Funding Rundown: Reliance Retail takes 54% stake in Addverb Technologies, INDmoney secures $75 mn, Agritech startup Arya bags $60 mn

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

Retailers and consumer-facing companies across the globe are looking at automation to meet a new wave of demand and speed - in other words, what we call the rise of quick commerce.

Reliance Retail has invested $132 million in robotics startup Addverb Technologies. With this investment, Reliance has become the largest shareholder in the company.

The fresh funds will accelerate the company’s expansion in Europe and US and enable it to set-up the biggest Robotic manufacturing facility at a single location, the startup said in a statement.

Addverb has a capacity to manufacture a variety of 10,000 robots of various kinds in a year through its state of the art manufacturing facility, “Bot-Valley”. The company is planning to set up a new manufacturing facility in FY 2022-23 which would have capacity to produce 50,000 robots in a year.

Addverb is also looking to start an innovation lab with bases in Europe, US and India to solve the complex problems in the field of Human-Robotic collaboration, it added.

Addverb is already working in sectors like FMCG, retail, fashion and lifestyle, but with this investment, it aims to deploy its robots across hospitals and airports.

The robotics startup is aiming to clock $1 billion revenue-run rate in the next 5 years, of which 40% of the revenue is going to come from the international markets.

Money management and investment platform INDmoney has raised $86 million in a Series D round led by Tiger Global, Steadview Capital, Dragoneer with the startup’s founder and CEO Ashish Kashyap too investing further in his personal capacity.

INDmoney intends to acquire 25 million more users via inorganic growth activities and further invest in Research & Development as well as Technology. It will also be adding stock brokerage stack and credit products, the firm said in a statement.

Post this round of financing, INDmoney’s total capital raise stands at $133 million. The number of registered users on the platform have gone up from 1.5 million in August 2021 to 3.5 million now. The next aim is to reach 10 million registered users.

Agritech startup Arya, has raised $60 million in its Series C funding round in a mix of equity and debt, at a valuation of $300 million.

The equity round was led by Asia Impact SA, Lightrock India and Quona Capital. The agritech platform also raised debt financing from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) among others.

Arya connects sellers and buyers of agriproduce, providing complete assurance on quantity, quality and payments. The platform eliminates distress sales of farmers’ produce by enabling farmgate storage and seamless finance options, offering farmers the freedom of when and whom to sell to. With visibility into over 10,000 commodity storage points across the country, Arya assures year-round supply to SME and corporate buyers with embedded financing options, it said in a statement.

“We have visibility on grains worth $2 billion on the Arya platform, and this number is growing rapidly as we gather data from warehouses around the country. This funding round will help us gain market share for our core offerings and add more services to consolidate our position as India’s most trusted platform in agriculture,” said Chattanathan Devarajan, Arya’s co-founder.

Arya also intends to use the funding to capture 20 percent of the $100 billion grain commerce market.

Early cancer detection startup Epigeneres Biotech has raised $ 6 million in a Series B funding round led by Kotak Investment Advisors, Moez Daya (of Satya Capital), and LetsVenture Angel Fund.

Other investors include Ashish Kacholia, East River Advisors, One Decacorn, Nandita Advisors, and Chockalingam Valliappa, to name a few. The Series B round investors join the list featuring HCG, Torrent Pharma, Vijay Karnani (Ex-Goldman Sachs, India), Venkat Ramaswamy (of Edelweiss), and Sanjeev Khandelwal (of K-Labs). The Company has V Krishnan (Promoter, Justdial) and Shailesh Haribhakti (BOD Torrent Pharma) as board members.

Commenting on the fundraise, Ashish Tripathi, Founder & Chairman, Epigeneres, said, “This latest round of financing will help us continue our upward trajectory in early detection of cancer. The investment will go toward expanding the R&D team, scaling operations, and development of new products, even as we continue bringing out the finest healthcare technologies and solutions. We will soon begin to commercialise the cancer test; first in India, and then at a global level.”

In May 2021, Epigeneres Biotech announced their early detection cancer test in collaboration with Singapore-based diagnostic company Tzar Labs. The pioneering breakthrough in RNA bio-markers technology can help in detecting cancer in Stage.

With initial approvals in place, the latest round of investment will go towards expanding its Lab facilities, scaling operations, and development of an AI platform to launch the service in India, the firm added.

Remote health management startup, Dozee, has raised Rs 71 crore in an additional funding round led by Doordash’s Gokul Rajaram.

The round also saw participation from existing investors such as Prime Venture Partners, 3one4 Capital, YourNest and other angel investors. The cumulative fundraise by the startup now stands at Rs 139 crore.

The company plans to use the fresh funding to make critical care more easily accessible and available in Indian hospitals and will launch new products, continue with Research and Development and expand globally, it said in a statement.

Dozee plans to partner with over 1,000 hospitals across India to help them upgrade critical care infrastructure through remote patient monitoring. Additionally, it also aims to install more than 50,000 step-down Intensive Care Units beds with its contactless sensor and set-up 24x7 Central Monitoring Cells in these hospitals, enabling them to quickly augment the much High Dependency Units (HDUs) and ICUs.

Electronics renewal and refurbishment startup Qarmatek has bagged $3 million in a Series A funding round led by GVFL (Gujarat Venture Finance Limited) and Caspian Debt.

The funds will be utilised towards expanding and digitising operational capabilities, to scale across key domestic markets and to foray into B2C operations with MOBEX, a brand by Qarmatek, according to the company.

