Zomato Raises ₹456 Crores in Funding from Temasek 's Subsidiary MacRitchie Investments

Zomato Private Limited,  the online food restaurant discovery and delivery platform, has raised ₹456 Crores (~ US $62.4 million) in funding from MacRitchie Investments Pte. Ltd., according to financial data accessed by business intelligence platform, Toflera.

MacRitchie Investments is a Singapore-based investment firm and a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited.

In January 2020, Gurugram-based Zomato raised $150 million from Alibaba-affiliate Ant Financial. According to an estimate by HSBC Global Research, Zomato's valuation has improved to nearly $5 billion, an addition of nearly $2 billion over its valuation during the previous fundraising round.

In 2018, Ant Financial invested $210 million in Zomato for 14.7 per cent stake and later raised the stake to 23 per cent.

Other Zomato investors include Info Edge India, Vy Capital, Sequoia Capital and Singapore-based Temasek.

Temasek's Vertex Holdings Raises $230 Mn for 4th South-East Asia Fund

Vertex Venture Holdings raised US$230 million in the first close of its fourth Southeast Asian fund to back technology startups across the region and India.

The Singapore-based venture capital arm of Temasek Holdings plans to finalise the funding in the next few months, which could take it above the first close, said Chua Kee Lock, managing partner of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.

Most of the investors in its third fund, including Cathay Financial Holding, have backed the new one.

After the success of its bet on ride-hailing app Grab, now Southeast Asia's most valuable startup, Vertex plans to continue backing early-stage technology for financial services, enterprise and consumers in the region.

The net internal rate of return of its third Southeast Asian and Indian fund, which started in 2016, was 45.2 per cent as of December, according to a presentation to investors.

"Our investors have shown confidence in us by participating in the first closing, which hit the initial target of the fund," Mr Chua said.

"The reality is that there are some concerns about the trade war and valuations and the fundraising environment is getting harder."

Earlier Vertex investments include online shopping store FirstCry.com; InstaReM, a cross-border digital payments startup; Validus, an online financing marketplace; and Binance Asia, a cryptocurrency exchange platform.

The VC firm got its start three decades ago and Mr Chua joined as chief executive officer of Vertex Venture Holdings in 2008 and expanded it into a global operation with US$2.5 billion under management as of October.

Today, it manages portfolios in China, Israel, India, Southeast Asia and the US.

The new fund comes amid a flurry of fundraising activities in the region. Jungle Ventures is currently raising a US$200 million fund, while Golden Gate Ventures has teamed up with South Korea's Hanwha Asset Management to raise a US$200 million fund.

This news was first appeared in The Business Times (Singapore)

Jungle Ventures' third VC Fund gets $175 Mn from Temasek, IFC, Cisco and Others

Singapore based Venture Capital (VC) firm, Jungle Ventures, that invests in and helps build tech category leaders from Asia, has received commitments of around $175 million for its third VC fund, said a report by Livemint.

According to the report, about 90% of the $175 million of third VC fund, which may increase to $220 million, came from institutional investors in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, which include International Finance Corporation (IFC) of World Bank group, DEG - Deutsche Investitions, Germany, Cisco Investments, and Temasek Holdings among others.

Jungle Ventures, which has recently invested in Singapore's TookiTaki, has raised a total of $275 Mn across two VC funds. The third, Jungle Ventures III, was announced in December last year.

Founded in 2012, by Anurag Srivastava (IIM-Calcutta) and Amit Anand (IIT-Kanpur), Jungle Ventures invests in technology and e-commerce start-ups in India and south-east Asia. The firm later on-boarrrded Jayesh Parekh, the co-founder of Sony Entertainment Television, and David Gowdey, the former operating partner at private equity firm TPG Growth. In July last year, Grace Xia, Tencent’s former senior director of strategy & development, joined Jungle Ventures as a principal.

From its third fund, Jungle Ventures has already made 5 new investments where it led Series A & Series B rounds, said the report. Each year, the firm invests in around 10-15 tech startups and software companies, specifically across Series A and B rounds.

