STARTUP DIGEST: Here’re top startup stories of the day

Its existing investor Sequoia Capital participated in the round as well. Notably, Sequoia, CZI and Naspers are all investors in Byju’s, India’s largest online learning startup.

Founded in 2010, by Chaitanya Kalipatnapu and Ashwin Damera, Eruditus offers management programmes and short courses remotely. Its subject areas include leadership and management, data science, digital transformation, banking and finance.

Home interiors company HomeLane has raised Rs 60 crore ($8+ million) in a bridge funding round from Stride Ventures and existing investors. With this round, HomeLane's total fund-raising has crossed Rs 370 crore ($54 million) in the last six years.

Stride Ventures led this round, participating through debt funding of Rs 20 crore in the company. Existing investors Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Evolvence India and JSW Ventures also participated, infusing another Rs 40 crore in equity.

Part of the funds will also be deployed to enhance HomeLane's technology offering to give consumers a better interior service experience by focusing on its proprietary 3D design platform, Spacecraft.

YCombinator-backed Bikayi raised a seed round of $2 million from a clutch of international investors including Mantis ventures, a VC fund promoted by the popular band Chainsmokers.

Mantis is a $50 million VC fund to invest in startups and this is their first investment in an Indian entity. Other investors include YC, Pioneer Fund, and Angel Investor Ankur Nagpal to name a few. Funds will be used to hire more talent to accelerate product development, ramp up the platform and on-board a million new merchants.

Bikayi is a B2B e-commerce enabler that essentially helps small businesses build an online presence and gives them the right tools to manage e-commerce on WhatsApp.

Dating app TrulyMadly 2.0 raised a Pre-series A funding round of INR 8.1 Crore via Angelist, Inflection Point Ventures and The Chennai Angels. Entrepreneurs and CXOs from startups like Unacademy, Haptik, Innov8, AirBnB, among others invested in this round. TrulyMadly’s existing investors also participated in this round.

The startup will use the funds to scale up its team size and operations and also enhance its technology.

Gurugram-based Superfoods & AI Health Venture, The Healthy Company, raised its first institutional round of investment of $350,000, from Venture Catalysts, Kushal Bhagia as part of First Cheque, 9Unicorns, Beardo founders.

Backed and accelerated by Gurgaon based Huddle, the AI health venuture will use these funds to get users to lose weight and better manage their lifestyle conditions like diabetes, thyroid, PCOD etc.

After the banking regulator, now the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDAI) is set to open the gates for video-based verification of customers looking to buy insurance products.

The IRDAI said in a letter to insurance companies that they may use video-based identification process to simplify the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements, according to Moneycontrol.

This comes a few months after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), through a notification, gave the nod for video KYC to simplify bank account opening.

Hours after US-based cyber research firm Cyble said that a hacker group 'John Wick' was able to gain unrestricted access to Paytm Mall's databases, the company refuted claims of a data breach. Paytm Mall on August 30 said it has not found any security lapses yet after investigating claims of a possible hack and data breach.

"We would like to assure that all user, as well as company data, is completely safe and secure... We have been investigating the claims of a possible hack and data breach, and haven't found any security lapses yet," a Paytm Mall spokesperson said in a statement.

BSE listed, fintech company Niyogin, has acquired a 51% strategic and controlling stake in Financial inclusion solution provider iServeU for Rs 592 million ($8 M) in a cash plus stock deal.

The acquisition not only provides Niyogin with deep market access to under banked India, but also offers multiple product complementarities such as credit, digital wealth, and payments among others which the two companies can jointly access to create a strong full-stack fintech value proposition for its customers, believes Amit Rajpal, Chairman and Co-Founder, Niyogin Fintech.

Google India Digital Services on Monday told the Delhi High Court that it has no access to the Aadhaar database and does not require any such information for operating its Google Pay (GPay) mobile app.

The submission was made in an additional affidavit placed before a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan by Google in response to an allegation, in an ongoing public interest litigation, that the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) granted GPay access to the BHIM Aadhaar platform without knowledge of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).