Nykaa Raises Rs 100 Crore from Steadview Capital

Nykaa, an omnichannel retailer, on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 100 crore from Steadview Capital at an undisclosed valuation.

Steadview is already an investor in the company started by Falguni Nayyar, an investment banker turned entrepreneur.

This is a primary investment by Steadview in the nearly eight year-old venture and comes amid concerns over economic growth following the full lockdown in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"In the midst of this unprecedented global crisis, we are working to ensure all our stakeholders are well served and that Nykaa emerges as a leading retail player in the industry," Nayyar said.

"We believe the company is poised for a strong growth trajectory in the years to come. The company's focus on customer service and capital efficiency stands out in the Indian ecommerce space," Steadview's founder and chief investment officer Ravi Mehta said. PTI AA

Voice Customer Service Firm Observe.AI Raises $26 Mn in Funding led by Scale Venture Partners

Company also announces a relationship with Microsoft to bring AI-powered coaching and conversational insights to joint customers

Observe.AI, the leader in AI-powered agent enablement for voice customer service, today announce d a $26 million Series A financing led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital, 01 Advisors, and Emergent Ventures. This funding allows Observe.AI to expand its US-India team globally and accelerate product development.

In conjunction with the funding, Andy Vitus, partner at Scale, will be joining Observe.AI’s board. This brings the company’s total funding to $34 million.

“Legacy speech analytics systems are simply not meeting the needs of the world’s top brands,” said Swapnil Jain, CEO and co-founder of Observe.AI. “Today’s customer service agents have a unique ability to emotionally connect with customers and are often a brand’s only frontline representatives. This investment will fuel our mission to elevate agent performance through AI-based coaching and insights."

Many support teams monitor just 1-2 percent of calls and use three or more systems to access conversational insights and enable agents. Observe.AI uses the latest speech, natural language processing, and deep learning technologies to analyze 100 percent of customer conversations and provide adaptive coaching, including completely automating some parts of the quality assurance and compliance tracking processes. The platform becomes smarter with each call analysis.

"Observe.AI is already disrupting the $300 billion voice customer service market by rethinking how agents are coached and the way top brands provide personalized customer experiences,” said Andy Vitus, Partner at Scale Venture Partners.

Observe.AI also announced that it has been accepted into the Microsoft for Startups program. With this relationship, Microsoft customers can leverage Observe.AI’s platform through its Azure marketplace.

“At Microsoft, we're thrilled to see one of our Microsoft for Start-Up members excel as one of the fastest-growing startups in the Bay Area. Observe.AI continues to define how AI can transform the customer experience, impacting enterprise support teams to improve quality of service, agent performance, and productivity," said Shaloo Garg, Managing Director, Microsoft for Start-Ups.

In the past 12 months, Observe.AI has signed 100 customers and formed partnerships with leading organizations like Microsoft, Talkdesk, ERCBPO, and itelBPO. Some of the world’s largest enterprises and emerging brands use Observe.AI, including TripAdvisor, Concentrix, ClearMe, and Root Insurance. Thousands of global agents are coached with Observe.AI, which provides a detailed look at how top agents successfully structure calls so those tactics can be replicated.

“We expect to see a 4X increase in annual recurring revenue in 2020,” said Sharath Keshava Narayana, CRO of Observe.AI. “With plans to significantly expand our sales, marketing, and customer success teams over the next few months, we’re both eager and grateful to build on the momentum.”

“Observe.AI is set to transform voice customer service for the AI era. We are delighted to have partnered with them from the early days of their journey,” said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Nexus Managing Director and Observe.AI board member.

Observe.AI, the leader in AI-powered agent enablement for voice customer service, brings coaching and conversational insights to the world’s top brands to improve the customer experience. With its Voice AI Platform, which leverages the latest Speech and Natural Language Processing technologies, organizations quality check 100% of calls, ensure compliance, and turn agents into top performers. Observe.AI is trusted by more than 100 customers and partners, including, Tripadvisor, Microsoft, ERCBPO, Talkdesk, and more. Backed by Scale Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and Emergent Ventures, Observe.AI’s headquarters is located in San Francisco with an office in Bangalore.

Scale Venture Partners (@scalevp) invests in software companies that are building the Intelligent Connected World. Investments include: Bill.com, Box (BOX), Cloudhealth, Pantheon, Demandbase, DocuSign (DOCU), ExactTarget (ET), HubSpot (HUBS), JFrog, Lever, and WalkMe. Scale partners with entrepreneurs to support accelerated growth from the first customer to market leadership. Founded in 2000, Scale has over $1 billion under management and is located in Silicon Valley.

