Startup Digest: Top stories of the day

Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, BYJU's said, "Our complementary strengths will enable us to build capabilities, create engaging and personalised learning programs. The future of learning is hybrid and this union will bring together the best of offline and online learning, as we combine our expertise to create impactful experiences for students."

Social commerce platform, Meesho has raised $300 million in a new round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The latest investment valued Meesho at $2.1 billion and saw participation from existing investors - Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment.

Commenting on the fund raise Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO of Meesho said, "We take pride at the rate of speed and scale at which Meesho has grown, positively impacting millions of lives, and creating exponential learning along the way. With the new round of funding, we are extremely thrilled to have SoftBank onboard. We are focused on expanding our vision — from helping aspiring women entrepreneurs to creating Meesho as a single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses in India to succeed online.”

Meesho’s long-term mission has been to enable 100 million small businesses including individual entrepreneurs to succeed online in India. These small businesses include individual businesses owned and run by women entrepreneurs and homepreneurs who have become financially independent and successful over the years through Meesho, and have carved out their own identities.

Actor Salman Khan has invested in Short video platform Chingari, which has also announced that the actor will join as its global brand ambassador. Salman Khan’s funding was part of a larger $13 million round in the company led by OnMobile Global Limited, a global player in mobile entertainment. Chingari this week also announced that OnMobile Global Limited, a global player in mobile entertainment, led a $13 million round in the company.

This investment, the company said, will allow Chingari to accelerate its growth from 56 million users to over 100 million users. As part of the deal, OnMobile will integrate and distribute its direct-to-consumer ONMO gaming platform on the Chingari app and collaborate on other product integrations to serve millions of users.

The company said it will use the funds to enhance its content portfolio, hire top talent and accelerate its growing user base. Other investors who participated in this round include Republic Labs US, Astarc Ventures, White Star Capital, India Tv (Rajat Sharma), JPIN Venture Catalysts Ltd, ProfitBoard Ventures, Raghunandan G of Zolve (Co-Founder, Taxi4sure) and some large family office funds from the UK.

Crypto exchange platform WazirX has launched a marketplace for Non-Fungible Tokens or NFT with an aim to enable “seamless exchange” of digital assets and intellectual properties including art pieces, audio files, videos, programs, and even tweets apart from other digital goods and services. Indian creators can now place their digital assets for auction over the blockchain-based NFT marketplace and earn royalty thereafter.

For the uninitiated, NFT is a one-of-its-kind asset that is non-fungible in nature. It means that NFT is not replaceable by another ‘identical’ item. Its copies cannot be created following the purchase, thereby making it a unique asset for buyers. NFT are the next logical step for everyone from collectors to businesses who are interested in inimitable, intellectual properties. Recently, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million in an NFT-based transaction. The same holds for artists, distributors, and other stakeholders who wish to drive digital sales while keeping their copyrights intact.

Nischal Shetty, founder, WazirX said, "We are delighted to launch one of India’s first NFT marketplace. Since our inception, we have been at the forefront of innovation and empowered our customers with value-added offerings. The latest addition to the WazirX portfolio builds along the same lines. It will truly transform the market in our rapidly digitizing world with a growing interest in NFT across the globe. Both digital creators and collectors stand to benefit from the WazirX NFT marketplace. As of now, we are working around certain nitty-gritty to make NFTs more lucrative for our customers."

Rocket Internet's VC fund - Global Founders Capital invested in the Bengaluru-based startup’s Pre-Series A round with participation from Toshan Tamhane, chief digital officer, UPL; Ajit Isaac, founder chairman of QuessCorp; Rohit Kale, MD, Spencer Stuart, Professors of ISB; Ghanshyam Das, former MD- Asia Pacific & Middle East, Nasdaq and Abhishek Nag, director of Business Development -India and South Asia, Netflix and other angel investors.

CareerLabs provides a technology-enabled platform with an unique Career Track recommendation engine called Career Wizard which helps CareerLabs provide suitable Industry-recognized Courses & Certifications for upskilling. The career skilling solutions are carefully built to make it affordable at a price that is 70% lower than similar solutions. Through a completely planned journey involving detailed profile analysis, personalized mentoring & recruitment help, CareerLabs is enabling millions of students in tier 2 and tier 3 cities to also access the same quality content and services.

Reports suggest that personal details of nearly 533 million Facebook users from more than 100 countries, including India, were leaked online and uploaded on low-level hacking forums. The exposed data includes personal information of 32 million Facebook users from the US, 11 million from the UK, 8 million from Brazil, 6 million from India, 3.8 million from Bangladesh, 1.2 million from Australia, among others, as per reports.