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Investec Capital Services (India) Ltd has announced that it acted as an an exclusive financial advisor to Kissht for the Series C fund raise of $30 million. The funding round was led by Vertex Ventures, the venture capital arm of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, and Sistema Asia Fund, with participation from existing investors Fosun RZ Capital, VenturEast & Endiya Partners. This is one of India’s largest consumer Fin-Tech deal.

Image Source – Kissht

Investec India had also advised Kissht on its Series B led by Fosun in November 2017. Investec India has built a strong advisory business over the last few years within the Indian Venture Capital ecosystem. Investec India has advised companies across a wide range of sectors on Equity Fundraises at Series B and above, including Kissht, Bizongo, Treebo Hotels, OfBusiness, BigBasket, Pepperfry and Quikr. The firm also advised on the sale of CitrusPay to Naspers – one of India’s largest Fin-Tech M&A, and on the sale of Sokrati to Dentsu – one of India’s largest Digital Media M&A.

Frankie Brown of Investec Capital Services (India) Ltd said

With our unique position in the Indian market, we believe that Investec India is well placed to advise businesses across the Fin-Tech spectrum. We have a long-term relationship with Kissht, and this partnership has successfully resulted in both the Series B and Series C fundraises. The $30 million Series C round will see Kissht perfectly placed to consolidate their market leadership position. Investec is investing significantly in the Fin-Tech space across the both in India and globally.

Vinit Barve of Investec Capital Services (India) Ltd said

Technology led lending has opened up a huge credit opportunity in India. Kissht has established a leadership position in the consumer Fin-Tech segment. With its consistent growth, strong unit economics and enviable NPA record, Kissht has taken the right steps in the direction of building a mighty lending institution. This investment, led by Vertex and Sistema with participation from existing investors, will enable the company to achieve the next level of growth and cement its leadership position in the consumer financing segment.

Founded in 2015 by Krishnan Vishwanathan and Ranvir Singh, Kissht provides product financing and personal loans to its customers through a financial technology platform which is integrated with online and offline merchants. Kissht has developed its own self-learning proprietary algorithm which assesses a customer’s credit profile in a fraction of a second based on 2,000+ digital footprints.

Kissht has demonstrated remarkable growth with impressive record on credit costs. The business had previously raised its Series B round from Fosun RZ Capital, Prophet Capital, VenturEast and Endiya Partners in 2017. Currently Kissht is present in 50+ Online and 2,000+ Offline points of sale across categories including consumer durables, electronics, health, alternative energy & education, enabling customers to easily access credit for their purchases.

Kissht will use this funding to penetrate its business further into both offline and online merchants, and deeper across categories and further enhance its data and analytics capabilities as it seeks to cement its leadership position in the highly under-penetrated Indian consumer credit market, as well as investing further in technology and building the team.

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Chai Kings,founded in 2016 is the largest Chai Retail Chain in Chennai operating with 8 stores. Chai Kings offers a sumptuous range of chai in exotic flavors, in the most hygienic ambience and at perfectly justifiable prices. Chai Kings also delivers Chai at your doorstep through in house delivery personnel as well as through the online food aggregators. Chai Kings deliver upto 4 kms radius from the outlets and uses food grade use-and-throw heat retaining chai flask for safe consumption also ensuring the Chai is piping hot for at least 50 minutes. With the vision to be the favourite chai place, Chai Kings is expanding rapidly in Chennai with the target of 100 stores in 5 years.

Piyush Bhandari who lead the investment from The Chennai Angels said

Sadique and Balaji have built a strong brand with Chai Kings, which has a great potential to scale given the vast consumption base in the country. We look forward to working with the Chai Kings team and helping them scale up their operations. We are excited to partner with Chai Kings and be a part of their growth journey.

Jahabar Sadique, Co-Founder & CEO, Chai Kings, said

We are super happy with our progress so far and to have created a niche and following for the brand. This investment coming at the right time will further propel us. This funding proceeds will be used towards adding retail stores and to strengthen our service operations.

