Funding Rundown: KuCoin secures $150 mn from Jump Crypto, Skillmatics bags $16 mn in Series B round, iNurture raises $15 mn from ADM Capital

It will also use the funds to build the next generation of KuCoin core trading system, resulting in tenfold performance improvement and enhance security and risk management systems to make the platform more secure and accessible.

Skillmatics, a global brand for children’s educational games and resources has raised $16 million in Series B funding, led by Sofina. The round also saw participation from existing investors, Sequoia Capital India, and Jalaj Dani Family Office.

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The funds will be used to strengthen Skillmatics' presence in the US, expand the brand's product offerings to new age groups and product categories, scale up its presence in new international markets and make strategic acquisitions in adjacent categories, the firm said in a statement.

"We have built a rapid and iterative product development engine that is 5X faster than incumbents and has a highly data-driven approach to product design. We are excited to leverage this process to launch new products across a wider range of categories,” said Devanshi Kejriwal, co-founder and Creative Director, Skillmatics.

Edtech startup iNurture Education Solutions has raised $15 million in a combination of debt and equity from ADM Capital. As part of this transaction, ADM Capital has also acquired Ventureast's stake in iNurture, facilitating a complete secondary exit.

The startup is looking to utilise these funds for propelling the growth of its NEP-ready (National Education Policy 2020) programmes, expanding its ‘Centres of Excellence’ model across university partners in India and further enhancing its technology stack for student placement.

In the fiscal year 2022, iNurture grossed $29 million in turnover with an EBIDTA of $2.5 million. The company said that it is targeting to exceed its long-term revenue CAGR of 40 percent for the fiscal year 2023 while expanding its profit margins on account of significant operating leverage.

Cogniteam, a robotics development company closed its $5.6 million Series A funding round led by Seabarn Management and UK-based Panthera family office members.

The company has recently launched the Nimbus robotics AI operating platform. The fresh capital will help Cogniteam boost its product development and Nimbus sales further as the robotics revolution continues to show both consumer and commercial demand, the firm said in a statement.

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These funds will enable Cogniteam to expand sales and support teams to onboard more companies who want to enable their robots with field-tested features. In addition to the new round, Cogniteam has been handpicked to co-lead a $20 million Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) consortium, funded by the Israeli Innovation Authority.

Together with other leading Israeli private and academic institutions, they are working on verbal and non-verbal communication gestures that robots can use to engage with society as they execute tasks. In line with their mission of easy adoption of advanced capabilities, Cogniteam will open the consortium’s capabilities to their Nimbus platform for companies to utilise.

Home construction and renovation start-up Kolo has raised $4 million from a global VC firm RTP Global and existing investor Better Capital. The new investment will help fuel the company's continued growth, enhance the consumer side product offerings including the content-recommendation engine, the community offering, digital portfolio/ tools for the professionals and expand their presence across India, Kolo said in a statement.

"Two key consumer behaviour trends that drive our growth. Firstly, consumers want to be involved in their renovation projects given the amount of money they spend and since the decision has a lasting impact on how they live. Previously they didn’t have avenues to learn about choices except for their immediate relatives or friends. Secondly, the influence of the media in driving transaction decisions.

From coming up with suggestions to choosing the service provider based on photos/videos and learning about different roofing options they have, content informs and provides transparency hence puts the power in the hands of the consumer," said Jery Althaf, co-founder of Kolo.

Josh Talks, regional content and upskilling platforms has bagged $3.5 million in a funding round led by Ankur Capital. Marquee investors such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma PayTM, Vaibhav Domkundwar Better Capital), Vineeta Singh SUGAR Cosmetics), Ritesh Agarwal OYO, and Ankur Warikoo Ex-Nearbuy) among others also participated in the round.

The startup said it will use the fresh capital refine its product and scale Josh Skills to become the preferred social learning platform for Bharat. Further, the organisation will experiment with new product lines catering to the aspirations of this user segment.

"Over the last two years, we have doubled down on two things - growing our distribution across 10 languages and creating a product that monetises this distribution network. With the new capital, our goal is to expand our offerings, strengthen our executive team and take Josh to every household in India”, said Supriya Paul, CEO & Co-founder, Josh Talks.

Fintech platform Multipl, has raised a $3 million Pre-Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures, GrowX Ventures, IIFL, and Kotak Securities Ltd. The “Plan Now, Pay Later” firm plans to utilize the funds to widen investment options and help Indians plan their expenses better, it said in a statement.

Multipl claims to have crossed 150K+ app downloads in the first six months of opening its app access on the Google Play Store and iOS Store. As per the firm, "Plan Now, Pay Later” landscape in India is expected to have 500-600 million eCommerce users by 2026.

Multipl plans to provide accessible finance for all their expenses including travel, gadgets, home renovation, insurance, children’s education, and vehicles amongst others, it added.

GoldenPi Technologies, a fintech platform for retailers, has bagged $2 million in Pre-Series A funding from domestic investors including HNIs. The firm plans to leverage the funding to ramp up the technology stack, outreach programs and expand its team across India, it said in a statement.

GoldenPi acts as an aggregator for bonds and debentures across bond houses, capital market divisions of banks, and other players in the markets. The firm is looking to add several alternatives and high-yielding fixed-income investment products to its offerings as well as leveraging its products for B2B growth opportunities.

Retail tech startup NutriTap Technologies has raised $1.5 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Venture Catalysts, LetsVenture, IK Capital, Elysian Fintech and a few marquee HNIs from the retail industry.

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"In India, kiosk-based retail is now accepted as an alternate mode of retailing. To make sure that customers get the right retailing solution, you need to have the right technology to do that. At NutriTap, we are building the technology to address this alternate channel market which stands at $10 billion,” said Rajesh Kumar, co-founder of NutriTap.

