Funding Rundown: The Whole Truth raises $15M, Google, others invest Rs 113 Cr in Cropin, Senior care platform Athulya bags Rs 77 Cr,  Virohan gets $7M from Blume & BankSathi nets $4M

The Whole Truth (TWT), which claims to be a 100 percent clean-label food brand, has raised $15 million in its Series B round, led by Sequoia Capital India. Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sauce.Vc also participated in the round.

The company has been funded by angel investors such as Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath, food delivery platform Swiggy’s co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety, and co-founder and CEO of Rebel Foods Jaydeep Burman.

According to TWT, the new capital will be invested in expanding the brand's in-house manufacturing capacity, hiring great talent, and expanding retail distribution. “With this new fundraising, nothing changes. We’ll continue to innovate and enter more categories. We’ll continue to grow distribution and bring our existing products to more consumers,” said Shashank Mehta, Founder and CEO of The Whole Truth Foods.

Agritech startup Cropin has secured Rs 113 crores in funding from new investors Google and JSR Corporation, as well as existing investors ABC Impact and Chiratae Ventures.

As per the startup, the funds will aid in expanding Cropin Cloud, its recently launched intelligent agriculture cloud platform, to cater to the growing demand for digitisation and predictive intelligence in the global agriculture sector.

Cropin added that it will be able to further invest in its go-to-market efforts and expand the platform's capabilities, including developing next-generation predictive intelligence solutions through Cropin AI Labs. In addition, Cropin plans to expand its business presence in new regions and industries, focusing on creating solutions that promote sustainable agriculture practices and address global food security challenges on a large scale.

Senior care service provider Athulya, has raised Rs 77 Crore ($ 9.3M) funding from North Haven India Infrastructure Partners, a fund managed by Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure, for its forthcoming expansion.

Athulya currently manages over 400 assisted living beds across multiple facilities in Chennai and Bangalore and has cumulatively served over 20,000 seniors till date. With the funding, the firm intends to expand its services across south India to reach over 2500 beds and serve over 50,000 seniors in the next two years.

This investment will help Athulya to focus on talent acquisition, infrastructure development and skill training, thereby creating direct and indirect employment opportunities for around 2000 people across the country,” said Srinivasan G, Founder & CEO, Athulya Senior Care.

Education-focused healthcare startup Virohan has raised $7 million in a pre-Series B1 round led by Blume Ventures. The funding saw participation from Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, Rebright Partners and Lesing Artha Limited.

It also included $500,000 from Harshvardhan Rajgarhia as part of LetsVenture, ALES Japan, Shantanu Jain (Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase – Singapore), Deepa Bagla Financial Consultants and others.

The company plans to use the funding to expand to 200 plus new campuses pan-India, and train over 7,000 students. Additionally, the latest round brings the total capital raised by the startup till date to $11 million.

“In the next 18 months, Virohan will deepen its relationship with its stakeholders (Students, Universities/Colleges and Medical institutions), train over 10,000 students, and establish an international presence to cater to $100 billion+ global opportunity,” said Kunaal Dudeja, Co-founder and CEO, Virohan.

In addition to developing new training programmes and scaling its infrastructure and content to regional languages, the Gurugram-based company intends to develop new features. Furthermore, this funding will also help the company expand to Japanese markets with the support from its existing investors ALES and Rebright Partner according to a press release by Virohan.

AI-based healthcare startup Qritive has raised $7.5 million in a funding round led by MassMutual Ventures, SEEDS Capital and Exfinty Venture Partners.

Qritive will use this new capital to drive geographical expansion, expand its product portfolio and support regulatory clearances, the firm said in a statement.

The firm builds AI-based solutions for cancer diagnosis and enhances imaging accuracy for medical professionals ensuring faster diagnosis.  In 2019, it had raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by SGinnovate and Pix Vine Capital.

Bangalore based social commerce platform BankSathi has raised $4M in funding from Kotak Securities, Lets Venture, We Founder Circle, Hem Securities and IPV (Inflection Point Ventures).

The company has also received funding from Recur Club, Liquiloans, Sunil Singhania (Abakkus), Kunal Shah (CRED), Dr. Ritesh Malik (Innov8), Kailash Biyani (Asian Markets), Mukul Rastogi & Bhaswat Agarwal (ClassPlus), Varun Alagh (MamaEarth), Sameer Rastogi (India Juris), Manish Dabkara (EKI Energy), Dinesh Godara (3X founder), and Mukund Modi (MS Fincap).

The funds will be used to invest in high-calibre employees across all the company's operations and to accelerate the development of new products and technology. In addition, the organisation will invest resources toward growing both its agent network and geographic reach into new regions.

“We have an endeavour to empower 10M financial advisors and serve 50M+ customers in the next five years and we are on track to achieve the same,” quoted CTO and Co-founder of BankSathi, Sandeep Kaler.

Medbikri, an app-first inventory management solution, has raised $ 650,000 in the pre-seed funding round led by 3one4 Capital.

The round also saw participation from angel investors including Siddharth Ahluwalia (Founder, 100X Entrepreneur), Tej Kapoor (Managing Partner, IvyCap), Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Atrey (Founders, Meesho), Saurabh Agarwal and Manish Jethani (Co-Founders, Hevo Technologies), Rahul Sharma (Co-Founder, Zetwerk), among others.

The company will utilise the funding to build the team, develop the product further and scale the app across India. Medbikri aims to onboard 50,000 chemists/pharmacists, across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and Karnataka, in the first six months, it said in a statement.

Mental fitness platform MindPeers has raised a $500,000 in a seed funding round led by Venture Catalysts. The round also witnessed participation of Goodwater Capital, Magic Fund, and Ministry of Electronics and IT.

The startup integrates mental fitness and biomarkers and leverages digital tools to promote mental well-being and for improving overall performance. As per the firm, its business model is B2B and B2B2C with a market size of over Rs 10,000 crore.

“There has been so much on the funding winter but mental health space in Asia has fought this from decades. Finally as the demand to be mentally fit has increased, awareness on how critical our minds are for high performance, mental healthcare is seeing its daylight,” said Kanika, CEO, MindPeers.

HR-focused tech startup InCruiter, has raised Rs 1 crore in a revenue-based funding round led by Recur Club.

The firm plans to deploy this capital to promote its recently-launched Interview-as-a-Service, in the US, Canada and Dubai markets to accelerate geographical expansion, it said in a statement. It will also recruit talent across tech and sales.

“We will continue to launch more such innovative products in the coming times - a new product is already in the pipeline and is expected to go live by the end of 2023,” said Anil Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of InCruiter.