Startup Digest: Sistema.bio secures $15.6 million, Global VCs invest $5 million in Invact Metaversity, AiDash acquires Neurafarms.ai & Trump's Truth Social app launches on Apple App Store

Former Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari's edtech platform Invact Metaversity has received seed round investment of $5 million from global VCs which includes Arkam Ventures and Antler from India, Picus Capital from Germany, M Venture Partners from Singapore, BECO Capital from Dubai and 2am VC from the US among others.

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The startup has also raised capital from over 70 entrepreneurs such as Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer at Coinbase; Nithin Kamath, cofounder of Zerodha; and Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal, among others. This brings the current valuation of the company at $33 million.

"Metaverse is a concept that stands at a cusp where it will be the lead factor in transforming the educational landscape. We will use this investment to bolster the product and technology team for the Metaversity platform, build a virtual-first curriculum and expand into Europe and the US,” said Manish Maheshwari, founder & CEO of Invact Metaversity.

RetainIQ, an e-commerce marketing company, has secured $2.3 million in a seed round of funding led by venture capital firm Accel Partners. The funding round also saw the participation of VC firm Hauz Khas Ventures and London-based private equity firm Creator Collective Capital.

Angel investors including Unicommerce founders Ankit Pruthi, Karun Singla, and Vibhu Garg, Upgrad co-founder Mayank Kumar, Ally.io founder Vetri Vellore, Brightchamps founder Ravi Bhushan Kumar, and Gromo founder Ankit Khandelwal, among others, too pitched in.

The firm said it will use the raised capital to scale its operations, accelerate product development, and expand its core teams across engineering, product, sales, marketing and operations. The startup is also looking to expand its presence across the Indian and US markets.

Dubai-based fitness startup Fit On Click has closed a $1.5 million pre-series A institutional round of funding led by Arrow Capital. The startup in a strategic tie-up with Iffort India has also launched Fitze a digital app that incentivizes its users to earn coins and get rewards for every move they make.

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Commenting on the fundraise, Ben Samuel, founder and CEO at Fit On Click said, "With the support of Iffort, this funding round will allow us to strengthen our technology and rapidly scale to the wider MENA region in the near future."

Supply Chain Labs, a supply-chain-focused fund has announced the first close of its purpose-specific fund at Rs 75 crore. This fellowship fund, with the mission of selecting, collaborating and investing in 50 of the most high-potential supply-chain-focused startups would be the sole vehicle through which SCL will be investing in its third cohort onwards, the firm said.

SCL already has 19 companies in its portfolio from its first two cohorts. The fellowship fund is a stage agnostic fund that will potentially invest up to Rs 7.5 crores in each startup. The 19 companies that are part of Supply Chain Labs cohorts have seen over 5x value expansion, and over 80 percent of the companies have raised follow-on capital, the firm added.

AiDash has announced the acquisition of geospatial and AI (artificial intelligence) powered farming solutions provider Neurafarms.ai. With the acquisition of Neurafarms.ai, AiDash strengthens its product line and adds valuable talent to its team, according to a statement. The company did not disclose the size of the acquisition.

"With the addition of Neurafarms.ai's team and assets, AiDash builds on its vision of becoming a global leader in leveraging satellites and AI to revolutionise operations, maintenance, and sustainability for core industries," it said.

Bhavesh Patidar, Neurafarms.ai co-founder and leader of the startup's data science innovations, would join the AiDash team, with a focus on strengthening its Disaster and Disruptions Management System (DDMS), which helps industries better manage disaster prediction, detection, and response.

Neurafarms.ai's head of research and development Anil Singh would also join AiDash as a remote sensing scientist. His focus would be enhancing the company's research and development activities to analyse data obtained from remote sensing systems and channel it to address industry problems, the statement added.

ICICI Securities initiated coverage on Paytm parent One97 Communications with a 'buy' rating. The brokerage assigned a target price of Rs 1,352 to the Paytm stock, which has hit a series of lows in the recent past. Paytm is optimising and monetising its user funnel to drive customer lifetime value. The brokerage mentioned below-expected monetisation through the company's financial services business and unfavourable regulatory outcomes as key risks.

According to ICICI Securities, Paytm calls for evaluation and assessment quite differently and distinctly, given its management’s high growth aspirations calling for significant investments and cash burn, rapidly evolving business model, highly competitive landscape with low switching cost, regulatory uncertainties and few unfavourable outcomes. Paytm has built a sizeable two-sided digital ecosystem with proven leadership in payments, commanding a market share of more than 40 percent mobile payments and more than 25 percent digital P2M transactions.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has proposed to tighten the disclosure standards of new-age tech firms that plan to hit the market with public issues. The market regulator plans to ask these firms to justify the pricing of shares for their initial public offerings (IPOs) in order to bring in more transparency on the listing of shares. SEBI issued a raft of proposals in its discussion paper and has set a March 5 deadline for the public to give their comments.

Once the proposals are accepted, the market regulator will ask companies to explain in detail how they have arrived at the pricing of their issue, compare that with the share sales before the IPO and disclose all presentations made to the investors before the IPO. This will help retail investors make an informed decision. The move comes after a meltdown in newly-listed tech stocks like Paytm and Zomato that plunged from their highs in the past few weeks, massively eroding investor wealth.