MOBEX has an expansive network currently of around 4000 smartphone retailers in Gujarat to alleviate their day-to-day operations of sales via E-commerce platforms & offline channels. This network is planned to be scaled up into major cities and reach more than 1 lakh partners within the next couple of years, the firm added.

“We as a business can fulfill 200,000 repairs per month but we are geared to take this to half a million repairs per month by the end of the ongoing calendar year. Our focus is to stay ahead of the curve and with our expansion plans underway we are geared to become a future-ready organization with an interplay of advanced technology, enhanced customer experience and sustainability at the heart of all our efforts,” said Krunal Shah, Co-Founder and Director, Qarmatek.

Edtech startup MyCaptain has raised $3 million in a Pre Series-A funding round led by Ankur Capital.

The round also saw participation from Inflection Point Ventures, Firstport ventures, IIM Calcutta Angels Network, Singapore Angel Investors and others.

The courses offered by the company range from content writing, social media management, fashion design to entrepreneurship and advertising. MyCaptain claims to have trained, mentored and facilitated monetizable outcomes for more than 150,000 paid learners so far.

The company said it will use the funding to further scale course offerings, acquire more users, increase the revenue 4X and grow the team to further its expansion plans.

Creator economy startup AppX has secured $1.3 million in a funding round led by YCombinator. Global Founders Capital, Rocket Internet, Soma Capital, Shrug VC, Lenny Rachitsky, James Beshara and TDV Partners also participated in the funding round.

The company plans to utilise the fresh funds to increase its product offerings to help more creators monetise, roll out their own tokens and expand internationally, it said in a statement.

AppX helps content creators monetise via their own personal mobile applications and websites, wherein creators can sell their e-books, courses, NFTs and run their e-commerce businesses.

“The creator economy space is a booming sector with market opportunity worth $100 billion. To cater to this demand, we have built a SaaS platform that empowers these creators to see revenue streams beyond digital ads,” said Sameer Sadana, founder and CEO of AppX.

AppX is also planning to launch a platform where creators can launch their online businesses in less than 10 minutes.

Startup ecosystem builder T-Hub has announced that it has got selected under the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme by DPIIT, Government of India, to disburse Rs 5 crore among eligible startups with an objective to support and fuel early-stage funding in startups.

With an aim to provide value-driven and effective growth for the startups, T-Hub this year announced its focus on providing funding avenues for its startups and receiving the Startup India Seed Fund is one of the steps towards this focus, T-Hub said.

The fund will be disbursed to the eligible startups through debt or convertible debentures instruments and will be utilised to provide financial assistance to startups for proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market-entry, and commercialisation.

Incubator Seed Management Committee (ISMC) which consists of prominent investors, mentors, established entrepreneurs, academic partners, and state government representatives, has been set up by T-Hub to assess the fund and select the startups.

T-Hub will be disbursing this fund to 15 startups in the span of three years. The seed fund allocated to T-Hub is sector agnostic and will focus on supporting technology startups and innovations which are Minimum Viable Product (MVP) ready and need funds for their early growth.

Mumbai Angels’ portfolio company, Aerostrovilos Energy has secured Rs 3.5 crore from Tube Investment of India- a Murugappa group company, in its seed round of funding.

The company said that it will be utilising the fresh capital for the completion of its solution, prototype manufacturing, and a trial run of MGT-based heavy vehicles.

Aerostrovilos Energy is an IIT Madras-incubated organisation that is working on developing micro gas turbines (MGT) with the National Centre for Combustion Research (NCCR) at IIT Madras. It is building an MGT-based powertrain solution for heavy-duty trucks and power generation at reduced costs.

N+1 Capital invests undisclosed sum in consumer electronics brand Mivi

Homegrown consumer electronics brand Mivi has raised an undisclosed amount in a debt funding round from N+1 Capital.

The fresh capital will further bolster the company's in-house capabilities, helping it expand its presence across new verticals, it said in a statement.

“The capital infusion by N+1 capital will set us up on an accelerated growth trajectory, banking on which we will expand our product portfolio across several new and in-demand categories,” said Midhula Devabhaktuni, Co-founder, Mivi.

Mivi opened its own manufacturing unit in India in 2020. Within a year of launch, Mivi is manufacturing all of its audio products in India and claims to be the only brand in this segment that is manufacturing domestically.

DCC Animal Hospital has marked its entry into PetTech with ‘PetConnect App’ backed by Rs 80-90 million investment.

The newly launched first-of-its-kind mobile app will allow pet parents to connect with highly skilled DCC doctors, access detailed health history and more. The organisation expects word-of-mouth awareness will also help drive up business and customers by 2X, it said in a statement.

As per the firm, the global Pet Tech Market was valued at over $5.5 billion in 2020 and is set to grow at 22% CAGR from 2021 to 2027.

Hyper-local logistics startup Hanchens has raised an undisclosed sum in a new funding round, which is over 2x of the last round of funding which was led by India Accelerator, Ex-Head of People Operations Delhivery, Founder of H-Zone Capital, CTO of Financial services company.

The firm said it is about to touch ARR of $1 million this month. The company with this investment plans to expand dark stores and last mile for quick commerce in 20+ cities and build technology advanced platform for scale and optimisations, it said in a statement.

The firm will raise another funding in its upcoming Pre- Series A investment in the next 2-3 months which will help it strengthen and gain prominence in the dark store and last mile network across the country.

“After strengthening Last mile, we've tied up with leading D2C grocery, pharmaceutical and B2B brands to open dark stores in multiple cities through a few mins, hours and same day fulfillment. We will launch 3-4 cities each month, and continue to open untapped markets to boost online sales for the brands, said Abhishek Kaushik, Co-Founder of Hanchens.