Image by Anand Kumar from Pixabay
The Tech Panda takes a look at recent funding events in the ecosystem, seeking to know where the cash is flowing.
nCORE Games announced a Series A funding round of US$10 million to expand their gaming properties into the Metaverse and NFT space. Global leaders in interactive media and blockchain, Galaxy Interactive and Animoca Brands, co-led the round, with Polygon and HyperEdge also participating.
Other prominent angels in the round included Amitabh Singhal (ex-Google), Sandeep Nailwal (Co-Founder of Polygon), Kanwaljit Bombra, Sohil Chand, Ashish Chand, Ram Madhvani, Rakesh Kaul, Mannan Adenwala, Sanjay Narang, Taj Haslani, Kristian Segerstrale (Game Industry veteran), Sanjay Gondal, Vedant Baali, Kartik Prabhakara, Peter Leung, Yashraj Akashi and Akshay Chaturvedi.
This additional investment will be used to provide the studios additional financial support to create a metaverse that will run across titles. Gamers stand to benefit from interoperability and true ownership of in-game customization assets.
Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, said, “This is one of our most promising investments in India, which has a large gaming market with a massive growth potential. nCORE Games has the right team to leverage blockchain and NFTs in games to deliver digital property rights to players, and we look forward to many successful products as we move toward a global open metaverse.”
Sam Englebardt, General Partner at Galaxy Interactive said, “We’re thrilled to partner with Vishal, Dayanidi and the entire nCORE team at this thrilling moment in the expansion of India’s gaming ecosystem.”
Kanwaljit Bombra, CEO/President of nCORE Global said, “With the establishment of this partnership, we are looking forward to seeing the brightest talent in India collaborate with the stalwarts of the global gaming ecosystem to take nCore to unprecedented levels of success within the Indian gaming industry and beyond.”
threedots, the fast-growing next-gen community investing platform raised US$4 million in seed round of funding led by Kalaari Capital.Other investors include Better Capital, iSeed, Cloud capital, Kunal Shah (Cred), Lalit Keshre (Groww), Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter), Amrish and Sweta Rau (Pine labs), Ramakant Sharma (Livspace), Rohit MA (cloud9), Giri Malpani (Malpani Family), Mohit Daga and others. The funds will be used for strengthening the product and expanding the team.
Kiran Vasireddy, Partner at Kalaari Capital, Ex-COO Paytm, commented, “We are excited to partner with Rishu, Prakhar, and Akul as they are building a social investing platform for the new generation of investors in India. Equity investments in India are expected to witness strong growth backed by the increased information access brought by platforms going digital.
“With current penetration only at 5%, there is a huge opportunity for a platform to help millennials come and learn from financial influencers the art of investing. We are impressed with Rishu and the team’s strong experience in building consumer internet products and excited to partner with them in their journey as they build threedots for the world.”
Insurance focused FinTech platform Finsall has raised INR12 crore in a Pre Series A round from its existing investors, Unicorn India Ventures and SEA Fund – along with a clutch of other investors. This is the second round of investment by UIV, which is widely known for discovering high potential fintech companies like Open Bank and SmartCoin.
Finsall plans to use the fresh funds raised for scaling its technology platform, signing new insurance partners with an aim to increase its market share in the Indian insurance premium financing market. The Company will also be looking to enter lending partnerships with top banks and NBFCs.
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “Since our first investment in the company, it has grown 70% m-o-m and added capabilities in its platform. We are seeing strong business traction and pipeline of customers, which is why we have decided to invest in them further.”
Manoj Kumar Agarwal, Managing Partner, SEAFUND, says, “We invested in Finsall when it was in the early stages of development of its technology platform and the team was developing a product market fit. The founding team had a great mix of young and experienced founders and was working on an unique strategy to address a perennial problem in Insurance in India. As a fund, we track and back Insurtech and we believe that Premium Financing is an enabler for higher insurance sales and Finsall is able to cater specifically to the problems faced by this customer segment.”
Rocketlane, a purpose-built customer onboarding platform that helps businesses accelerate their time-to-value, boost customer satisfaction, and reduce churn, closed a US$18 million Series A funding round. The Series A is being led by previous Asana investor, 8VC, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, Matrix Partners India, and prominent angel investor, Gokul Rajaram.
The announcement comes just seven months after Rocketlane announced its seed funding round, bringing the total capital invested to US$21 million. The funding will be used to expand product offerings, accelerate marketing, and grow the Rocketlane team.
Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO & Co-founder, Rocketlane, said, “This funding round follows on the back of very strong early customer growth, and validates the market pull in the category as well as the clear product leadership position we’ve established. We were also just named a leader by G2 in the client onboarding category.”
“The Rocketlane team is off to a fast start towards establishing category leadership in the customer onboarding domain and has grown at a rapid clip in the last 6 months. We’re excited to double down on our investment here and welcome 8VC to the partnership,” said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix India.
“Nexus is thrilled to support the Rocketlane team on their journey to becoming a global category leader in the customer onboarding and services automation space,” said Sameer Brij Verma, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners.
Real estate digital amenities provider Reloy has raised INR 5 crore in a strategic pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures, Fawkes Fund, family office of Greenpanel & Greenlam, and 50+ prominent angels. The funds raised will be used for expanding operations and fine tuning the product for a commercial launch.
Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures says, “Residential housing sales is going through a huge growth cycle and Reloy through its partnership with the leading real estate developers is uniquely placed to benefit from this cycle. On one hand it can help builders generate relatively cheaper referral sales (vs real estate agent sales) and on the other it can improve Buyers’ overall experience with the brand and further fuel referral sales creating a positive network effect.
“At scale, Reloy will also be building a strong downstream demand aggregation model (for consumer goods, interior services, lifestyle businesses etc) that has the potential to become the largest business model of its kind in the country.”
Akhil Saraf, Founder & CEO, Reloy says, “We are excited to have IPV as our first institutional investor because we seek not just capital but mentorship, guidance, network and revenue opportunities that IPV is known for.
StockGro, India’s largest social investment platform, concluded a US$32 million Series A round. The round was led by marquee global investors including BITKRAFT Ventures, General Catalyst, and Itai Tsiddon (Co-founder of Lightricks – Unicorn in Israel), with participation from existing backers such as Roots Ventures, Creed Capital Asia. The above also included commitment for secondary financing for its early backers which would lead to multi-fold returns on their previous investments.
A syndicate of prominent angel investors which includes Base10 Capital Founders, Junglee Games founder Ankush Gera, Nazara Technologies founder Nitish Mittersain and Founding member of Robinhood also participated in this round. StockGro plans to use the funding to tap into more markets, introduce new product offerings and aggressively ramp up its hiring across all functions.
This is among the largest Series A rounds raised by fintech startups in India, raising the total funding commitments for the Bengaluru-based company to about US$ 40 million.
“Having set up a solid foundation, our aim is to build a disciplined culture of trading in India and help the digital generation of today to invest in an informed and learned manner. The funding further reinforces the faith of our investors in our vision of bringing this transformation,” said Ajay Lakhotia, Founder & CEO, StockGro.
Commenting on the fundraise, BITKRAFT Ventures said, StockGro has a unique opportunity to facilitate the transition of wealth into new asset classes, not just with stocks but also with its expansion into crypto and other assets, and we are proud to be working with Ajay on the front lines of this transformation.”
General Catalyst added, “We are very excited to be investing in StockGro and to partner with Ajay and his ambitious team. We were captivated by their vision to help educate Indian consumers on how to become better investors. StockGro empowers them to do so via engaging with a fun and interactive product. We are looking forward to seeing team StockGro scale their user base with the funds from this round in order to achieve their compelling vision.”
FeetWings Pvt. Ltd., has secured INR 1.1 Crore as Seed Fund, from a round led by SucSEED Indovation Fund and supported by Friends of PadUp and Elina Capital.
Dr. Siddhant Bhargava, the co-founder of Feetwings said “This seed fund shall help us in product development and refining our algorithms bringing us closer to achieving this goal.”
Speaking on why they have invested, Vikrant Varshney, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of SucSEED Indovation Fund said, “There is a huge TAM, SAM, SOM in this space and we wanted to support FeetWings, in their formative years; as they develop an affordable wearable technology towards early detection & prevention of diabetic complications, with the help of remote & continuous monitoring. They have a great team with motivated founders and amazing mentors to progress towards their goal of making diabetic monitoring affordable in Bharat.”
FeetWings is a PadUp Ventures mentee startup. Pankaj Thakar, Founder & Chief Mentor of PadUp Ventures said, “It is really great to see such young founders trying to solve such a burning problem. Padup programs have always identified and nurtured such unique ideas that solve real life problems. This investment not only helps Feetwings to pursue their cause but also encourages us as a mentoring platform to continue nurturing and encouraging such entrepreneurs through our programs.”
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