of food for operational effectiveness, from exclusive community engagement programmes to delivering reliable and standardized services through technology integration, Stanza Living operates with a full-stack business model that puts students at the heart of its product and service design, development and execution. The company currently operates in Delhi-NCR and plans to expand its presence across multiple student markets in the country in the coming months.

In India, Stanza Living competes with Delhi-based Placio, StayAbode, StudentAcco and also Zolo, which caters to PG segment. Placio had raised $2 million in pre-series-A funding from Prestellar Ventures, a Singapore-based private equity, while Zolo had raised $5 million from Nexus Venture Partners, in January 2017.

[Top Image - (L-R) Sandeep Dalmia and Anindya Dutta, Co-Founders, Stanza Living]

Unacademy Raises $11.5 Mn In Series B Funding Led By Sequoia India, SAIF Partners

Learning platform Unacademy today announced the close of a $11.5 million Series B round of funding led by Sequoia India and SAIF Partners. Existing investors and angels including Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures also participated in the round.

Unacademy will utilize the funding to accelerate its product and technology as well as scale to other categories including personality development, new languages and job interviews. The company will also significantly invest in producing its own knowledge based content with its top educators on the platform.

Commenting on the development, Gaurav Munjal, CEO and co-founder, Unacademy said, “Our vision is to build the world’s largest online knowledge repository by empowering great educators. With the backing of Sequoia and SAIF, we are poised to significantly gain momentum and create the first global education technology product out of India.”

Unacademy is an online learning platform that empowers educators to create courses on various subjects. The platform currently has more than 50,000 lessons online and over 1 million registered users. It is also one of the largest education channels on YouTube India with 1 million subscribers.

The platform’s educators range from influencers like Dr Kiran Bedi to teachers in smaller towns and cities such as Dhiraj Singh Chouhan in Jagdalpur and Yasmin Gill in Panchkula.

“Sequoia India is inspired by Unacademy's vision to create a global platform that enables educators to create content and engage with learners. The missionary team at Unacademy is off to a tremendous start, achieving rapid early adoption and Sequoia is thrilled to be a part of their journey,” said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore Pte. Ltd.

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh and Sachin Gupta. Gaurav and Hemesh were previously running Flatchat which was acquired by CommonFloor in 2014. Roman, 26, is a doctor from AIIMS and one of the youngest people to clear the prestigious Indian Civil Services Examination. To follow his passion, he quit his administrative services post as Asst. Collector of Jabalpur to start Unacademy.

Recently, the company added billionaire and serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia to the board.

Finova Capital Secures Funding From Sequoia India In Series A

Finova Capital, the NBFC licensed by Reserve Bank of India has raised an undisclosed amount in series-A funding from Sequoia India, a venture capital firm. According to the ETtech, the startup will use the freshly infused fund for expansion plans and build out a technology to smoothen the process of reaching out to rural customers, cut short the documentation process for loans and also for digitization of KYC and documents required for applying for the loan.

Commenting on the development, GV Ravi Shankar, MD, Sequoia Capital India said, “Finova Capital is addressing a critical need-gap in the highly underserved MSME market by making credit available to small businesses with undocumented income through their innovative credit models.”

Founded in 2015, Finova capital is NBFC focusing on MSME lending. The idea of Finova capital germinated with a belief that, if supported well, then the MSME can play a pivotal role in growing Indian economy.

Being one of the fast growing NBFCs based out of Jaipur, Rajasthan, the company is floated by the ex-senior banker, Mohit Sahney who recently announced its association with Rajiv Sabharwal, as the strategic advisor.

Bringing about financial innovation and transforming credit delivery, The Finova Capital offers flexible ticket size of the loans between a minimum of 2 Lakhs to maximum 20 Lakh, depending on the requirements. Within just a year of its operations, Finova Capital has emerged as one of the most preferred financial services providers amongst MSMEs in India.

In March 2017, Finova Capital shared its target of disbursing loans worth INR 100 Crore in 2017 to the Indian MSME sector. Within the past one year of its launch, the fastidious company has already disbursed loans worth INR 20 Crores to over 220 small scale merchants, with the ticket size of INR 9 Lakh.

Bengaluru-based Oncology Focused Startup OncoStem Raises $6 Mn From Sequoia Capital

Bengaluru-based OncoStem Diagnostics, an oncology-focused startup offering personalized cancer treatment, has raised $6 million from Silicon Valley heavyweight investor Sequoia India, reported Times of India.

The funding round also saw the participation of its existing investor Artiman Ventures, a California-based VC firm which has so far pumped $3 million in multiple tranches since the company was founded. OncoStem will use the freshly raised funds in R&D to develop new products as well as expand its operations go deeper into Asia and Europe.