Crowdsourced last-mile delivery platform Shadowfax Technologies is planning for rapid electrification of fleet and is aiming to move to 75 percent electric vehicles by 2024. It further aims to transition to 100 percent electric movement by 2026. This adoption is part of a global effort to make logistics more sustainable with the Zero Pollution Campaign, the startup said in a statement.

"With the EV and E-store initiatives, our target on first-time users and new categories like women partners would be fast-tracked. Additionally, it gives me immense pleasure to be participating in the NITI Aayog project ‘Shoonya- Zero Pollution Mobility,’ which is relentlessly driving the EV agenda,” said Abhishek Bansal, co-founder & CEO, Shadowfax Technologies.

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On the back of a fast-growing base of 100,000+ rider partners, Shadowfax is currently serving over 170 enterprise clients across 700+ cities, delivering over 1 million orders every day.

Edtech startup BrightCHAMPS has announced that it will accept cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Tether, and Ethereum as modes of fee payment across all the 30+ countries it is operational in, including the US, Canada, UAE, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Thailand, among others.

The firm has partnered with the leading global crypto payment gateway, TripleA, to ensure secure and stable transactions for new and existing customers, it said in a statement. The announcement comes on the back of BrightCHAMPS’ recent acquisition of Education10x, a financial literacy education platform for children from 8 to 16 years of age.

Matchmaking platform Betterhalf.ai has partnered with Buy Now, Pay Later platform ZestMoney, to offer the convenience of zero-cost pay-later/EMI option to its users. The partnership enables Betterhalf’s customers to access ZestMoney’s quick, easy and flexible pay-later offerings. Users will also be eligible for a cashback of up to Rs 1000 on the first timely repayment, the firm said.

Donald Trump's new social media venture, Truth Social, launched late on Sunday in Apple's App Store, potentially marking the former president's return to social media after he was banned from several platforms last year.

The app was available to download shortly before midnight ET and was automatically downloaded to Apple devices belonging to users who had pre-ordered the app, Reuters reported.

Some users reported either having trouble registering for an account or were added to a waitlist with a message: "Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist." The app has been available for people invited to use it during its test phase, Reuters previously reported.

Russia's finance ministry said it would take proposals on cryptocurrencies from the country's central bank into account so long as they do not contradict its own approach, paving the way for legislation governing digital assets, as per a Reuters report. A simmering dispute over cryptocurrency regulation in Russia heated up on Friday as the finance ministry submitted legislative proposals to the government that clashed with the central bank's demand for a blanket ban.

The Bank of Russia has proposed banning cryptocurrency trading and mining due to the threat digital currencies pose to financial stability. But the finance ministry prefers legislation that regulates cryptocurrencies, allowing them as an investment tool, but not as a means of payment. The finance ministry's draft legislation aims to create a legal market for digital currencies, it said on Monday.

One proposal is for transactions involving the purchase or sale of cryptocurrency requiring customer identification, a move that may diminish one of the cryptocurrencies' major selling points - their anonymity. Other proposals include foreign cryptocurrency exchanges having to obtain a licence in Russia, and introducing financial literacy tests that determine how much individuals are permitted to invest.

Citizens who successfully pass the tests would be permitted to invest up to 600,000 roubles ($7,853) in digital currencies each year, the finance ministry said. Those who fail would have an investment limit set at 50,000 roubles annually.

Technology that merges the virtual and physical worlds could start to become a reality for consumers in a few years, Facebook owner Meta Platforms has told advertising agencies, giving more details of its vision for the creation of the metaverse, according to Reuters.

Mixed reality (MR) technology could allow a person wearing an MR headset to use a real-world object to trigger a virtual world reaction, like hitting a video game character with a real world baseball bat, for instance. It is one of three types of extended reality technologies often associated with the metaverse.

Augmented reality exists, with mobile games like Pokemon Go, but players cannot affect the digital world with a physical object. Virtual reality headsets, like Meta's Oculus, immerse users into a fully virtual world where they can interact with the environment.

The comments from Meta came on a Zoom call with ad agencies on Thursday, which was scheduled to help advertisers better understand the metaverse, said an agency executive who attended the call. It was Meta's first roundtable discussion with agencies about the metaverse.

Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) urged Apple investors to vote for a resolution demanding greater transparency in the iPhone maker's efforts to protect workers in its supply chain from forced labor.

Apple will hold its annual shareholder meeting on March 4, Reuters reported.

Apple and independent third parties audited the company's global suppliers in 2020 and found no evidence of forced labor, its latest proxy filing said. Apple also releases reports with information on the protection of its supply-chain workers.

But independent human rights investigators have reported that some Apple suppliers have participated in the Chinese government's forced labor program in the Xinjiang region, "bringing into question the effectiveness of these policies and procedures," ISS said in a report to investors.

A group of shareholders have asked Apple's board to prepare a report on how the company protects supply-chain workers from forced labor. The request covers the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many Apple has taken action against.