The capital raised will be used to ramp up in-house technology, invest in R&D and grow its presence across sectors and cities, the company said in a statement. NutriTap is currently operating over 250 smart retail kiosks locations across the tier 1 metro cities of India.

Healthcare startup FirstCure has raised $350,000 in pre-seed funding round from various angel investors. The funding will enable FirstCure to expand deeply into the segment of HealthCare Service offerings, both in terms of geography and operations.

Further, with the commitment of another $300,000 in the next 6 months, the firm plans to expand its presence strongly in North India and enter Southern regions by the end of the year, it said in a statement.

FirstCure currently has over 40 surgeons, 40 + hospitals and clinics catering to 50 different kinds of treatments in entire New Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Bhopal.

Alternative credit platform, BlackSoil has raised Rs 180 crore through non-convertible debentures (NCDs), bank debt and other instruments. The capital raised through the latest fundraise will be deployed predominantly for lending activities, across a variety of debt products, to fund mid and growth-stage enterprises in the startup ecosystem, the firm said.

In the financial year (FY) 2022, the firm deployed Rs 650 crore. “We already have an exciting pipeline of investments across diverse sectors lined up for FY23,” said Ankur Bansal, director and co-founder, BlackSoil Capital.

The firm has previously invested in unicorns and soonicorns such as Oyo Rooms, Slice, Udaan, Zetwerk, Spinny, Infra.Market, Curefoods and ZestMoney amongst others.

Organic farming startup Humpy Farms has raised Rs 5 crore in an angel round that also includes funds secured in Shark Tank India. The firm had secured funds from Lenskart’s Piyush Bansal, and MamaEarth’s Ghazal Alagh.

The angel round also saw participation from marquee investors including Shailesh Ligade of DBS Bank, Abhay Amrute of IIFL, Prattyush Shahane of Bain & Company, Yogesh Lahoti and Anushka Iyer of Wiggles.in.

The firm will use the funds to scale-up and expand PAN India. The capital will also be used for investment towards technology and to enhancing the brand's D2C strategy. The startup is looking to accelerate customer acquisition, and identify and on-board new talent.

Keeping in line with its expansion plans, Humpy Farms said it is also exploring new potential markets for the launch of its perishable range of products including its signature Humpy A2 Milk.

Abroad study assistance startup ForeignAdmits has raised Rs 3.26 crore from early-stage fund Unicorn India Ventures (UIV) and other investors like SEA Fund. Beerud Sheth (founder CEO, Gupshup, Zishaan Hayath (founder CEO, Toppr) and Keshab Panda former CEO, L&T Infotech) also participated in the funding round.

This is the second investment by UIV in Foreign Admits and will be used for enhancing the tech platform to provide a better experience to the students and partners and ongoing business development efforts, the firm said.

ForeignAdmits said it has grown 10X in the last 12 months across various business growth parameters. Currently, the platform claims to be witnessing 2 lakh monthly traffic organically, which is growing at 25% M-O-M.

Redbasil, a zero-inventory marketplace for wholesale food supply for restaurants and cloud kitchens, has received Rs 2.5 crore in a seed funding round led by Mumbai Angels. The round also saw the participation of SAT Industries, Plan B Capital and other investors.

Redbasil will primarily use the capital to expand its ground operations and sales team in the Delhi NCR region and invest in engineering resources and tech infrastructure, it said in a statement.

The platform also aims to onboard 500+ outlets and clock a monthly GMV of over Rs 1.5 Cr with the funding. The firm claims to have generated Rs 51 lakhs in GMV in April 2022 and is currently clocking a growth of 30% month-on-month.

Ecommerce food startup Vegandukan which offers plant-based food, mock meats, and dairy alternatives to vegan consumers, has raised $325,000 as a part of its seed funding from USA-based Sunlight Capital.

The fresh funds will be used to create a better user experience for shopping and market growth, the startup said. The firm is also aiming to expand its presence in Delhi and Mumbai by 2022.

In addition, the brand also plans to accelerate the growth of vegan products under its own brand, ‘ULTX,’ which includes a 100 percent plant-based whitener, curd kit, and kids’ protein nutritions, which are to be launched in India. Plant-based nutrition consultation service is also in the pipeline, the firm added.

Nova Benefits, an employee wellness platform has received an undisclosed amount in a funding round from SHL Capital, a fund by Sahil Lavingia, CEO at Gumroad, Author and Investor.

Nova Benefits enables companies to avail customised health insurance plans for their employees and add additional health and wellness benefits around physical and mental health.

"We are building a platform that will enable HRs to provide personalised benefits across physical health, mental health, and financial wellness to families of 10 million employees in the next 5 years,” said Yash Gupta, CTO & Co-founder, Nova Benefits.

Nova Benefits claims to have on-boarded 300+ companies, and 100,000+ members on its platform. Some of Nova’s clients include DTDC, Taco Bell, MyGate, PharmEasy, CoinDCX, Chumbak, HomeLane, TeachMint and Zenoti.

Agatsa, a medtech company in the cardiac problem diagnostic segment, has raised Rs 125 million from several industry veterans to grow business operations and expand the product line.

The company has innovated a pocket 12-Lead ECG device which is 99% accurate and is being used by both doctors and heart patients in India for quick diagnosis/detection of cardiac problems.

With this new funding, the homegrown med-tech brand is aiming to scale business and make its products more accessible to its consumers. Till now, Agatsa has been functioning as a B2C medtech brand and now it plans to venture into B2B tie-ups with big hospitals and telehealth companies.