IDG Ventures, a leading VC firm in India known for its investment in companies like Myntra and Yatra, today announced that Cisco Investments has invested in its third and most recent fund.

Last year, IDG closed its third fund at $208 million.

The VC firm will continue to invest in deep tech startups in the software/SaaS space apart from consumer, fintech and health-tech.

IDG Ventures India’s third fund was targeting to raise US$200 million and completed a final close sometime last year with over US$$208 million in commitments. The fund has already invested in over 26 companies across various sectors of focus – fintech, consumer, software and health-tech. The fund is an early investor in some of the leading startups like Myntra, Lenskart, FirstCry, Manthan, NestAway, Policybazar, Rentomojo, Unbxd and Uniphore.

IDG Ventures India has had a slew of exits in the recent past, the most recent being Newgen Software which was taken public on NSE/BSE in India in January 2018. Another portfolio company Yatra, is listed on NASDAQ.

Launched in 2006, IDG Ventures India is a leading technology VC fund. The fund has approximately $470 million under management and 70-plus investee companies across consumer media & tech, cloud/software, health-tech and fintech.

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Bangalore-headquartered online home rental startup NestAway Technologies has raised $51 million (INR 332.5 crore) in Series D financing roundled by Goldman Sachs and UC-RNT Fund, a fund jointly managed by Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates, University of California and Swiss investment firm Schroder Adveq.

Existing investors IDG Ventures and Tiger Global also returned to contribute in this round.

The startup will use the funds for expansion in existing markets, and scale operations of its newly-launched NRIs (non-resident Indians) category.

The startup has previously raised US$30 million led by Tiger Global, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and IDG Ventures India, in April 2016.

Established in January 2015 by Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Parida, Deepak Dhar, and Jitendra Jagadev, NestAway enables users in the discovery of homes as well as the fulfilment (closing the rental transaction) and post rental services (rent collection, home repair services, etc).

At the same time, for owners who have no time or expertise to generate yield from their home, NestAway enables them to lease their homes with almost no hassle.

NestAway essentially turns unfurnished houses into fully-furnished and managed apartments and provides them at affordable prices to pre-verified tenants.

The company caters to over 35,000 tenants and 16,000 owners, including over 7,000 family owners in Bengaluru, Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Noida, Mumbai and Pune.

Last year, NestAway acquired rival Zenify.in.

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Chennai-based fintech startup CreditMantri, which enables you access credit scores, has raised $7.6 million in Series B funding, led by US-based US-based Quona Capital, with participation from IDG Ventures, Newid Capital, and Elevar Equity.

The funds will go into growing its user base, strengthening the product proposition, and scaling the team.

“The funds raised will help us deliver a complete suite of products and services to give the Indian consumer better choice and make credit truly possible,” said Co-founder and CEO Ranjit Punja.

The company was established by Punja, R Sudarshan and Gowri Mukherjee (all former Citibank executives). CreditMantri aims empower consumers to know their credit potential and benefit from this knowledge. Customers can access their credit scores, learn how to improve their credit health, resolve past issues, and reduce current borrowing costs. In this process, they can discover products best matched to their credit profile.

The platform uses a combination of traditional data (credit reports) and alternative data (social media data from mobile phones).

CreditMantri claims it has served over 1.4 million users so far, with over 60 per cent of users providing access to over 2,000-plus credit relevant data points. All data is captured or shared only after obtaining explicit consumer consent.

On the supply side, CreditMantri provides financial institutions access to better quality consumer risk profiles besides helping these institutions cut down on expensive credit operations processes and disburse loans faster. Consumer demand data on the platform is used to create custom credit products to address unmet credit needs, for instance, providing unsecured personal credit lines for new to credit consumers or debt consolidation loans for credit challenged consumers.

This way, lenders don’t have to waste resources on applications that do not meet their credit criteria. As per a statement, over 40 lenders already use its site to source consumers, resolve past loan issues and expand into new customer segments.

“The richness in the quality of our credit profiles is validated by the uptake and portfolio performance of the tailor-made loan products launched in partnership with financial institutions. The response from consumers and lenders has far exceeded our expectations and validates that we are solving a real market need,” Punja added.

“Lending in India, and doing so responsibly, is a huge opportunity, and alternative data is the key to unlocking this potential. The digitization of Indian consumers’ financial data is the catalyst that will help build a truly financially inclusive India,” said Ganesh Rengaswamy, Founding Partner at Quona Capital.

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