Funding Rundown: Mad Street Den raises $30M, Blue Tokai gets $30M from A91 Partners, Beaconstac bags $25M to increase workforce in India by 200% & Zero To One gets SEBI nod to set up Rs 300 Cr fund

Enterprise AI startup Mad Street Den has secured $30 million in its Series C funding round led by Avatar Growth Capital, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Alpha Wave Global.

The investment will enable it to expand its artificial intelligence offerings across industries, the company said in a statement. The company also recently acquired INTURN, a US-based enterprise solution that helps retailers monetize slow-moving and excess inventory, faster.

"At MSD, we’ve gone step by step in this vision we’ve had from day zero, of building a truly general AI platform, taking a vertical-first approach into Retail and then scaling that horizontally across several industries. What we needed at this stage of the company was partners that would help us bring discipline to the scaling and a very strong understanding of the GTM levers that get unlocked with building a horizontal AI platform for large scale enterprises," said Ashwini Asokan, CEO & Founder.

Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, a homegrown coffee brand, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by A91 Partners and also saw participation from existing investors such as Grand Anicut Fund and 8i Ventures. The valuation for the round remains undisclosed.

The Series B fundraise marks the largest investment round in the Indian specialty coffee industry so far, the firm said in a statement. In August 2021, it raised $2 million in a pre-Series B round led by Anicut Angel Fund.

The company will use the funds to scale the business and expand its global presence in specialty coffee markets, it said in a statement. In addition, the company is working toward the introduction of new FMCG products.

"In the coming 3 years, we plan to showcase the work done by ~100 new specialty coffee producers, thus enabling a far more diverse product offering at Blue Tokai. New products, services and farm-level interventions that will further transform the coffee-drinking preferences in the country are making their way to you soon," said Chitharanjan, co-founder and CEO of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters.

Beaconstac, a QR code customer engagement platform has received $25 million in Series A funding round led by Telescope Partners, with participation from existing investor, Accel.

The SaaS platform claims to have clocked in profitable revenue growth of 200% over the course of 2022. Over the past 12 months, Beaconstac said it has helped businesses of all sizes create and track 1.8 million QR codes that were scanned over 150 million times by consumers. These numbers will continue to accelerate as the number of unique US smartphone users scanning a QR code is poised to reach 99.5 million by 2025.

The firm intends to use the fresh capital to further develop its market-leading platform, build a world class team, and ultimately enable new and existing customers to adopt QR codes as a means to create personal connections with a wide audience at scale, and bridge physical world customer experiences to digital, a statement said.

Beaconstac currently employs 75 employees across offices in New York and Bangalore, India with plans to increase its workforce by roughly 200% in 2023.

Investment firm Zero To One has received SEBI’s nod to set up a Rs 300 crore Category-1 Alternative Investment Fund (AIF). The fund will invest in Pre-Seed and Series A tech-enabled startups working in edtech, healthtech, agritech, medtech and cleantech sectors.

"We are witnessing funny times when funding at relatively higher valuations are easier for technology backed innovative ideas/ startups as compared to traditional businesses with heavy asset base. The new age investors are breaking the myth of "Indians being risk-averse investors" and rewriting investment scenario. This is the same set of investors who believe that technology would change society and are bullish on entrepreneurs who can lead the disruption through technology led innovation," said Praveen Kaushik, Founder and Director, Zero To One.

The firm claims to have a network of more than 500 angel investors, high net-worth individuals (HNIs) and VCs across India, Singapore, Dubai, the US and the UK.

South Korea-based Lotte Confectionary will invest Rs 450 crore in its Indian unit Havmor Ice Cream in the next five years, of which a major portion would be for setting up a new greenfield plant to expand manufacturing capacity, said a top company official.

The investment is to set up a new greenfield plant at MIDC Talegaon in Pune, Maharashtra, expand the capacity of the existing Faridabad-based unit, supply chain and on go-to-market strategy, said Havmor Ice Cream managing director Komal Anand.

Its Talegaon plant would be operational by the fourth quarter of 2024, in which Lottee range of premium ice cream would be manufactured.

Over the Talegaon plant, Anand said: "This is a big investment. It will use the design and manufacturing technology from Lottee." Besides, the company would also go for capital investment and create an infrastructure of freezers for its further expansion in the consumer market.

Revenue-based financing platform GetVantage and early-stage investment firm Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) have partnered to invest Rs 200 crore in over 500 businesses over the next 12 months

The partnership gives a combined portfolio of around 1,500 digital businesses and startups access to equity and revenue-based financing growth capital to extend their runway, a statement said.

“The rationale behind this partnership was to ensure that businesses get easy and faster access to funds amidst a funding winter and a possible global downturn. This fund allocation has been done to help businesses scale when other alternative forms of financing seem difficult to get hold of,” said Bhavik Vasa, Founder & CEO, GetVantage.

GetVantage and Inflection Point Ventures share a bunch of brands under their portfolio across SaaS, CleanTech, EV and Health-focused D2C brands amongst others. Some brands include companies such as BluSmart, Buyofuel, Almo, Macmerise and The Healthy Company. Other brands that have received investments from both financing platforms are Pumpumpum, Truly Madly, and Mobigarage among others.

Podeum, a sports creators-fan engagement platform, has bagged $1 million in its pre-seed funding round led by Titan Capital, RTP Global, Point One Capital and Bharat Founders Fund.

The round also saw participation from prominent angel investors like Sujeet Kumar (Co-founder, udaan), Ganesh Krishnan and Srini (Co-founder, Growthstory), Harsh (Fynd), among few others.

As per the firm, the newly raised funding will be utilized to further grow the sports creator ecosystem and invest in products to grow fan offerings.

Deeptech startup XYMA Analytics that leverages its patented waveguide-based technologies to measure critical industrial parameters, has raised an undisclosed capital from Venture Catalysts in its seed funding round.

The round also saw participation from Chirag Gupta (8X Ventures), Vish Sahasranamam (Forge Innovation and Ventures), GAIL India Limited, and other angel investors.

“We plan to utilize this investment to upgrade our capabilities for the global market and scale our deployments. Also, we plan to strengthen our arms in AI & IoT to leverage our technology’s potential in the Industry 4.0 adoption,” said Dr. Nishanth Raja, CEO & Co-founder, XYMA Analytics.

The World Economic Forum has announced that 10 water-focused entrepreneurs will share 1.75 million Swiss francs in vital funding from India's HCL Group to tackle global freshwater crisis.

Securing the world's global freshwater ecosystems, under increasing threat from climate change, population growth and consumer demand, has become more critical than ever, the WEF said.

To tackle this escalating crisis, UpLink, the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum, in partnership with global conglomerate HCL Group, announced 10 water-focused entrepreneurs who will share CHF1.75 million ($1.9 million) from HCL Group to scale their innovations.

The 10 water-focused entrepreneurs, or "aquapreneurs", were chosen from 227 solutions submitted to the challenge, and will now each receive CHF175,000 ($190,000) in vital funding from HCL Group.