Funding Rundown: VerSe Innovation raises $805 million, Elevation Capital raises record $670 million Fund VIII & Omnivore launches new $130 million venture fund

Early-stage investor Elevation Capital (formerly Saif Partners), which has backed unicorns like Swiggy, Paytm, Urban Company and Meesho, has closed its eighth India-dedicated fund with a corpus of $670 million, its largest ever.

Elevation said it would continue to focus on funding in the Seed and Series A stages of early-stage companies. It will invest in sectors such as consumer internet, fintech, SaaS, apart from Web3 and cryptocurrency.

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"Fund VIII will allow us to demonstrate a greater commitment to exceptional founders with a larger initial investment and continued support to them until much later in their journeys," the firm said in a statement. As per the company, its investment pace has been accelerating and went up by 100%, just in the past 12 months.

Instoried, an AI pre-publication sentiment analysis tool startup, has received an investment of $200 million from Luxembourg-based private alternative investment group GEM Global Yield (GEM).

The firm has signed an agreement with GEM, under which the latter will provide a Share Subscription Facility of up to $200 million, to be drawn at the option of Instoried, for a 36-month term following a public listing. Instoried seeks to go public via SPAC or traditional IPO.

The announcement comes after the startup raised $8 million in its Series A funding round led by Pritt Investment Partners and 9 Unicorns, last year. The firm said this fresh capital infusion has made it the fastest-growing deep tech startup led by a woman founder.

Agritech venture capital firm Omnivore has announced the launch of its third fund, with a target corpus of $130 million (Rs 1,000 crore). The new fund will continue to invest in early-stage startups developing breakthrough technologies for agriculture, food, climate, and the rural economy.

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Omnivore is targeting a first close of the new fund by September 2022 and a final close by June 2023. With this new fund, Omnivore expects to make 25 to 30 new investments over the next four years, continuing to fund entrepreneurs building the future of Indian agriculture and food systems, it said in a statement.

Aavishkaar Capital, the impact investing arm of the Aavishkaar Group, has Rs 1,000 crore ($130 million) towards the first close of its eighth impact fund. The fund will be looking to increase its size of this fund over the next few months, the firm said in a statement. It is currently backed by British International Investment, Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets and Fund of Funds for Startups.

The 'Aavishkaar India Fund VI’ will invest in businesses, largely MSME’s with technology as a key enabler in the core sectors of sustainable Agri-tech, Financial Inclusion and Essential services with a focus on Climate-tech, with the intent to build commercially attractive and impactful businesses, it added.

Seed stage venture capital firm Speciale Invest has announced the final close of its second fund at Rs 286 crore. This is more than twice the expected corpus of Rs 100 crore announced at the time of launch in April 2021.

The fund, which primarily invests in deep science and enterprise technology across India and Asia, will now look to invest in more than 20 early-stage startups through pre-seed and seed rounds with the average cheque sizes ranging from $100,000 to $ 1 million.

Speciale Invest is focused on investing in startups building enterprise software products (including SaaS), developers' tools, and frontier technologies like climate, advanced materials, space tech, robotics, photonics, alternative energy, and more.

Venture Catalysts-backed Beams Fintech Fund has announced the first close of its maiden fund at $36 million. The Fund aims to reach the target corpus of $100 million within the next nine months.

The First Close saw participation from marquee domestic and international investors including banks, NBFCs, fintechs, large family offices, financial services' CXOs & fintech founders. Existing investors of Venture Catalysts & 9Unicorns (the first fund from Venture Catalysts) also backed Beams in its first close.

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Beams' follows the investment policy of backing growth-stage startups operating at the intersection of financial services and technology. The fintech-themed fund plans to enter Series B and Series C rounds and invest in 10-12 companies.

Co-working startup IndiQube has bagged $30 million in a Series B funding round of funding led by WestBridge Capital. The round also saw participation from its existing investors Ashish Gupta, former managing director of Helion Ventures. Out of $30 million, IndiQube’s promoters have infused $17 million, the firm said in a statement.

"Over the next two years, we plan to more than double our PAN India footprint to over 10 million square feet venture into 15+ tier-II cities, and further ramp up technology integration, creating a consistent experience for our clients,” said Rishi Das, Co-founder, IndiQube.

EnKash, an all-in-one spends management platform and corporate cards company has raised $20 million as a part of its Series B funding round led by Ascent Capital with Baring India & Singapore-based White Ventures.

