Exotel raises $35 million in series C funding

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Customer communication platform Exotel has raised $35 million in Series C funding from IIFL, Sistema Asia Fund, CX Partners, Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund and angels.

Existing investors such as Blume Ventures and A91 capital also participated in this round. Arun Sarin, Ex-CEO of Vodafone, has also joined the round as an angel investor and a mentor. This fresh infusion of funds will be used by the company to primarily boost its growth. Exotel recently announced its merger with Ameyo.

The organisation claims to be growing 70 per cent YoY and is at an ARR of $45 million and aims to hit an ARR of $200 million over the next five years.

“CPaaS is a $6-billion market in India and SEA and one of the fastest growing technology areas in the post-Covid world. Exotel has quietly emerged as the CPaaS platform of choice in India through their market-best reliability and comprehensive product suite. We expect them to become a globally relevant platform in the years to come,” commented Sumit Jain, Senior Partner, Sistema Asia Fund.

To double headcount

Commenting on the fund raise, Shivakumar Ganesan (Shivku), CEO and co-founder of Exotel, said, “Our desire to enable enterprises with the best in customer engagement is one step closer to reality. We’re investing heavily in building the market’s first vertically integrated full-stack engagement suite with interoperability of channels and convergence of customer data to enable enterprises to have multimodal conversations with customers. We are going to be expanding our team and doubling our headcount over the next 12 months.”

Started in 2011, Exotel is a customer communication platform. It was started with the vision to help businesses bring order and efficiency to customer communication. Some of the clients of Exotel in South-East Asia include Ola, Flipkart, GoJek, Lazada, Quikr and Redmart. Exotel helps these companies to manage their customer communication over calls and SMS. Exotel currently serves over 6,000 companies across India, the US, SE Asia, Middle East, Australia and Africa.

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MFine raises $48 million Series C from Moore Strategic Ventures, BEENEXT

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Healthtech startup MFine has raised $48 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Moore Strategic Ventures and BEENEXT, with participation from existing investors Stellaris Venture Partners, SBI Group Japan, SBI Ven Capital Singapore, Heritas Capital, Prime Venture Partners, Y’S Investment Pte Ltd and Alteria Capital.

The new round of funding will be used by the company to expand its hospital, diagnostics and e-pharmacy network across the country and to build tech-driven care delivery products for patients with both acute and chronic conditions.

Commenting on the fund raise, Prasad Kompalli, CEO and co-founder, MFine, said, “In the healthcare sector the world has changed to a new normal and we are seeing a steep growth in the adoption of digital health in India too. We will continue to invest in deep tech to transform every smartphone into a health companion for consumers and a decision support assistant to all doctors. We will also be looking to expand our network across India and make our services available widely.”

In an earlier conversation with BusinessLine, MFine’s Chief Business Officer and founding member, Arjun Choudhary noted that the company’s current focus is to expand its network of services to next 20 cities over the next 14-15 months, which would include cities like Jaipur, Chandigarh, Surat, Patna, Ahmedabad, and Lucknow.

The company is also working on adding clinical decision support for doctors using AI and bringing vitals monitoring and health management to consumers’ smartphones. In early 2021, MFine launched an app-based SPO2 (blood oxygen saturation) monitoring tool which enables users to keep track of their oxygen saturation levels without needing an additional device. Since then, 250,000 users have used the tool and thousands of people continue to use it daily. In the coming months, MFine will be extending the tool to measure heart rate and blood pressure too.

Hero Choudhary, Managing Partner, BEENEXT, said, “MFine’s model, coupling AI technology with a strong provider network, is powerful in providing healthcare services on demand and changing the way we think about care delivery for millions across the world. We see a huge demand from consumers looking for an integrated care experience.”