Balaji Sadagopan, Co-Founder & COO, Chai Kings, said

We are excited to have The Chennai Angels part of our journey. We are planning to setup additional stores to cater to folks in IT Parks, Malls and few stores in High Streets, at a faster pace. There is going to be a sea of new product launches as well.

About The Chennai Angels

The Chennai Angels is one of India’s most active angel investing groups. Founded in the year 2007, it is comprised of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders with a track record of starting and scaling large enterprises. Additionally, several seed and venture capital firms hold institutional membership in the group. Though it is located in Chennai, TCA’s investing members and portfolio investments are not limited by geography. Unusually for an angel investing group, TCA has a diversified portfolio that goes well beyond a restrictive tech focus, reflecting the diversity of its members’ interests. TCA portfolio companies benefit from the collective expertise and rolodex of its members.

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Bombay Shaving Company [BSC], the premium online men’s grooming brand and pioneer in the Direct-To-Consumer [D2C] market in India, has raised an undisclosed amount in series A funding. This investment is from a clutch of investors including Colgate-Palmolive Asia Pacific Limited, a subsidiary of the Colgate-Palmolive based in Hong Kong and existing investors Fireside Ventures. As part of the transaction, Colgate-Palmolive has picked up a minority financial stake in the company.

Image Source – Bombay Shaving Company

Founded in 2016, Bombay Shaving Company has expanded quickly to 80,000+ customers and a portfolio of 30+ products across shaving, bath and body, skin and beard care categories.

Shantanu Deshpande, Chief Executive at BSC and former McKinsey consultant said

We are thrilled to have raised this round from stellar investors focused in the CPG space. All our investors to date have a track record of being patient, supportive, financial backers with learning in-tent. Building a consumer brand in India needs time, capital and long-term vision. After having proven product market fit with promising repeat rates and product response, we are now looking to scale the brand.

Men’s grooming is proving to be a fast-growing category in the FMCG space in India with growth rates estimated at 30% annually. Many young companies have come up in the past 3~4 years and even established brands have upped investing in product launches and marketing efforts.

S Ramadorai, former Vice-Chairman at TCS and a long-term backer of BSC, said

We met with the team from Colgate-Palmolive and were very excited by the synergies across technology, direct-to-consumer distribution and supply chain. The young team at BSC stands to leverage decades of experience in Colgate-Palmolive to grow the BSC brand and reach.

Kanwaljit Singh, founder of Fireside Ventures and board member at BSC, said

India is premiumizing rapidly. Young men in India are demanding more thoughtfully made products and better choice. The BSC team has been able to quickly ramp up its product portfolio and expansion of its online platform. We see BSC building a strong brand with emotional appeal and a compelling product narrative.

The funds will be used to invest in brand building, product development & expanding capabilities in technology and sales.

About Bombay Shaving Company

Bombay Shaving Company is a young men’s consumer care product brand. The company was launched in June 2016 after spotting a clear gap in the shaving space in India. Aside from Deshpande, the founding team includes Raunak Munot who was Director for Social Media at GroupM in New York and Rohit Jaiswal, IIMU alumnus and former Crompton Greaves executive. In two years, the company has acquired 80,000+ customers, expanded into 30 SKUs, seen 100% quarterly growth and is now available in 500 offline shelves.

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Enakshi, an online apparel brand for women has closed their first round of seed fund of 80 Lakhs from a private investor. The brand is also in talks with a clutch of other investors to secure a total funding of $1 million over the next two years to build on its distribution network.

Image Source – Funding

Founded in March 2018, by young founders in their early 20s, Maharsh Shah & Namya Patel, launched Enakshi, a virtual boutique for modern women that offers only exclusive pieces of garments with no two pieces alike. The brand plans to utilize the funding amount to increase the brand’s visibility, improve their existing logistics & technology and to empanel more designers from across the nation. Enakshi also plans to expand their business into brick and mortar stores as a next step to giving its customers a first-hand experience of their favorite Enakshi garments.