The round also saw participation from existing investors Mayfield India and Axilor Ventures.

"It intends to further expand its offerings with the infusion of fresh capital and lead the space with innovative offerings around banking-as-a-service, scaling up its ‘plug and play’ cards issuance stack and plans to expand its geographical presence on the international front,” said Hemant Vishnoi, Co-founder, EnKash.

Venture capital firm 100X.VC has announced its plan to invest Rs 125 crore (over $16.5 million) in 100 early-stage startups in the next 12 months.

The company said in a statement that it is mulling investing the amount for 15 percent future equity ownership in each startup using iSAFE Notes. It added that this will be "the fastest deployment of first cheque capital by any VC in India for early-stage startups."

Vested Finance, a California-headquartered online investment platform that enables Indian investors to invest in the US stock market, has raised $12 million in Series A funding.

Ayon Capital led the round with new investors including 9Unicorns, Ankur Warikoo (ex-CEO of Groupon India), Dhruvil Sanghvi (CEO at Loginext), and Saumil Parekh (VP of Marketing at PharmEasy). Content creators like Akshat Shrivastava, Mukul Malik (Asset Yogi), Sharan Hedge (Finance with Sharan), Dhruv Rathee, Shashank Udupa, and others have also invested. Existing investors Tenoneten, Ovo Fund, Wedbush Ventures, IPV, and Upscale too participated.

Vested Finance is a zero-commission investment platform that helps Indian investors easily diversify their portfolios by investing in the U.S. stock market. It claims to have processed more than $250 million in transactions in 2021 while tripling deposits.

Live video and audio calling platform Dyte has raised $11.6 million in a seed funding round led by Unbound, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, and Nexus Venture Partners.

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The fresh capital will be used to expand their product and engineering team and focus on international hires while building for a global market, the firm said in a statement.

"Since we launched Dyte in March 2021, we’ve seen massive scale with 30x growth in terms of users and 25x growth in terms of usage minutes on the platform,” said Abhishek Kankani, Co-Founder and CEO of Dyte.

Doceree, a digital platform meant for the networking of healthcare professionals and physicians, has gotten $11 million in a Series A funding round led by Eight Roads Ventures, a global investment firm backed by Fidelity.

F-Prime Capital and Alkemi Growth Capital also participated in the round.

As per the firm, it will use the fresh funds to scale its global operations, expand partnerships, augment its product portfolio and advance the platform’s measurement and behavior lift capabilities to bring greater transparency to results.

Bombay Play, a hypersocial gaming startup, has raised $7 million in its Series-A funding round led by Kalaari Capital. The round witnessed new investors like Winzo, AdvantEdge VC, AMEA Ventures amongst others, with participation from existing investors — Lumikai Fund, Leo Capital and PlayCo.

A game publisher, Bombay Play has developed hypersocial games such as Dice Merge Puzzle, Card Party and Daily Word Puzzl. It claims to have over 40 million players worldwide. "With the amount raised, we will scale up existing offerings while investing in cutting-edge technologies to elevate the social experience of casual gamers worldwide," said Oliver Jones, CEO of Bombay Play.

XYXX, a premium men’s innerwear, and comfort wear label has roped in Indian Cricketer KL Rahul as an investor and a brand ambassador. With this partnership, XYXX wants to focus on further strengthening its online presence and expand into untapped markets with KL Rahul as the face of its top categories - innerwear and loungewear.

In June 2021, XYXX had raised Rs 30 Crore in Series-A funding from Sauce.vc, DSG Consumer Partners and Synergy Capital Partners. This April, KL Rahul joins the ranks as an investor in XYXX for an undisclosed amount.

Cloud-kitchen operator Curefoods has received an undisclosed investment from Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan. The firm has onboarded the actor as the brand ambassador for its food brand EatFit. Dhawan’s investment in the cloud kitchen operator comes along with the company's launch of its direct-to-consumer food ordering platform, www.eatfit.in.

Earlier this year, Curefoods announced the acquisition of Frozen Bottle. It has also bagged the south India franchise rights for pizza chain Sbarro. In January, the company secured $62 million in funding from Iron Pillar, Chiratae Ventures, Sixteenth Street Capital, Accel Partners, and Binny Bansal. It has over 150 kitchens operating in 15 cities.