Growing user base

Since its inception, over 3 million users are said to have used MFine services with the platform clocking over 300,000 monthly transactions that include doctor consultations, diagnostic tests, e-pharmacy and in-patient procedures. In October 2018, MFine integrated with laboratory and diagnostic services to provides its users access to more than 700 diagnostic centres across 400 cities in India.

Over 1,00,000 users are said to be using MFine for booking diagnostic tests every month. Further, more than 6,000 doctors from over 700 hospitals across 35 specialities are on MFine and are said to be serving millions in more than 1,000 towns across India.

MFine claims to be growing 15 per cent month on month, amidst growing adoption of telemedicine and digital health in India since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The MFine Corporate subscription product is also said to have seen strong growth in the last year with many corporates offering multiple benefits programmes as part of which employees and their families get access to online doctor consultations, preventive health checks, mental health consultations and chronic condition management. Over 500 corporates have partnered with MFine to enable wide ranging services covering over 500,000 employees. In the coming months, the company will also bring innovative financial solutions for users together with insurance partners.

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88academics India raises $3 m funding from Aarin Capital Partners, others

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Edtech firm 88academics, on Monday, said it has raised equity financing of about $3 million (about ₹22.1 crore) in funding, led by Aarin Capital Partners.

The pre-series A round also saw participation from Piyush Gupta (DBS Group CEO), Vinod Gupta (VG Learning Destination MD), PS Jayakumar (ex-MD and CEO of Bank of Baroda), Ramesh Swaminathan (Lupin Group CFO), Ajay Abrol (ex-Head Proprietary Trading of Nomura Singapore), Prem Rajani (Rajani Associates Managing Partner), Akshay Gupta and N Jayakumar (Prime Securities management team), a statement said.

88academics (India) — an 88tuition (Singapore) group company — will use the funds to develop India specific content for the K-12 segment, it added.

“Our objective is to democratise education and make the highest quality product available to everyone at an affordable price. We are committed to building a top-quality enterprise and creating value for all stakeholders. We are grateful to all EdTech companies who have pioneered the transformation in India,” 88tuition founder and CEO Anil Ahuja said.

Prime Securities was the exclusive investment banker to this transaction.

Capturing Singapore market

Superior pedagogy, outstanding teachers and attractive pricing have helped 88tuition capture over 6 per cent and 2 per cent (registered users and paid customers, respectively) of the highly competitive Singapore market, the statement said.

The edtech space has seen strong growth globally with the Covid-19 pandemic serving as an inflection point. Many offline classes went online to ensure continuity of education while adhering to social distancing norms.

TV Mohandas Pai, Partner at Aarin Capital Partners, said the organisation seeks to partner technology-intensive businesses in life-sciences and healthcare, education and other potentially large India-centric or India-first companies. “88academics provides us with an opportunity to invest in a sector we know well and back a highly experienced management team with a differentiated product and a disruptive business model,” he added.

Ganesh Agarwal, Managing Director of Prime Securities, said the Indian edtech industry is valued at over $30 billion and the incumbents have significantly transformed the way education is being imparted to students.

“The market is ripe for a revolutionary and disruptive product that is affordable, customer centric, scalable and profitable. We are proud to have brought 88tuition, Aarin Capital Partners and our growing list of HNI investors together,” he added.

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Fintech start-up IppoPay raises $250,000 in pre-seed funding

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IppoPay, a Chennai-based fintech start-up that provides digital payment solutions to merchants in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, has raised $250,000 in pre-seed funding from early-stage investor Better Capital along with Prabhu Rangarajan (co-founder of M2P) and Sailesh Ramakrishnan (partner at Rocketship VC).

In a statement, the company said it intends to use the proceeds to reach 100,000 merchants and expand its suite of offerings.

IppoPay claims that its platform has recorded transactions worth ₹1,750 crore in over one crore transactions for about 5,000 merchants. IppoPay is currently partnered with YES Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Paytm Bank.