Nexus Venture Partners is a venture capital firm in US and India, focused on partnering with early-stage companies. With decades of experience in building and funding globally leading companies, Nexus manages more than USD 1.5 billion across funds. Nexus invests in companies across sectors spanning enterprise technology, consumer internet, and technology-enabled business services. Nexus backed companies include Druva, Postman, H2O.ai, Headspin, Delhivery, Kaltura, Unacademy, Snapdeal, and many other startups across US and India.

Ola Raises $74 Mn in Fresh Funding from Steadview Capital At $5.7 Bn Valuation

India's homegrown ride-hailing platform Ola has raised $74 million (~ ₹ 521 crores) in Series J round of funding round from Hong Kong-based equity hedge fund Steadview Capital's Mauritius arm. The latest funding infusion is part of $1 billion that Ola is currently in the process of raising.

With this fresh infusion of capital, Ola is now valued at $5.7 billion which has resulted in displacing budget hotel chain Oyo Rooms (Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd) in terms of valuation and now Ola is second most valued startup in India, behind only to One97 Communications Pvt. Ltd, the parent of payment firm Paytm.

The fresh funding comes within just four months after Ola had raised $50 million from two new investors, Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF), at valuation of $4.2 billion.

Earlier in January last year, Ola had raised Rs 14.14 crore from Chinese company Eternal Yield International Limited.

According to a report accessed from business intelligence platform Paper.vc, ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, the holding company of Ola, on Wednesday issued series ‘J’ preferential shares to Steadview Capital Mauritius Ltd.

Bengaluru-headquartered Ola issued 245,082 shares with a face value of Rs 10 each and a premium of Rs 21,240.

In October last year, Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved a proposal from the founders of Ola to enhance their stake in the parent company, ANI Technologies. This allowed acquisition of 6.72% shares of ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. by Lazarus Holdings Pte. Ltd, is a Singapore-incorporated subsidy set up by ANI Technologies to be used as an investment holding company.

Just yesterday, it was reported that Ola is in discussions to invest or even acquire Myra Medicines, a medicine delivery startup, in order to enter the burgeoning online medicine delivery segment.

Ola, formerly Olacabs, was founded in Jan 2011 by IIT Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. India’s most popular mobility platform has users across 110 cities with over 800,000 vehicles across cabs, auto-rickshaws, and taxis.

Besides SoftBank, other investors in Ola include Tiger Global Management, Falcon Edge, DST Global and Matrix Partners India.

Source - LiveMint,

Ibibo Founder Launches AI-based FinTech Startup INDwealth; Raises $30 Mn from Steadview Capital

Two years after selling Ibibo to MakeMyTrip for an estimated $2 billion and making an exit from its first venture, Ibibo founder, Ashish Kashyap, has launched his second entrepreneurial venture called INDWealth, which is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered wealth management company.

Kashyap has co-founded INDwealth with three other co-founders namely Pratiksha D., Amrita Sirohia and Varun Bhatia. Pratiksha and Varun are former employees at Ibibo and were serving as Software Engineers at Kashyab founded Ibibo. Amrita Sirohia on other hand is former Vice President at HSBC.

The parent company of IndWealth is Finzoom Investments, which is registered in Gurgaon.

INDWealth, an AI and machine learning-based wealth management and advisory platform, will offer a slew of services to high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals. Its a full stack personal finance platform that aims to provide solutions to investors ranging from wealth management, investments, micro-savings, taxation, lending, expense management, and portfolio management.

Moreover, the startup has raised an estimated $30 million (~ Rs 220 crore) in seed funding from UK and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, which is possibly the largest funding round raised by a homegrown startup that is yet to be launched for public.

Ravi Mehta, managing director at Steadview Capital, said in a statement to Economic Times, “Globally, this space has seen some innovative applications of tech, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with human touch to change the way wealth is managed for individuals.”

With this fundraise, INDwealth has joined the league of very few Indian startups which has raised a handsome capital even before being launched and going live for public usage. Earlier in September last year, Mumbai-based InsurTech startup Acko General Insurance had raised $30 million in seed funding from many high profile investors.