In India, some of the recent investments of Jungle ventures include Livspace, Paysense, Moglix and Klinify among others. The funds’ last 8 investments globally in Southeast Asia have collectively reached over $500 Mn.

FirstCry May Raise Fresh $150 Mn Funds from Temasek, Tencent Holdings and A Chinese Investor

Mahindra-owned baby products startup Firstcry is reportedly in talks to raise $100-150 million from new and existing investors as it seeks to increase its lead in the market.

According to the LiveMint report, citing three people privy to the matter, Firstcry has fortifed talks with Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, with whom it was in funding talks last year but cooled-off later. The startup is also in talks with Chinese internet giant Tencent and an unidentified Chinese investment firm to raise its next round.

Firstcry held funding talks with Temasek last year but then nothing happened in the end because of two's differences over valuation. The companies revived talks this year and has appointed Morgan Stanley as its investment bank for the deal.

Temasek, which has recently led the $125 million funding of Noida-based PoS deploying company Pine Labs, is a minority investor in companies such as Flipkart, Ola, Byju’s, Practo and Hike.

Founded in 2010 by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, Firstcry (Brainbees Solutions Pvt. Ltd) is now poised to called as India’s largest baby products retailer and has raised more than $100 million from high profile investors including Ratan Tata, Mahindra, IDG Ventures India, New Enterprise Associates, SAIF Partners, Vertex Ventures and others.

In October 2016, Firstcry bought Mahindra’s struggling babycare business BabyOye Retail Pvt. Ltd for ₹362 crore in a cash-and-stock deal.

Headquartered in Pune, FIrstCry is one of the very few e-commerce startups that has flourished in the past three years despite competition from giants like Flipkart and Amazon India.

For financial year 2016-17, Firstcry reported a loss of ₹393 crore on revenue of ₹239 crore.

It may also be recalled that, e-commerce logistics startup Xpressbees, which is founded by Firstcry founders Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, had raised funding of $35 million from China's Alibaba, in January this year. Launched in 2015 as 'Busybees', Xpressbees is the logistics business offshooted from FirstCry

FirstCry May Raise Fresh $150 Mn Funds from Temasek, Tencent Holdings and A Chinese Investor

Mahindra-owned baby products startup Firstcry is reportedly in talks to raise $100-150 million from new and existing investors as it seeks to increase its lead in the market.

According to the LiveMint report, citing three people privy to the matter, Firstcry has fortifed talks with Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, with whom it was in funding talks last year but cooled-off later. The startup is also in talks with Chinese internet giant Tencent and an unidentified Chinese investment firm to raise its next round.

Firstcry held funding talks with Temasek last year but then nothing happened in the end because of two's differences over valuation. The companies revived talks this year and has appointed Morgan Stanley as its investment bank for the deal.

Temasek, which has recently led the $125 million funding of Noida-based PoS deploying company Pine Labs, is a minority investor in companies such as Flipkart, Ola, Byju’s, Practo and Hike.

Founded in 2010 by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, Firstcry (Brainbees Solutions Pvt. Ltd) is now poised to called as India’s largest baby products retailer and has raised more than $100 million from high profile investors including Ratan Tata, Mahindra, IDG Ventures India, New Enterprise Associates, SAIF Partners, Vertex Ventures and others.

In October 2016, Firstcry bought Mahindra’s struggling babycare business BabyOye Retail Pvt. Ltd for ₹362 crore in a cash-and-stock deal.

Headquartered in Pune, FIrstCry is one of the very few e-commerce startups that has flourished in the past three years despite competition from giants like Flipkart and Amazon India.

For financial year 2016-17, Firstcry reported a loss of ₹393 crore on revenue of ₹239 crore.