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CollegeDekho raises $26.5 million funding from Winter Capital, ETS, Man Capital

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CollegeDekho, a college admissions and education services platform, on Wednesday said it has raised $26.5 million (about ₹200 crore) in an ongoing funding round, led by Winter Capital Partners, ETS Strategic Capital and Calega. Existing investors, Man Capital and Rajeev Chaba also participated in the series B round, a statement said.

The company had last raised $8 million in May 2019.

ETS Strategic Capital is the private equity investment arm of ETS, creator of TOEFL and GRE tests.

Fund deployment

The company plans to use the proceeds of the funding to further improve its offerings for students and colleges, increase its investment in product and technology, expand internationally and “grow new verticals like Ed-Fin-Tech and Student Accommodation”, the statement said.

CollegeDekho operates a Common Application Form (CAF) platform that enables students to apply to multiple colleges with a single click.

For studying abroad, CollegeDekho offers a range of services across profile building, test preparation, application assistance, university selection and visa assistance.

“The tremendous response we are seeing from students, parents and colleges continues to energise us to build world class products and services for them. All of this would not have been possible without the passion and commitment of the CollegeDekho family,” Ruchir Arora, Founder and CEO of CollegeDekho, said.

He added that with this fund raise, the company plans to invest in making “its products and services even more lovable for our students and colleges, as well as expand into new geographies and business verticals”.

This series B funding round has been advised by IBIS Capital and Cilix Capital.

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Dukaan raises $11 million in funding from 640 Oxford Ventures, others

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Dukaan, a retail platform that helps entrepreneurs to set up online store, on Monday said it has raised $11 million (about ₹80.3 crore) in funding led by 640 Oxford Ventures.

The pre-series A round also saw participation from existing investors Snow Leopard Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, and Matrix Partners India, as well as new firms – Venture Catalyst, HOF Capital, Old Well Ventures, LetsVenture and 9Unicorns.

Many high-profile executives also participated in the funding round, including OYO Room’s Ritesh Agarwal and Nothing Co-founder Carl Pei.

Suumit Shah, CEO and co-founder of Dukaan, said the post-money valuation of the company after this round would be $71 million.

The company has over 3.5 million sellers, who have opened their stores using the Dukaan platform and 70 per cent of these stores are from beyond the top six cities. Dukaan has also facilitated over 1.5 million transactions for these sellers, he told PTI.

“We founded Dukaan because we saw small businesses and first-time entrepreneurs struggling to digitise and make their presence online. We became obsessed with the idea of making the most affordable, easy-to-use, mobile-first commerce platform in the world,” he added.

Dukaan had raised $6 million in a seed round from Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Partners in October last year.

Shah said the latest capital infusion will allow Dukaan to aggressively expand its operations while building its team of highly skilled designers and developers.

“Additionally, this capital accelerates our ability to establish key strategic partnerships to grow our paying merchant base. We started with our monetisation journey on a small merchant base last quarter, and more than 2,000 merchants have enrolled in our Dukaan premium subscription plan so far,” he said.

Premium subscription contributes about 10 per cent to the company’s revenues, he added.

“We started with the monetisation of a small set of users in the last quarter and so many monetisation experiments are currently going on. Presently, we are at around $7,00,000 ARR (annual recurring revenue) in terms of revenue. We are just a year-old company and currently, the whole focus is to help as many merchants as possible,” he said.

Sources of revenue

The company has multiple sources of revenue, including take rate on transactions (0.40-3 per cent cut on each transaction happening through Dukaan Pay), the mark-up on marketing costs etc. It also offers Dukaan Delivery that provides an automated shipping solution and Dukaan Infinity that includes consultation on marketing, design and other business decisions for brands.

Shah said the company’s premium subscription revenues are currently growing at 23 per cent month-on-month and it does not expect sluggishness in this growth at least for a few quarters.

“Overall TAM is very large and we are just scratching the surface as of now. We have plans to add more value to the subscription pack without making it unaffordable for our partners,” he added.

