Funding Rundown: BharatPe turns unicorn with $370 mn funding, Stride Ventures' first close of second fund at Rs 550 crore, yellow.ai raises $78.15 mn

Ashneer Grover has been elevated as the co-founder and managing director and he will look after the company’s strategy, product, technology, capital (IPO, Equity & Debt) functions. Grover previously held the designation of chief executive officer (CEO). Suhail Sameer, who was previously the Group President, has succeeded Grover as the new CEO. These funds will be utilised by BharatPe to make investments into distressed Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, in collaboration with Centrum Financial Services. As per a Mint report, BharatPe and Centrum will collectively invest $250-300 million into the PMC Bank in the next two years.

Venture debt firm Stride Ventures has marked the first close of its second fund by raising more than half of the targeted corpus of Rs 1,000 crore ($137 million). Stride Ventures India Fund II has secured commitments of Rs 550 crore to mark the first close, said the venture debt firm in a statement. The second fund, which was launched just around two months ago, also has a greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 875 crore. The venture debt firm said the second fund will ramp up deployment in late-stage startups across sectors like business to business (B2B) commerce, healthcare, agritech, fintech and direct to consumer (D2C) brands. It will have an average ticket size of up to Rs 75 crore. It marked the final close of its debut fund earlier this year at over Rs 350 crore, which was its corpus target. It also had a greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 150 crore. The venture debt firm has invested in more than 20 companies from the first fund. It has also been actively investing since the pandemic began last year.

Customer experience automation platform yellow.ai has raised $78.15 million in a Series C round led by WestBridge Capital, along with Sapphire Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Lightspeed Venture Partners again participated in this round, which brings total funding raised so far to $102.15 million. With the fresh infusion of capital, yellow.ai will deepen investments in global expansion, hiring top talent across regions, and applied R&D in hyper-automation, the company said.

Pallet pooling firm Leap has raised $34 million in a secondary round from investors led by Schroder Adveq and IIFL fund, giving early backers Mayfield Fund, IndiaNivesh. The existing investors have sold partial stake and will take home 7x returns on their investments,” founder Sunu Mathew told Economic Times. The company had raised $25 million from Morgan Stanley in a primary round in February.

Email technology startup Titan has raised $30 million from WordPress parent company Automattic. Post the funding round, the startup was valued at $300 million. This is Automattic’s single largest investment round, the company said in a statement. The firm aims to disrupt the email market by delivering the first email suite built for businesses, providing them access to tools that traditionally come at a premium price. Titan offers features like scheduled send, email templates and follow-up reminders.

Employees health benefit services firm Onsurity has raised $16 million in a funding round led by leading fintech investor Quona Capital. The Series A funding round also saw participation from Clover Healthcare founder and CEO Vivek Garipalli and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners, the company said in a statement. Onsurity will use the investment to continue building its healthcare platform and offerings. "We have built a system from the ground up that will enable every organization to have access to comprehensive yet affordable healthcare and health benefit options that can be selected, customized, and priced in as little as two minutes,” said Yogesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of Onsurity.

StockGro, a social investment startup, has raised $5 million in a pre-Series A round of funding. The round was led by Roots Ventures and Velo Partners.

The company will use the funding to grow its user base, hire tech talent, and build new features. With a gamified virtual interface, the startup enables users to discover trading strategies, compete and interact with some of the country’s best minds. With a user base of more than one million, StockGro has over 80 percent month-on-month retention, the company said in a statement.

Logistic-tech startup StackBox has raised $1.2 million in funding led by Ecosystem Ventures. The round also saw participation from LetsVenture and existing investors. StackBox had previously raised Rs 5 crore. With the fresh funding, the company plans to set up more fulfillment centres to service customers in different geographies and tech development. StackBox co-founder Nitin Mamodia added that the company is helping distributors in managing their working capital efficiently and also improve the distribution ROI by 3X-4X as it reduces distribution costs by 20 percent apart from giving real-time visibility on demand and inventories.

Celcius, a cold-chain logistics solutions provider, has raised $500,000 in a seed funding round led by Mumbai Angels Network along with the participation of Huddle, Lumis Partners, and investors from Nigeria, Malaysia, and the United States. The startup will use the capital for geographical expansion, hiring and setting up offices in other cities to provide localised services. It also aims to expand its offerings by including a transport management system and warehouse management. Celcius Logistics Solutions has a software-as-a-service platform that connects shippers and transporters of perishable cargo across India. It claims to be the only domestic aggregator providing end-to-end cold-chain solutions.

Mumbai-based nutraceutical skincare brand I am Love on Thursday said it raised Rs 35 crore in a seed round from California-based angel investor Xentel Investments. With the fresh funding, the company aims to take the venture to the global market. The D2C brand claims to combine modern science and Ayurveda to manufacture immunity booster mix, oil and acne control mix, scar treatment and pigment control mix, and protein powder mix, among others.