Enakshi was launched to address two primary concerns of modern women

  • Their everyday worry of ‘what to wear tomorrow’
  • Their need for exclusivity and novelty in their wardrobe

The virtual boutique helps women explore and discover fashion that is as unique as their individuality. With efficient logistics in place, the brand promises a quick turnaround time by ensuring dispatch on the very same day so that the customers get the garment of their choice sooner than anticipated.

Enakshi ensures novelty by launching a new collection every 21 days, where each collection is designed by a different pool of designers, empaneled by the brand from across the nation. Through this unique approach, the brand also aims at disrupting the fashion industry by providing a platform to many talented yet underappreciated designers from across the nation, to collaboratively showcase their creativity befitting the theme of the collection.

Enakshi Founders – Maharsh Shah [R], Namya Patel [L]

Maharsh Shah, Co-founder Enakshi, said

With the largest social media savvy youth population in the world, India as a market is becoming increasingly fashion conscious. With decades of experience in the women apparel industry through our parent brand Deepkala in Ahmedabad, we noticed that increasing number of women have now started seeking novelty in their every buy and aspire to create a wardrobe that showcases their own individuality. This catapulted the launch of brand Enakshi.

Namya Patel, Co-founder, Enakshi further added

At Enakshi, we brief our empaneled designers to create designs to suit the modern women’s preferences. Our primary target audience is women in the age group of 18-48 yr, that don many hats in their daily lives and pride over their individuality. Our designs, therefore, are fluid, to adorn the multiple roles of these women and our philosophy of ‘One Woman, One Design, One Garment’ ensures that there is only one distinctive piece per design. Our tech ensure that every design ordered is altered in the requested size and dispatched for delivery the same day to keep up with the paced life of a modern woman.

About Enakshi

Enakshi is an apparel brand catering to the modern women. The brand offers a virtual boutique for women to explore and discover fashion that is as unique as them.The designs on order have been created by a hand-picked pool of designers shortlisted by Enakshi and then further curated to suit the brand’s style and vision. Enakshi offers only fresh designs and no two designs are alike, which means only one distinctive piece per design. The company was launched in March, 2018 and is headquartered in Ahmedabad. Enakshi was conceptualized and created by Nilay Shah, Maharsh Shah, and Namya Patel. The early twenties Founders chose to launch from Ahmedabad since it is the hub for fashion designing and also their hometown.

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Racetrack.ai – India’s First AI Innovation Hub for Sales & Support, has raised $5 Million funding from a clutch of national & international investors. The investors include Murali Krishnan [Ex-President & Founding Member, Biocon], Dov Kagan [a renowned USA based investor]. The list also has names of investors from Singapore, Mauritius, and most of its existing investors.

Subrat Parida, Founder & CEO Racetrack.ai, said

This is really an overwhelming and positive moment for all of us. We are now looking forward and are excited to announce our next overseas operation base in USA, Mauritius and Singapore.

This move will help us delve into newer business verticals like retail, banking and healthcare. This boost in our physical presence will open new doors for us to partner with intercontinental brands and decision makers while helping us to create global footprint in the AI industry.

Being a pioneer in India’s AI sector, this AI startup offers two flagship products: MARVIN & TURING. While MARVIN is world’s first SmartBot for sales & support, TURING on the other hand is world’s smartest online & offline Business Accelerator that helps in better business planning and execution. With these two products, Racetrack.ai is targeting the fast booming $100 Billion AI market. Investors are positive on their recent moves and have high expectations on Racetrack.ai.

Subrat Parida -Founder & CEO, Racetrack.ai

As the global AI market is rocketing up, Racetrack.ai is focussing on business verticals like BFSI, Education, Health, Hospitality, and Real Estate. With the possibilities, capabilities, and scopes getting wider, Racetrack.ai is all set to expand its operation base to USA, Singapore, and Mauritius.