Shah stated that Dukaan currently has 98 employees, and the company plans to hire 100 engineers to strengthen its product and offerings.

“We will be investing in talent on both the business and product sides as well,” he added.

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PhonePe to use $50 million Tencent funding for overseas acquisition

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PhonePe plans to use the $50 million funding received from Chinese conglomerate Tencent for its overseas acquisition and to support its Singapore office operations, according to a source close to the development. While all PhonePe employees are based in India, the company has a small team in Singapore looking after legal and M&A proceedings, the source added.

Tencent has acquired a minority (1.8 per cent) stake in PhonePe as part of the company’s $700 million funding round which was announced in December 2020. PhonePe has been in talks to acquire content and app discovery platform Indus OS (registered name – OSLabs) for $60 million since May 2021. However, the deal could not be completed because of the objection raised by existing investors, Affle Global and Ventureast. The existing investors value Indus OS at $90 million, while PhonePe had offered to acquire about 90 per cent stake in the company for $60 million. Since then the deal has been in a legal tussle.

“The case is expected to be closed in a few months. Companies had a court hearing a few months back and they both also participated in an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) in July, which was mandated by the Singapore High Court,” the source told BusinessLine. In July 2021, Affle Global claimed to have gotten a favourable ruling from Singapore HC. However, PhonePe refuted the claim at that time and said that no final ruling has come out yet.

“In addition to IndusOS, PhonePe had also acquired MapMyIndia in the past. This acquisition is being used to power the PhonePe store feature which helps users discover nearby stores. It is similar to Google Maps but it is built for the local audience,” the source added.

Synergies

Indus OS has built Indus App Bazaar which has a portfolio of 4 lakh localised Indian apps, making it an Indian alternative to platforms like Google PlayStore and AppStore. PhonePe is looking to integrate the Indus App Bazaar in PhonePe Switch, which hosts m-sites (mobile sites) for a variety of apps like Myntra, Zivame, Grofers, Netmeds etc.

The Indus OS acquisition can potentially strengthen the super app ambitions of PhonePe. Currently, PhonePe has expanded into a majority of verticals encompassing all things money. It allows users to send and receive money, recharge mobile, DTH, data cards, pay at stores, make utility payments, buy gold and make investments. PhonePe forayed into financial services in 2017 with the launch of Gold, which enabled users to buy 24-karat gold on its platform.

Since then, the company has launched several mutual funds and insurance products like tax-saving funds, liquid funds, international travel insurance, and Corona Care, a dedicated insurance product for the Covid-19 pandemic among others. PhonePe also launched its Switch platform in 2018, enabling users to place orders on 600 apps directly from within the PhonePe mobile app. PhonePe claims to be accessible at 20 million merchant outlets across 12,000 towns and 4,000 talukas nationally.

PhonePe is also the market leader in terms of UPI transactions. The NPCI data for the month of July 2021 showed that the company holds about 46% per cent of the market share by transaction volume. Media reports have claimed that PhonePe’s Indian competitor Paytm is also planning to launch its super app by the end of this year.

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RBI suggests startups to convert ‘innovative ideas’ into breakeven, profits, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Mumbai: At a time when startups and new-age companies are garnering huge investor interest along with robust responses for IPOs, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said that the interest will sustain only if the companies are able to breakeven, increase cash flow and turn profitable.

In its Bulletin for August, RBI has lauded the recent IPOs of tech-based companies such as Zomato which received enthusiastic investor interest and said that 2021 could well turn out to be India’s year of the initial public offering (IPO).

Debut offerings by Indian unicorns — unlisted start-ups — kicked off by a food delivery app’s stellar IPO that was oversubscribed 38 times, have set domestic stock markets on fire and global investors in a frenzy.

“Yet, this explosion of interest in these companies will only be sustained if they are able to convert innovative ideas into metrics such as breaking even at the level of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) level without expensing business development costs, followed by cash flows and profits,” it said.

