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Mumbai-based venture debt fund BlackSoil Capital invested Rs 35 crore as growth capital in five startups. These include two-wheeler vehicle financing startup Orange, marketing automation platform WebEngage, direct-to-consumer FMCG brand Habanero Foods, fintech startup CASHe, and another undisclosed generic pharma company.
This development comes a week after BlackSoil announced its investment in global consulting firm Kaar Technologies.
“Their unique business positioning and ability to survive through adversities like COVID is what made these companies an attractive proposition for BlackSoil. We are optimistic that our debt capital will help these companies take their businesses to the next level and we will continue to support them throughout their journey,” Ankur Bansal, Co-founder and Director, BlackSoil, said in a statement.
San Francisco-headquartered virtual events platform Hubilo also raised a Series B round of $125 million led by Alkeon Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital.
It plans to use the funds to expand its market reach in India and overseas through new business functions, product enhancement, go-to-market teams in the US, the UK, EMEA, and APAC.
NFTically — a global NFT marketplace creator and B2B SaaS for launching white-label NFT marketplaces — raised under $1 million additional investment in its seed round from Nitish Mittersain (Nazara Games), Gaurav Munjal (Unacademy), Sujeet Kumar (Udaan), Kunal Kapoor (Bollywood actor), Surojit Chatterjee (Coinbase), and other global investors.
M2P FINTECH, earlier known as YAP, raised $35 million in a Series C round of funding led by Tiger Global, along with existing investors, including BEENEXT, Flourish Ventures, Omidyar Network India, 8i Ventures, Better Capital, and the DMI Group via its investment vehicle Sparkle Fund.
The Chennai-headquartered startup intends to use the funds to enhance its API infrastructure capabilities and expand its reach beyond Asia.
The Interview
Watch Intuit India’s Peter Thomas and Crediwatch’s Sandeep Anandampillai trade insights about how open-source tools are transforming the way technology can be accessed and implemented in an engaging fireside chat powered by YourStory.
Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap
Ten days into the lockdown in March 2020, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka launched Koo, a microblogging platform for Indian languages, an offshoot of their user-generated content platform Vokal.
The focus of Koo was simple: create a micro-blogging platform that can help people communicate in a language they are comfortable in. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
This Hyderabad startup uses AI to speed up blood test reports
Entrepreneur Dr Junaid Shaik began learning programming languages to upskill himself during his second year of medical college. During that time, he developed a few apps and also got exposed to machine learning (ML) algorithms.
Identifying a gap in the blood testing segment, Dr Junaid Shaik and Faisal Sheikh launched Livo.ai in 2018. The Hyderabad-based startup is solving this problem through its AI-powered robotic microscope, Livo A700. Read more.
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News & Updates
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