INDwealth is expected to launch in January next year, for both Android and iOS users. The app will initially target HNIs and affluents with annual incomes starting from Rs 18-Rs 20 lakh and upwards and therafter it will eventually be rolled out for all.

In a statement given to Economic Times, Kashyap said, “The key learning is, managing money cannot be done through a single dimension. It can’t just be done through investments. It has to be done through a combination of investment, liabilities and taxation. We want to play a very important part of the consumer’s financial life."

“Everyone is developing products and solutions of various sub-categories, but they all intersect. We wanted to bring all of this under one roof, which is classic wealth management practice. This will enable consumers to plan their goals for the future,” he said.

Kashyap quit as president and co-founder of MakeMyTrip in September last year, a year after he, along with MakeMyTrip group chief executive Deep Kalra, had orchestrated, at the time, the largest internet merger in India—the $2 billion largely stock acquisition of Ibibo Group by the Nasdaq-listed Makemytrip.

Prior to founding "ibibo Group", Kshyap was had served as Country Head of Google India, where he set up the India facing operations from ground up. Prior to Google, he was also the head of E-Commerce businesses at Indiatimes.com (Online travel, Shopping and Payments).

Post his stint at Google, he set up Ibibo Group, which was initially created as a greenfield incubator, in partnership with Naspers, before evolving into an online travel business.

Ashish holds an Economics (Honors) from Kirori Mal College, University Of Delhi and a diploma in "International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM) from Insead, Fontainebleau, France.

Kashyap had also made a couple of investments in Indian startups - Betaout and Food delivery startup BiteClub.

Source - Economic Times

Ibibo Founder Launches AI-based FinTech Startup INDwealth; Raises $30 Mn from Steadview Capital

Two years after selling Ibibo to MakeMyTrip for an estimated $2 billion and making an exit from its first venture, Ibibo founder, Ashish Kashyap, has launched his second entrepreneurial venture called INDWealth, which is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered wealth management company.

Kashyap has co-founded INDwealth with three other co-founders namely Pratiksha D., Amrita Sirohia and Varun Bhatia. Pratiksha and Varun are former employees at Ibibo and were serving as Software Engineers at Kashyab founded Ibibo. Amrita Sirohia on other hand is former Vice President at HSBC.

The parent company of IndWealth is Finzoom Investments, which is registered in Gurgaon.

INDWealth, an AI and machine learning-based wealth management and advisory platform, will offer a slew of services to high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals. Its a full stack personal finance platform that aims to provide solutions to investors ranging from wealth management, investments, micro-savings, taxation, lending, expense management, and portfolio management.

Moreover, the startup has raised an estimated $30 million (~ Rs 220 crore) in seed funding from UK and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, which is possibly the largest funding round raised by a homegrown startup that is yet to be launched for public.

Ravi Mehta, managing director at Steadview Capital, said in a statement to Economic Times, “Globally, this space has seen some innovative applications of tech, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with human touch to change the way wealth is managed for individuals.”

With this fundraise, INDwealth has joined the league of very few Indian startups which has raised a handsome capital even before being launched and going live for public usage. Earlier in September last year, Mumbai-based InsurTech startup Acko General Insurance had raised $30 million in seed funding from many high profile investors.

INDwealth is expected to launch in January next year, for both Android and iOS users. The app will initially target HNIs and affluents with annual incomes starting from Rs 18-Rs 20 lakh and upwards and therafter it will eventually be rolled out for all.

In a statement given to Economic Times, Kashyap said, “The key learning is, managing money cannot be done through a single dimension. It can’t just be done through investments. It has to be done through a combination of investment, liabilities and taxation. We want to play a very important part of the consumer’s financial life."

“Everyone is developing products and solutions of various sub-categories, but they all intersect. We wanted to bring all of this under one roof, which is classic wealth management practice. This will enable consumers to plan their goals for the future,” he said.

Kashyap quit as president and co-founder of MakeMyTrip in September last year, a year after he, along with MakeMyTrip group chief executive Deep Kalra, had orchestrated, at the time, the largest internet merger in India—the $2 billion largely stock acquisition of Ibibo Group by the Nasdaq-listed Makemytrip.

Prior to founding "ibibo Group", Kshyap was had served as Country Head of Google India, where he set up the India facing operations from ground up. Prior to Google, he was also the head of E-Commerce businesses at Indiatimes.com (Online travel, Shopping and Payments).