About Racetrack.ai

Racetrack.ai – India’s First AI Innovation Hub, endeavours to empower businesses by igniting meaningful communication with consumers. It helps businesses to understand consumers:  analyse their requirements & sentiments, suggest them solutions and ensures smooth on-boarding. Racetrack.ai believes Artificial Intelligence as a handshake between humans and modern-day machines to address the vital needs of consumers. For more information, please visit Racetrack.ai

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Tessol, a Mumbai-based startup in the CleanTech-led cold chain logistics space, has recently raised an undisclosed amount in follow-on equity funding from early stage venture capital firm 1Crowd, and existing investors Infuse Ventures and Ankur Capital.

Image Source – Tessol

Founded by IIT Delhi – Harvard alumnus Rajat Gupta, Tessol aims to revolutionize the cold chain distribution in India using its proprietary ‘Energy Storage’ technology based solutions. These products and solutions, while being environmentally sustainable, reduce the lifetime cost of cooling by more than 50% therefore making cold chain on low value products viable.

Over the last few years, Tessol has developed solutions ranging from farm level collection to home delivery and works with the largest FMCG, food processing and e-commerce players in India. Funds raised in this round would be utilized by Tessol for strengthening the current product suite and bringing some disruptive products that were under development to pilot and commercialization.

Rajat Gupta, CEO of Tessol, who has several years of past industry experience, said

There are huge gaps in the Indian food supply chain and while there are several cold chain products available in the market, there is a dearth of viable solutions. At Tessol, we believe in partnering with our customers and working out system level solutions that can drastically impact costs while improving the performance.

Anil Gudibande, Co-founder – 1Crowd, said

We see Tessol occupy a sweet spot at the intersection of India’s underserved cold chain architecture and a vacuum in environmentally-friendly clean energy solutions. Tessol’s farm-to-fork product range serves myriad use cases, application segments and customer profiles, and the breadth and depth of their client roster bears ample testimony to the efficacy of their innovation-driven offerings.

Amber Maheshwari, Vice President – Infuse Ventures, said

Tessol is one of the very few innovation-driven cold chain product companies. With their superior energy-efficient technology, already adopted by many marquee clients across industries, the company is well-positioned to service the growing demand for cold chain infrastructure.

Krishnan Neelakantan, Senior Director – Ankur Capital, said

We are excited about the rapid growth in Tessol’s range of cost efficient, high performance cold-chain solutions, which is bringing in new, quality-conscious customers across end-user segments. We believe Tessol’s technology can, over the longer-term, aid significant reduction in losses in the agri/food chain from the current high levels.

About 1crowd

1Crowd is an early stage investor and startup ecosystem with a unique co-investment lead equity crowdfunding platform and seed & early stage Fund. Launched in 2015 by a team of experienced bankers, with two offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the platform has invested in over 17 ventures, with over Rs. 40 crores in AUM. Recently, 1Crowd announced the first close of its seed & early stage Fund. For more information, please visit 1Crowd.

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Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform, announced the closing of its $21 million Series C funding round from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Blume Ventures also participated in this round. Unacademy has raised $38.6 million in total so far.  The funds raised will be utilized to onboard new educators on the platform, penetrate deeper in categories including pre-medical, GATE and CAT, and further strengthen the core product and technology team.

Image Source – UnAcademy

Commenting on the announcement, Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy said

Right from the outset, we have focused on growing the platform by empowering the best educators. We have grown tremendously since our inception, and just last month, more than 3000 educators were active on the platform and lessons created by them were watched more than 40 million times by learners.

I am thankful to our existing investors for infusing Unacademy with growth capital and reaffirming their faith in us. We will utilize these funds to invest heavily in our product and technology to make Unacademy one of the best global internet products out of India. We remain committed to growing our platform with more educators, learners and categories.

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital [India], Singapore said

Sequoia India is thrilled to lead the new round in Unacademy, which is already making a big impact in India’s online learning space.  Gaurav, Roman and Hemesh are driven founders with a very focused mission, and that is having a clear effect on the pace of production innovation, team building and overall growth.

