FUNDING RUNDOWN: Lightspeed India Partners raises $500M India fund; Wheelocity bags $12M; zbyte gets $10M & Sequoia India’s Surge, InfoEdge Ventures invest $5M in Attentive

Here’s the lowdown of the top deals from the startup space.

Lightspeed, the backer of startups like Byju’s, Oyo, Razorpay and ShareChat, has launched a $500 million India and South East Asia dedicated fund to double down on early-stage bets.

Alongside India IV fund, the Silicon Valley-headquartered VC firm has also announced the closing of Fund XIV with $1.98 billion, Select Fund V with $2.26 billion, and Lightspeed Opportunity Fund II with $2.36 billion of committed capital.

With this, Lightspeed has raised over $7 billion to fund early and growth-stage entrepreneurs around the globe, 60% more than its last flagship fundraise. The company said with the fresh capital, it will focus on expanding its early stage bets and supporting its large and growing global platform.

The VC firm has also unveiled Lightspeed Faction, an independent team dedicated to building on the company’s nine-year history of backing founders in blockchain infrastructure, a statement said.

Wheelocity, a supply chain network for fresh commerce, has raised $12 million in a mix of equity and debt in its Series A funding round led by Lightspeed. The round also saw participation from Anicut Capital and select other investors.

The fresh capital to build new products in farm operations, helping its customer base scale rapidly and drive efficiencies within the F&V supply chain. Over the next six months, Wheelocity aims to hire across roles in product, technology, and operations, among others, a statement said. The company further aims to reach over 30 more cities in India in the next 12 months.

“India is a fresh-food surplus country - and despite that while on one hand we dump/lose hundreds of thousands of tonnes of F&V every day due to supply chain inefficiencies, on the other hand, studies indicate more than 33 million Indians are undernourished. Clearly, there is a massive problem to be solved by building the rails for fresh produce in India, and we are excited to be backed by Lightspeed & Anicut to solve this at scale,” said Selvam VMS, Founder and CEO, Wheelocity.

Web 3.0 startup zbyte has raised $10 million in a funding round led by private investors. The startup aims to build decentralised applications (dApps) stores to help developers and enterprises to build such apps.

The project is pioneering a blockchain-enabled, LCNC (low-code, no-code) platform, making it easy for developers and enterprises to build dApps (decentralized applications). The new category, dPlat will enable acceleration of blockchain adoption in the developer community and enterprises through its simple LCNC Interface, a statement said.

It also plans to launch a public token, ZBYT token, towards Q4 of 2022. "We will leverage the developer talent available here in India. We hope to make a significant impact on the developer ecosystem," said Nitin Kumar, Co-founder of zbyte.

Attentive, an AI based SaaS startup has raised $5 million from Sequoia India’s Surge Fund and InfoEdge Ventures. The fresh funds will be used to further build the platform and add more modules to automate the remaining landscaping workflows.

“Raising funds in today’s market is strong validation of our business fundamentals. The funds will allow us to hire and retain the best talent across product, technology, and sales and expand our operations across the US and Canada” adds Sarthak Vijay, co-founder, Attentive.

Attentive has built a SaaS-based sales automation platform for the outdoor service industry. The over $200 billion industry includes landscaping, snow removal, paving, and pest control businesses, said the company.

Content monetisation platform ConsCent has raised $1.75 million (about Rs 14 crore) in a funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures.

Early stage funds Varanium Capital, RiSo Capital, SucSEED Innovation Fund, Sigurd Ventures, AngelList, PitchRight Ventures, and angels like Quess Corp’s Vijay Sivaram, former Rivigo Co-founder Gazal Kalra etc also participated in the round. This is ConsCent's second funding round since it raised a seed capital of Rs 4 crore in August 2020.

The company plans to use the fund for hiring technology talents, expanding sales and marketing team and investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools for developing in-house technology for content monetisation.

Japan-based 3D-printed prosthetic legs maker Instalimb has raised Rs 26 crore in Series A funding to foray into the Indian market and launched its technologically advanced prosthetic wear solutions in Gurgaon.

The startup aims to deliver the prosthesis leg with socket (tech) and alignment (PO quality) to 48 million people who currently do not have access to a device in the world, a statement said.

“With our launch in India, we are expecting to reach out to a larger set of individuals who need this kind of advanced assistance and help them to get back their active lifestyle,” said Yutaka Tokushims, CEO, Instalimb.

AI and data analytics startup Ganit has raised an undisclosed amount as part of its Pre-Series A funding round led by angel investors including Sangeet Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Addverb Technologies, Krishnan Vishwanathan, co-founder and CEO, Kissht, Anshul Gupta and Amit Raj, co-founders of EatClub Brands (formerly Box8), among others.

Ganit claims to be doubling its growth Y-o-Y consistently for the last four years, with 100% client retention. The new infusion of capital is slated to be used to expand its product portfolio in various spaces including, but not limited to – voice of customer, forecasting, promotion planning, route optimisation, price optimisation as well as fast-growing emerging areas such as ESG (environmental, social and governance).

In addition to an expansive array of products, Ganit is also looking to more than double its headcount to 500 by the end of 2023, it said.