Expanded and dynamic exploitation of innate advantages such as data and logistics will be essential to live up to investors’ starry-eyed expectations, as per the Bulletin.

“The jury is still out. Investors will closely scrutinise their stories. Analysts will put it down to stock markets’ idiosyncratic behaviour, investors’ greed and bandwagon effects, including myopic pursuit of listing day gains.”

It noted that there are already warnings of systemic risks to financial stability that monetary policy authorities should not ignore as the unicorn IPO party gets going.

The bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001 showed that many startups could go bust, but risk management practices have changed to diffuse this risk over many newcomers, it said, adding that, those that survive can go on to become the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons of the future.

The RBI report also noted that IPOs of new age companies arrive as bullishness about India mounts, especially around Indian tech

“These listings coincide with a broader rush by Indian companies to tap the market and the fomo (fear of missing out) factor driving investors, which have taken the benchmark indices to records.”

It is estimated that India has 100 unicorns, with 10 new ones created in 2019, 13 in 2020 in spite of the pandemic and 3 a month in 2021 so far, it added.

The platform is being readied by Sidbi, which already manages a fund for startups, with LIC and EPFO evincing interest during a meeting of the National Startup Advisory Council chaired by commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal.



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Satya MicroCapital raises ₹135 crore from BlueOrchard and responsAbility Investments

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Satya MicroCapital Ltd, a Delhi-based NBFC-MFI, has raised about ₹135 crore through Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) from impact investment fund manager responsAbility Investments and Swiss impact investor, BlueOrchard Finance Limited.

This will enable Satya to achieve its vision of providing financial assistance to 5 million households by the year 2025 with an exponential speed,” Vivek Tiwari, MD, CIO & CEO, Satya MicroCapital Ltd, said in a statement.

About ₹55 crore funds managed by Blue Orchard was disbursed in June and July and the remaining ₹80 crore was made available by responsAbility Investments, the company statement said. This will not only act as a catalyst in socioeconomic upliftment of the MSME sector but will also help in the much-needed economy revival of the country, it added.

LLG Model

This NBFC-MFI offers collateral-free credit to micro enterprises based on strong credit assessment and a centralised approval system. The company has adopted a unique Limited Liability Group (LLG) Model for extending loans and ensuring repayment. The group lending model allows groups of borrowers to share the liability and responsibility to repay loans, while helping them build a strong credit profile to avail finance from traditional financial institutions.

Through the model, the company aims to add a social touch to lending by integrating modern technology into the micro finance industry. Satya primarily caters to women who own businesses or are looking for business expansion.

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Pine Labs announces $600 million in funding

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Pine Labs has raised $600 million from a clutch of new investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, funds managed by BlackRock, Ishana, Tree Line, a fund advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC. IIFL AMC via its ‘Late-Stage Tech Fund’ and Kotak are also participating in this investment round.

“Pine Labs continues to be well-financed and has been EBITDA-profitable for several years,” said a statement.

The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Actis, PayPal and Mastercard amongst other leading global investors.

Also read: Furlenco raises ₹1,000 crore in funding round led by Zinnia Global

“Over the last year, Pine Labs has made significant progress in its offline to online strategy in India and the direct-to-consumer play in Southeast Asia. Our full-stack approach to payments and merchant commerce has allowed us to grow in-month merchant partnerships by nearly 100 per cent over the last year,” said Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

What Pine Labs does

Pine Labs is a merchant commerce platform and offers products for in-store and doorstep payments, Pay Later at the point of sale, prepaid issuance and online payments to large, mid-market and small retailers.

“Through its acquisitions of QwikCilver and Fave, Pine Labs now has the market leading pre-paid platform in this region as well as the top consumer loyalty product in this market. With leadership across multiple categories, the company is very well positioned to help drive immense value to its merchant partners in India and across other SEA markets,” said Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia Capital.

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