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. The platform empowers educators by making it easy for them to create high quality educational lessons on the Educator App, that learners access via the Learning App.

Alok Goel, Partner, SAIF Partners, said

Unacademy has demonstrated tremendous progress towards their goal of delivering personalized learning by connecting great quality educators and students on their platform. The company has diversified across several new domains and has achieved amazing word of mouth among learners. We are excited to continue supporting Gaurav and team in their journey.

Sameer Brij Verma, Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, said

We are super excited to support the Unacademy team on their mission to become India’s largest online learning platform. The team has done a great job in building market leadership in the government test preparation domain since we led their Series A round in early 2017, and they are aggressively expanding to new examination categories.

In October 2017, Unacademy also launched ‘Plus’ courses on its platform with a private discussion forum, live video classes, and a personalized classroom learning environment with its top educators. Currently, more than 30 educators take paid ‘Plus’ courses on the platform apart from the lessons that are also available for free. Since the launch of Plus courses, the company has achieved a 6x growth in its monthly revenue.

About Unacademy

Unacademy is an education technology platform founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. It was started as a YouTube channel by Gaurav Munjal in 2010. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Unacademy is India’s largest learning platform that brings expert educators together with millions of students in need of quality education. With a growing network of 10,000 registered educators and 3 million learners, Unacademy is changing the way India learns. The company has raised $38.6 million so far from prominent investors such as Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. To know more, download the Unacademy Learning App from Play Store or Unacademy Learning App from the iOS Store

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Pune-based healthcare startup SynThera Biomedical Private Limited, which focuses on R&D, manufacture and commercialization of affordable biomaterials-based medical devices, has secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding investment from two investors: Equity crowd-funding platform 1Crowd and the government’s Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council [BIRAC] SEED scheme via Venture Center.

Image Source – SynThera

Nilay Lakhkar, Founder and CEO of SynThera Biomedical, said

The investment will help us achieve expansion, approvals and launch of our first line of bone graft substitute products in the market, together with further development and testing on our patented bone graft product line.

The company’s flagship products –  SynOst and PoroSyn are synthetic bone graft substitute products made from bio-active glass materials. Both products are used in dental and orthopedic surgeries as implantable materials for repair and regeneration of bone that is lost or damaged due to disease, injuries or congenital deformities.

Anil Gudibande, co-founder of 1Crowd, said

SynThera is an innovative bio-material sciences company, with patented technology, which we believe can address a global opportunity through an array of technology lead products. 1Crowd seeks to invest in ventures that are at the cusp of knowledge and technology, and SynThera is a fine example of that. With investments in over 17 startups, 1Crowd has built an ecosystem, that startups such as SynThera can leverage, which includes an investor community, a mentorship panel and industry connects.

Dr. Premnath, Director, Venture Center, the incubator that supports SynThera Biomedical, said

BIRAC’s SEED – Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development – scheme was set up to support life sciences start-ups, with a funding of up to Rs. 30 Lakh. The investments raised by Venture Center’s incubatee company SynThera will enable it to move faster towards regulatory approvals, production and sales. SynThera has unique technology capabilities and intellectual property, and will be the first bio-active glass company from India. It will be uniquely positioned to provide valuable bio-material solutions to dental and orthopedic surgeons.

About Venture Center

Venture Center is India’s leading inventive enterprises incubator. It won the National Award for Technology Business Incubators from the President of India in May 2016. The Venture Center is hosted by CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. For more information, please visit The Venture Center.

About 1crowd

1Crowd is an early stage investor and startup ecosystem with a unique co-investment lead equity crowdfunding platform and seed & early stage Fund. Launched in 2015 by a team of experienced bankers, with two offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, the platform has invested in over 17 ventures, with over Rs. 40 crores in AUM. Recently, 1Crowd announced the first close of its seed & early stage Fund. For more information, please visit 1Crowd.