Startup Digest: Zetwerk acquires Unimacts, Google& YouTube invest $13.2 mn to help fight misinformation, Anicut Capital gets Sebi nod for Rs 1,500 crore debt fund

The US-based food technology startup Perfect Day has said the acquisition of Sterling Biotech will enable the firm to scale up the production of animal-free milk proteins to cater to both domestic and export markets.

The company has received approval from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India for its animal-free milk proteins, opening the door for commercialisation in India.

In the near-term, Perfect Day will export animal-free protein produced in India to meet increasing global customer demands while it works on building a roadmap for domestic commercial opportunities.

In a statement, the company noted that the acquisition of Sterling Biotech will double its production capability in the near-term with the addition of four high-value assets, including two operational manufacturing facilities in Masar, Gujarat - more than returning on the company's immediate investment of 1.5 times the winning auction price of Rs 638 crore, it added.

In a bid to further fight misinformation, Google and YouTube have announced a $13.2 million grant to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the nonprofit Poynter Institute to launch a new Global Fact Check Fund.

The new fund, to open in early 2023, will support its network of 135 fact-checking organisations from 65 countries, covering over 80 languages.

"Building on our previous work to address misinformation, this is Google and YouTube's single largest grant in fact-checking," the company said in a statement.

Google said that fact-checking organisations can use the funding to incorporate new technologies, create or expand digital footprints, optimise verification tools, and increase their capacities to deepen audience engagement through innovative storytelling formats such as audio, video or podcasts.

Fintech lenders are gearing up to comply with the Reserve Bank of India's new rules on digital lending, with the deadline ending on Wednesday. While some expect disruption in the short term, and compliance costs to increase initially, fintech says they are prepared to adhere to the new regime.

The guidelines focus on consumer protection against unethical recovery practices and frauds by unregulated entities amid the increasing penetration of digital loans.

"More than 50 percent of our fintech members (non-NBFCs/Banks) were required to change their workflows due to these guidelines. But from our discussion with the membership base, no one faces any existential risk following these new rules.

There will naturally be changes and some discomfort, but nothing serious," said Anurag Jain, founding member of the Digital Lenders Association of India (DLAI) and founder and executive director at KredX.

"I believe these guidelines are a shift in the digital lending industry that will encourage banks, NBFCs and FinTechs for more data clarity that were earlier masked and also allows boost consumer sentiment.

Though the industry at large will be required to change their operations, leading industry players made the requisite tweaks way ahead of the deadline to stay compliant with the norms," added Prashant Muddu, managing director and CEO of Jocata.

Debt and equity investment firm Anicut Capital has received market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) approval for a Rs 1,500-crore debt fund.

Anicut Capital's third debt fund, Grand Anicut Fund 4, includes a green shoe option of Rs 500 crore, the firm said. The asset management company plans to launch the fund in the January-March 2023 quarter and aims first close by the end of the same quarter.

Anicut invested upwards of Rs 550 crore across 15 investments through the second debt fund, and in 25 equity raise rounds across early-stage as well as growth-stage startups, the firm said.

Global investment and education company Seedstars has launched Seedstars Capital, an investment platform for emerging VC fund managers, with the support of Swiss-based investment holding company xMultiplied.

Seedstars Capital will look for the sector and industry-specific strategies in regions and countries like Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia and India. It is looking for funds that target pre-seed to Series A companies.

The platform will incubate, accelerate and invest in new venture capital funds in emerging markets like Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, it said in a statement.

With the platform, Seedstars expects to drive over $500 million of new funding into emerging and diverse managers, who will create more than 10,000 new jobs and generate over $20 billion of additional GDP across emerging markets in the next ten years.

Online home services marketplace Urban Company has awarded stocks worth Rs 5.2 crore to 497 service partners under the Partner Stock Option Plan (PSOP) programme.

Of the total recipients, about 30 percent were female service partners from the beauty and wellness vertical, the firm said in a statement. Bengaluru had the highest number of partner shareholders with 26 percent, followed by Delhi-NCR with 22 percent, it added.

The company in March announced the PSOP programme for its service providers, where it will award stocks worth Rs 150 crore at near zero cost to thousands of service partners over the next 5-7 years.

The company has already received board approval for the first tranche of Rs 75 crore worth of stocks, to be disbursed over the next few years. Seven partners, who were part of the first cohort of stock recipients in March, received it again for the second time, due to their consistently high performance, it informed.

D2C startup Melorra said it has clocked an annual recurring revenue of $100 million. This catapults the jewellery brand into becoming one of the fastest-growing D2C brands in terms of revenue in India, placing it among the top 7 in the D2C segment list, the firm said in a statement.

"We look forward to continuing to bring the lightweight, trendy gold jewellery to our customers and grow further, reaching $1 billion in revenue by 2026. Our customers are in every nook and corner of India. We put in all efforts to make modern jewellery, which is lightweight and easy on the pocket, available to everyone," Melorra founder and CEO Saroja Yeramilli said.

Melorra currently has 23 new-age brand experience centres across India and plans on increasing this number to 350 by FY26. The company recorded a revenue of $10 million in the financial year FY21 which grew to $50 million in FY22.

Grain commerce platform Arya.ag has reported a 4x jump in net profits for the first half of the current financial year as more farmers used the company’s services such as warehousing, market linkage and post-harvest finance.