It may also be recalled that, e-commerce logistics startup Xpressbees, which is founded by Firstcry founders Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, had raised funding of $35 million from China's Alibaba, in January this year. Launched in 2015 as 'Busybees', Xpressbees is the logistics business offshooted from FirstCry

FirstCry in Talks To Raise Rs 666 Crore

Pune, Maharashtra headquartered FirstCry.com, which claims to be Asia’s Largest Online Portal for Baby Products and Toys, is currently in the midst of raising equity financing of about Rs 665.27 crore ($100 million) from multiple investors including Temasek Holdings, a state-owned holding company that can be characterized as a national wealth fund owned by the Government of Singapore.

According to a report in the Economic Times, two sources close to the company have confirmed the publication that FirstCry’s parent company Brainbees Solutions is hoping to be valued at $400-500 million after this fundraise goes through. The company was earlier estimated at $300-350 million when it last raised funding in October last year.

The sources further revealed that the investment is most likely to include secondary transactions to purchase stockholdings in the 2010 founded firm from its existing investors.

Neither FirstCry and Temasek have confirmed the news yet. Temasek is an investment company headquartered in Singapore with a multinational staff of 630 people and a portfolio of $275 billion globally, which is mainly in Asia and Singapore and covers a broad spectrum of industries. In the past, the company has backed online marketplace Snapdeal, automobile classified portal CarTrade, and online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, among other companies.

An online shopping store offering a range of baby care products and toys, FirstCry has over 20000+ items from 250+ top International and Indian brands like Mattel, Ben10, Pigeon, Funskool, Hotwheels, Nuby, Farlin, Medela, Pampers, Disney, Barbie, Gerber, Zapak, Mee Mee and so on.

FirstCry has risen as a market leader in the Indian online baby products retail segment, especially after the company acquired Mahindra Retail for a whopping Rs. 362 crore last year in a deal that garnered a lot of publicity and is still considered a landmark deal in Indian retail.

For the uninitiated, Mahindra Retail, which was a subsidiary of software-to-automobile conglomerate Mahindra Group was the owner of Babyoye brand, which was at that time FirstCry's closest competition in the market.

According to a Euromonitor report published in May, India's baby and child-specific product market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8 per cent, and reach Rs 2,940 crore by 2021.

When the Mahindra Retail deal was being executed last year, the Pune-based company had risen Rs. 226 crore in fresh funding from Switzerland's Adveq and Mahindra Group. The funding round also saw the participation of its existing investors including IDG Ventures India, SAIF Partners, New Enterprise Asso ciates and Vertex Ventures, the venture capital arm of Temasek. Overall, the company has raised about Rs. 820 crore ($125 million) in funding so far.

Paytm To Get More Than $500 million From Alibaba & Temasek Holdings, May Become Fastest Billion Dollar Indian Startup

India's mobile commerce company Paytm may get more than $500 million from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings as per reports by Economics Times. Moreover, if Paytm get this funding the startup may become one of the fastest Indian startups to get past the billion-dollar valuation mark.

As per reports, for making room for these new investors, Chairman and founder of One97 Communications Vijay Shekhar Sharma, is going to dilute his shares for the purpose and talks are at an advanced stage on one of the biggest fund-raising exercises by an Indian startup and an announcement is expected towards January-end that would value the Delhi-based Paytm at $1.5-1.9 billion.

Founded in 2011, with this investment, Paytm will become India's fastest startup to reach the $1 billion mark. Existing investor SAIF Partners will also participate in this funding round, to keep its stake at 40 percent. Speculations also states that Amazon and New York-based Tiger Global also showed interest in investing in Paytm.

Alibaba and Temasek have bid for a stake in the One97 Communications-owned company, which has grown manifold since its launch in 2011, the people cited above said. At least two investors will gain a 25-30% stake for $500 million, some of which will be used for strengthening mobile operations and adding customers.

Paytm was among the first ecommerce companies to move to a mobile-first strategy from an exclusively computer-based one, which is why it's so attractive to investors.

Recently, Paytm had announced its plans to foray into international markets, with pilot countries being Singapore and other South East Asian markets. It appointed crowd-funding website Milaap’s founder Sourabh Sharma to establish its presence in these geographies.