Post his stint at Google, he set up Ibibo Group, which was initially created as a greenfield incubator, in partnership with Naspers, before evolving into an online travel business.

Ashish holds an Economics (Honors) from Kirori Mal College, University Of Delhi and a diploma in "International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM) from Insead, Fontainebleau, France.

Kashyap had also made a couple of investments in Indian startups - Betaout and Food delivery startup BiteClub.

Source - Economic Times

Fresh Funding For Flipkart Again, $180Mn From Honkong's Steadview Capital

India's e-commerce giant Flipkart has raised a fresh round of funding again and the third round of funding of Flipkart has been led by Hongkong-based investment firm Steadview Capital. Flipkart has received an initial investment of $180 million from Steadview Capital.

Moreover, the latest round of funding has been made against their new valuation of $11 billion or roughly Rs 69,000 crore from its previous valuation of $10 billion which was just a month back. The latest valuation has made Flipkart's worth more than some of India's largest consumer companies. While Godrej Consumer is estimated to be worth Rs 31,000 crore, Dabur India is valued at about Rs 41,000 crore.

This latest deal, which when complete could bring in about $700 million in fresh funding for Flipkart. For Steadview Capital this its third funding in Indian company. Earlier, the investment firm had invested in furniture e-tailer Urban Ladder and taxi aggregator Olacabs.

Last month we reported that Flipkart is all set to raise another waive in India's e-commerce industry by its plan of raising another $1.5 billion in a fresh round of funding.

So far Flipkart has raised a total of $1.2 billion in year 2014 comparing to Snapdeal's $860 milion funding in 2014.

In May, Flipkart received $210 million led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global and in July, Flipkart had raised $1 billion funding (roughly Rs. 6,000 crores). The $1 billion fund raised by the company also became the biggest fund raising ever by an Indian startup or an e-commerce company in India.

Flipkart is now worth nearly half of India's fourth-largest IT services firm Wipro, which has a market capitalisation of Rs 1.34 lakh crore, and nearly seven times the mid-sized IT services firm MindTree that is valued at Rs 10,000 crore.

Funding Raised By Flipkart - 2009-2014

Round	Who Funded	Date	Amount
First Round	Accel India	2009	USD 1 Million
Second Round	Tiger Global	2010	USD 10 Million
Third Round	Tiger Global	June 2011	USD 20 Million
Fourth Round	Naspers / ICONIQ Capital	August 2012	USD 150 Million
Fifth Round	Naspers, Accel Partners, Tiger Global, and ICONIQ Capital	July 2013	USD 200 Million
Sixth Round	Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sofina and Vulcan Capital, Tiger Global	Oct 2013	USD 160 Million
Seventh Round	DST Global	May 2014	USD 210 Million
Eighth Round	Tiger Global, DST Global, Accel Partners (plus other new investors)	July 2014	USD 1 Billion
Ninth Round	Steadview Capital	December 2014	USD 180 Million
		Total	USD 1.2 Billion

Zomato To Raise $200 Million, Will Enter Billion-Dollar Club by December

Zomato, the online restaurant discovery guide, has decided to hit the billion dollar plus valuation by December this year. In order to achieve its this goal, the company has already begun talks with a number of global strategic and private equity investors. The company will have to raise another 200 million dollars in order to hit the billion dollar mark by the year end.

According to sources, private equity firms like Tybourne Capital Management, which is a Hong Kong based hedge fund, Tiger Global and Steadview Capital have entered into discussions with the Gurgaon base Zomato. A couple of strategic investors are also in talks with the eight year old company but their names haven’t been disclosed yet.

Sequoia Capital, an existing investor, which was successful in raising around $530 million in its fourth India focused fund, has also decided to take part in the latest round of funding. The funding round could further reduce Info edge’s stake in the company. Info Edge is an early backer of the Gurgaon based company which still owns 50% of stakes in it.

If the fundraising is successful, it will be the biggest investment ever made by investors in an Indian non-retail, consumer retail venture. This fundraising will also leave behind the $90 million raised by Quikr in March this year.

The last round of funding which took place in November 2013, valued the eight year old company at $165 million. This year, the company is expected to end the year with revenues of Rs.100 crores or more. Flipkart, the Online retailer was successful in increasing its valuation from $ 2.6 billion to $ 7 billion in just two months between May and July this year.

