Funding Rundown: Flipkart and Walmart invest $145 mn in Ninjacart, Fullife Healthcare raises $22 mn & Anakin secures $2 mn in seed funding round

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Ninjacart works closely with the farmers and has to date helped over one lakh farmers across 150 villages to generate better revenues. Earlier this year, Ninjacart inked a deal with the union ministry of agriculture and farmer welfare to strengthen the market linkages and promote best practices in the farming sector.

Flipkart offers groceries in 1,800 cities and towns and aims to take its offering to 2,000 more towns by mid-next year. Fresh fruits and vegetables will be an integral part of the expansion, with the company investing in technology capabilities to ensure the highest and most stringent quality checks for the end consumer.

Smartworks, which provides managed office space, will invest $25 million (nearly Rs 190 crore) in its new tech venture that will offer services related to workspace management, as part of its plan to grow business.

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The new firm 'Smartworks Technology Services' will be a 100 percent subsidiary of Smartworks and it aims to launch a building operating platform and workspace management SaaS product. Smartworks has appointed Anuj Nangpal as the chief executive officer (CEO) to head this new venture.

Founded in April 2016, Smartworks currently has a portfolio of around 5.3 million square feet of office space across 32+ locations in nine major cities.

The company has already bagged 12 clients in this new venture, said Harsh Binani, co-founder, Smartworks. Elaborating on the new venture, Sarda said the demand for flexible workspace has grown rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sports nutrition and supplements company Fullife Healthcare has raised $22 million in a Series C funding round led by Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia (MSPEA). The healthtech startup will use fresh funds to expand its domestic presence, enhance manufacturing capabilities and accelerate momentum globally.

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The firm said its home-grown brands Fast&Up and Chicnutrix have been aggressively entering into new categories to provide nutrition solutions for a healthy and active lifestyle. "We are building these brands at an international level even in several regulated markets as a first for Indian OTC brands,” said Varun Khanna, CEO of Fullife Healthcare.

B2B SaaS startup Anakin has raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by YCombinator, HOF Capital, Austen Allred, ACE & Company, Integrity, Pioneer Fund and a group of other angel investors.

The company said it will be using the fresh funds to enhance its software and hire additional employees to increase its presence in other geographies. Anakin will also invest in product development, expanding into other categories, and creating a self-service tool. Founded in 2020, Anakin helps e-commerce stores and brands increase their revenue using pricing, products and trends data, both from their competitors and markets.

SaaS startup unremot has secured $700K in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Digital Futurists Angels Network (DFAN), ah! Ventures and Point One Capital also participated in the round.

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"This platform has bridged the gap and helped Consultants create a community-like structure, increasing their discoverability factor. The fact that unremot is addressing the entire spectrum of remote working on an advanced level and keeping the entire experience efficient prompted us to back the company,” said Vinay Bansal, founder & CEO, Inflection Point Ventures.

Since its launch in February 2020, unremot has 14,000+ monthly active users, 40,000+ monthly visitors, 80 percent organic users and users from 52+ countries, with 70 percent from the US, Canada, UK, Australia & Germany.

The company aims to reach 1 million users by the end of 2022, 5 million by 2023 and 25 million by 2025. To fuel this growth, the company is targeting to raise a larger $2 million round at the end of the Techstars program.

AI-powered SaaS startup SpoofSense has raised $150,000 in a funding round led by JITO Angel Network along with other angel investors. The company had also raised 25 lakh from 100X.VC a couple of months back. SpoofSense will use the funds for further R&D, teamBuilding and marketing, it said in a statement.

The firm is targeting 2.4 billion users who will be using face recognition for online transactions by 2025. Launched in 2020 by Kartikeya Bhardwaj, SpoofSense is a plug and play integration that lets businesses authenticate their customers through Face Biometrics.

E-Learning platform, PingoLearn has raised Rs 2 Crore in the pre-seed round of funding led by Titan capital, Haresh Chawlaand AngelList's syndicate.

The startup will use the funds to expand the core team, set up content machinery, and develop the product, it said in a statement.

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Founded in 2021, PingoLearn offers language courses with mini video lessons inspired by real-life conversations. The firm said that PingoLearners have spent close to 3000 hours on the app since its inception. The firm aims to build the least boring app to master a language.

O'2 Nails India, a consumer and fashion retail startup has raised an undisclosed amount in the pre-seed round of funding from angel investors, including Amit Singal (CEO of StartupBuddy and Fluid Ventures) and Manish Aggarwal (Partner of Fluid Ventures).

Nitin Gupta (Founder and CEO of Etherea Coworking) and other investors too participated in the funding round. The brand claims to be growing its retail footprints by 200% and customer base by 10X on YoY.

"We will use these funds for technological advancement along with retail growth by increasing our stores' numbers to fifteen till March 2022,” said Aparna Singh, CEO, O'2 Nails India.