Arya.ag reported a profit of Rs 14.38 crore on gross revenues of Rs 622 crore during H1FY23 as compared to a net of Rs 3.86 crore on revenues of Rs 107 crore in the same period last year.

The digital lending arm of Arya crossed the Rs 350-crore mark in disbursals with negligible non-performing assets (NPAs), almost doubling on a yearly comparison. Its subscriber base grew to over 15,000 cumulatively for its three integrated services, namely intelligent warehousing, digital lending, and digital market linkages.

actyv.ai, an AI-powered Enterprise SaaS platform, today announced its partnership with Axis Bank to offer the Bank’s Supply Chain Finance solutions to MSME customers. This partnership will enable corporate anchors, downstream dealers and trading partners to avail the Bank’s Supply Chain Finance solutions.

"Small and medium enterprises in India often face challenges in accessing sustainable credit. We at actvy.ai, in partnership with Axis Bank, aim to leverage our technology prowess to reach MSME customers. We are certain that our digital platform, access to technology tools and affordable credit will help drive growth for this segment,” said Raghu Subramanian, Founder and Global CEO, actyv.ai.

Indian agrifood startups received a record $4.6 billion in investment in FY 2021-22, up 119 percent year-over-year, as the country overtook China as Asia-Pacific’s biggest funder of agrifood-tech innovation, a report showed.

Farmtech startups raised $1.5 billion across 140 deals, a 185 percent year-over-year increase, according to the report by VC firms AgFunder and Omnivore. Restaurant marketplaces and e-grocery startups secured close to $3 billion, around 66 percent, of the total investment.

The deal activity also increased to 234 in FY2022 compared to 189 deals in FY2021. Downstream startups raised $3.8 billion, a 115 percent increase from $1.77 billion in FY2021.

This significant growth is due to Swiggy, which raised $1.2 billion accounting for 38 percent of total investment in Indian agrifood startups. eGrocery startups raised $934 million across 42 deals, a 4x jump from $244 million across 25 deals in FY2021.

Gaming platform MPL has banned over a million user accounts in order to provide a secure and fair gaming experience to users. "The step has been taken by the company to remove players who did not comply with the rules and resorted to unfair means to manipulate gameplay results in their favour,” the company added.

Some of the key reasons that led to the user accounts getting blocked include using multiple accounts by the same user to access the platform, uploading fake or doctored KYC documents, using any unauthorised payment means like stolen cards and cheating during the gameplay by using any hacks or collusion techniques, according to MPL.

Early-Stage VC Fund Arkam Ventures appointed Vishnuhari Pareek as the head of finance for the company. According to the firm, Pareek will guide startup journeys up close and build a portfolio of winning ideas for Middle India and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

"As we look to double down on our mission to empower opportunities and innovation for Middle India, his experience with helping build early-stage startups ground-up makes him a valuable asset for our portfolio teams and our investors," Rahul Chandra, managing director of Arkam Ventures, said.

Prior to his current appointment, Pareek was leading finance for the used car business at CarDekho. Additionally, he has held key finance positions at ITC and KPMG which Arkam claims is favourable as it looks to expand its early-stage portfolio across fintech, Agri, skilling, SaaS, healthcare and logistics.

Food delivery service DoorDash said it is cutting about 1,250 jobs in a bid to reduce costs in the face of a global economic slowdown. The company joins a list of multinational American firms that have laid off employees in recent weeks due to rising operating costs amid decades-high inflation.

"We were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth... That's on me. As a result, operating expenses grew quickly," said chief executive officer Tony Xu in a message to employees posted on the company's website.

Twitter’s Blue verified service is scheduled to roll out on Friday, but only on Apple's iOS mobile software, the Information reported. As Twitter plans to launch the subscription offering via an update to Twitter's iOS app, it needs Apple's approval as part of the standard app review process, the report said, adding that the company would update its Android app later.

This comes a day after new owner Elon Musk accused Apple of threatening to block Twitter from its app store without saying why in a series of tweets that also said the iPhone maker had stopped advertising on the social media platform.

The world's largest cryptocurrency platform Binance on Wednesday announced its first licence in East Asia with the acquisition of Japan's officially regulated Sakura Exchange BitCoin.

The terms of Binance's 100-percent purchase of the Tokyo-based Sakura Exchange BitCoin were not disclosed in a joint statement. But Binance said it "aims to support a responsible global environment for cryptocurrencies" by offering Japanese-regulated services.

"The Japanese market will play a key role in the future of cryptocurrency adoption," Takeshi Chino, general manager of Binance Japan, said in a statement. "We will actively work with regulators to develop our combined exchange in a compliant way for local users."

Airbnb is introducing a new listing service in the United States that will help renters find an apartment where they can host part-time. The move comes at a time when people are looking to earn additional income as higher food, transportation, and housing expenses continue to squeeze household budgets, deepening the cost-of-living crisis in the country.

"As the cost of living continues to rise, renters can use the extra income earned by hosting part-time on Airbnb to contribute to their rent, save for a home, or pay for other living expenses," Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharzyck said. The short-term rental firm has partnered with more than 175 buildings in 25+ cities across the United States, the company said in a blog post.