If the Gurgaon based Online restaurant discovery guide is successful in achieving the $ 1 billion mark, it will make an entry into the elite club of digital startups who have been successful in reaching this crucial valuation milestone. As of now, just seven Indian startups enjoy a membership in the club, they are MakeMyTrip, InMobi, Flipkart, Mu Sigma, Snapdeal, Info Edge and JustDial. They all are valued more than $ 1billion.

A successful round of funding will also make the two founders of the company- Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal- the new poster boys of startup boom and success in India. Both the founder currently own over 30% stakes in the company. The Gurgaon based Company is expected to use the money from the funds to make its way into the lucrative United States market  and compete with the likes of Open Table etc.

Zomato To Raise $200 Million, Will Enter Billion-Dollar Club by December

Zomato, the online restaurant discovery guide, has decided to hit the billion dollar plus valuation by December this year. In order to achieve its this goal, the company has already begun talks with a number of global strategic and private equity investors. The company will have to raise another 200 million dollars in order to hit the billion dollar mark by the year end.

According to sources, private equity firms like Tybourne Capital Management, which is a Hong Kong based hedge fund, Tiger Global and Steadview Capital have entered into discussions with the Gurgaon base Zomato. A couple of strategic investors are also in talks with the eight year old company but their names haven’t been disclosed yet.

Sequoia Capital, an existing investor, which was successful in raising around $530 million in its fourth India focused fund, has also decided to take part in the latest round of funding. The funding round could further reduce Info edge’s stake in the company. Info Edge is an early backer of the Gurgaon based company which still owns 50% of stakes in it.

If the fundraising is successful, it will be the biggest investment ever made by investors in an Indian non-retail, consumer retail venture. This fundraising will also leave behind the $90 million raised by Quikr in March this year.

The last round of funding which took place in November 2013, valued the eight year old company at $165 million. This year, the company is expected to end the year with revenues of Rs.100 crores or more. Flipkart, the Online retailer was successful in increasing its valuation from $ 2.6 billion to $ 7 billion in just two months between May and July this year.

If the Gurgaon based Online restaurant discovery guide is successful in achieving the $ 1 billion mark, it will make an entry into the elite club of digital startups who have been successful in reaching this crucial valuation milestone. As of now, just seven Indian startups enjoy a membership in the club, they are MakeMyTrip, InMobi, Flipkart, Mu Sigma, Snapdeal, Info Edge and JustDial. They all are valued more than $ 1billion.

A successful round of funding will also make the two founders of the company- Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal- the new poster boys of startup boom and success in India. Both the founder currently own over 30% stakes in the company. The Gurgaon based Company is expected to use the money from the funds to make its way into the lucrative United States market  and compete with the likes of Open Table etc.

Olacabs raised Rs 250 crore funds from Sequoia Capital & Steadview Capital

Mumbai based car rental startup has raised fresh Rs.250 crore of funding from India focused-hedge fund Steadview Capital and Silicon Valley's VC firm Sequoia Capital and this made 3-year old Olacabs valuation of over Rs 1,000 crore.

The money raised would be used to quickly expand Olacabs services into new cities, categories and strengthen the cab aggregators' driver ecosystem in a highly competitive market. The startup has raised around $65 million of funds in three rounds of institutional funding.

Earlier in November last year Olacabs have raised undisclosed amount in Series B funding from Matrix Partners India and Tiger Global Management. Raised Rs.2 crore angel round in 2011 and the subsequent 40 crore Series A funding from Tiger Global Management in April 2012.

Olacabs' valuation has more than doubled since November last year when it got on board Matrix Partners in a Rs 120-crore fund-raise. Now Olacabs has joined 1000 crore club of India with other internet startups players such as Quikr, Zomato and Bookmyshow and this exclude billion-dollar club members such as Flipkart and Snapdeal.

Notably, Sequoia Capital has also invested in Zomato which also have valuation of more than Rs.100 crore.

Olacabs, which works on the marketplace model, has 11,000 cabs across nine cities on its platform and is said to be clocking 12,000 bookings per day, 50% of which are through its mobile app. Olacabs is the first cab service in India to launch a mobile app to book and monitor cabs.

As reported to TOI, Olacabs work on the asset-light model where, instead of owning the fleet themselves, they facilitate driver entrepreneurship. Ola, in fact, helps drivers in financing loans at lower interest rates for the purchase of their cars and has tie-ups with car manufacturers.

The overall Indian cab market, estimated at about $4 billion and Olacabs is growing 30% month-on-month.