Founded by Manjiri Bakre in 2011, OncoStem is focused on personalized cancer treatment planning through the development of tests that try to effectively predict the chance of cancer recurrence in patients. OncoStem's first focus has been the development of CanAssist-Breast which identifies the risk of recurrence in patients with Hormone Receptor positive Breast Cancer. Similar tests in Oral, Lung, and Colorectal Cancer are under development. The company is present in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh currently.

"We will allocate the new capital to expand our presence in Asia firstly and then look into markets like Europe, Middle East etc. While expansion is a focus point, we will invest in our R&D so that we can come up with new products to follow up with our lead product. We aim to develop innovative and cost-effective tests that will help predict and assess the risk of recurrence in cancer patients, thus providing doctors with an actionable blueprint for personalised treatments," said Manjiri Bakre, founder and CEO, OncoStem Diagnostics.

The company plans to expand its presence in India and introduce tests in new markets like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore. Moreover, the company is also planning to set up another central laboratory in Singapore.

While patients can reach out to the Bengaluru-based startup directly, OncoStem also works with hospitals to develop its distribution network."OncoStem is filling a critical need gap and helping thousands of cancer patients from severe chemotherapy, its associated toxic effects and the costs involved with it. The technology and pricing can fundamentally change patient's access to such cutting edge tests, which have been prohibitively expensive in most markets globally so far," said Anjana Sasidharan, principal, Sequoia India.

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Sequoia India Acquires Canadian Cosmetics Brand 'Faces' from Everstone Capital for $40M

Sequoia India has signed definitive agreements for the acquisition of Faces Cosmetics Canada, along with its international subsidiaries and the brand “Faces”, from Indivision India Partners managed by Everstone Capital. The existing management team led by Sharmili Rajput will continue to drive the business forward.

Faces is an iconic Canadian Color cosmetics brand set up over 40 years ago with a presence across countries in North America. It was acquired by Indivision India partners in 2007 and launched in India in December 2009.

“The colour cosmetics market is the fastest growing category in personal care and we see a huge opportunity for the Faces brand. The Sequoia team will work with the Faces management to make significant investments and deploy operational expertise to unlock the brand’s full potential, as well as expand its portfolio and reach.” said Abhay Pandey, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Faces has a strong presence in India through leading e-commerce sites, over 900 store-in-stores, 2000 general trade stores and 13 EBOs across 80 cities. The new management team took over in 2014 and has helped grow the business rapidly to brand sales of over INR 100 Crores last year. Having successfully established itself as a young, exciting and innovative brand, the company is now looking to invest in a big way in product development, marketing and distribution and take the company to the next level.

“Our aim is to grow our revenue by 5x over the next five years, through strengthening our geographic coverage, deepening our distribution, expanding the portfolio, and extending our iconic brand to adjacent skin care categories,” said Sharmili Rajput, CEO, Faces.

Deep Mishra, MD, Everstone Capital, said: “Over the last three years, the Everstone team has reoriented the brand and product towards India and build a strong local management team. The Product suite has also been adapted to suit the Indian skin tones and points of presence scaled rapidly. The company is now poised for its next leg of growth and is well positioned for success”.

Everstone’s Rajev Shukla, a Unilever veteran, will continue to hold his personal stake in the company.

Image Source: ShutterStock

Blume Venture Is India's Most Active Tech VC Followed By IAN and Sequoia India

India is still a developing economy, and in order to bridge that gap between developing and developed, India still has a lot of sectors to work on like health, finance, defence etc. And, the one sector which can really help in making all these sectors progress is the tech sector.

The Indian startup industry has witnessed a lot of investment activity happening in the tech sector in the last couple of years. In fact, the year 2016 saw a record number of deals taking place in the tech space. While 2017 might not be going that well when it comes to the deal pace, but the funding is advancing in a celebratory trajectory and is currently witnessing more than triple the deals that took place last year.

According to a CB Insights report, early-stage investors are currently the most active in the tech space in India, with Mumbai-based Blume Ventures right at the top of the ladder.

The report, which took into account investments that took place in the Indian tech startups from 2012 to 2017, ranked the Mumbai VC firm as the leading tech investor on the basis of the investments it made in 76 companies. The VC, which is known for participating in seed or pre-Series A stages, typically invests a sum of anywhere between $100,000 to $500,000 in each of the startups that it adds to its portfolio. One of the most popular startup in its folio is TaxiForSure, which later got acquired by Ola in a deal worth a whopping $200 million.

According to the CB Insights report, the biggest round that the VC participated in was a $30-million Series B round two years ago in 2015. It was raised by warehouse automation systems provider Grey Orange Robotics.

The report further divulged that Angel groups were some of the most active investors in the Indian tech startup sector, with Indian Angel Network (IAN) coming in at the second place by making investments in 64 companies. Partners India and Sequoia Capital India took the third place together on the list by investing in 55 startups each.

A close look on the list reveals that off the ten most active investors, two of the firms were of foreign origin. They were: New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Hong Kong headquartered SAIF Partners. While Tiger invested in 36 companies, SAIF invested in 35.