With this Fund, UIV aims to build a portfolio of 25 startups that are focused in global SaaS and digital platforms, Unicorn India’s expertise areas. From the sector’s perspective, the Fund is also exploring investments in newer sectors such as climate tech, agritech, spacetech, and the semiconductor ecosystem.

Founded in 2016 by Bhaskar Majumdar and Anil Joshi, Unicorn India Ventures is a technology-focused early-stage venture fund specializing in investments within emerging sectors. Following the success of its inaugural fund, Unicorn India Ventures introduced Fund II, a $36.12 million fund launched in 2020, which has shown remarkable growth. Many of the companies in its portfolio secured multiple rounds of funding within the initial two years post-investment. Fund II currently manages a portfolio of 20 companies. With two funds under its management and an active portfolio comprising over 35 companies, UIV has consistently demonstrated its knack for identifying unique startups. Notably, a significant portion of the startups in their existing portfolios is either profitable or on a clear trajectory towards breaking even.

With the Fund III, Unicorn India Ventures would continue with their strategy of being the “first institutional investor”. The Fund would look at investing a first cheque of around $ 1 -2 million dollars and would then look to invest in the follow on round. As a part of their investment thesis, UIV invests only 20% of its investible corpus to create the portfolio and the rest to back the winners of the portfolio.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures said, “We continue to identify innovative business models with faster scalability. The metrics for us is a clear path to profitability for the companies. Being the first institutional investors, before doing any investment we spend considerable time with the founders to understand their vision, team’s capabilities, growth plans and leadership style. Our focus is to invest in companies that are enablers of India’s digitisation across sectors. We avoid high cash burn businesses like D2C, Consumer Internet, content businesses.”

We believe the raison-d’etre of our existence is to give cash returns to our investors and in this regard, we are clearly one of the best performing funds. We are focussed on bringing newer pools of capital to the country both for co-investments in our portfolios as well as for secondary divestments. Over the years, we have built strong relationships with international funds and family offices that don’t have a physical presence in India but are keenly looking at the India growth story, he adds.  

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says, “We have always believed in the Bharat story as much as the India story. While we have invested in startups from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore but over 60% of our portfolio is built from startups coming from emerging regional hubs like Kochi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad amongst others. Unicorn is perhaps the only fund which has worked tirelessly with state govt in Kerala, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh to roll out startup policy with an aim to find high potential startups from tier 2 and 3 cities. Our key differentiator is that we are present across India and believe that India’s startup landscape has changed immensely over the past couple of years. With this third fund, our commitment to nurture Indian startups will be unwavering and we will keep scouting for highly innovative companies whose disruptive solutions can address real life problems of users by leveraging technology.”

Unicorn India Ventures has also announced senior hiring for Fund III.

The fast-growing team is joined by Bikram Mahajan as a Partner. Bikram will play a key role in the next phase of the Fund’s growth, with a primary emphasis on portfolio management and nurturing the growth of investee companies. Bikram comes with 20 years of experience in private equity and investment banking with the last decade in fund management. He is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta. Discussing his new responsibilities, Bikram Mahajan, Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “Leveraging my track record and experience, I aim to contribute my knowledge, network and expertise to help the fund scale its business.”

Kamlesh Ahuja joins as VP (Fund Operations) responsible for all compliance and back-office administration for all the Funds. He has  15 years’ experience in fund operations with large cross sector funds as well as with trustees.

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The research report also suggests that for agritech players to build and scale the business model around Green Financing, they would need catalytic effort, collaborations and partnerships. Additionally, most farmers, especially small-holder farmers, would need financial incentives to shift from existing practices to adopting new technologies for smart irrigation, soil and water conservation, building water ponds, sowing drought-tolerant seeds, and using integrated pest/nutrient management techniques. 

Commenting on the report, Hemendra Mathur, Venture Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund, and Co-founder, ThinkAg said, “It’s very timely to see an upswing in climate-solving innovations developed by young entrepreneurs for climate risk mitigation, adaptation and resilience. Climate-linked financing and insurance products need a lot of integration of technology for these models to scale. There is a need to build a strong public ecosystem and policy support for climate-solving agritech startups like the kind of interventions we see in other climate risk-related areas such as electric vehicles, mobility and pollution-tech.”

The report further states that the combination of policy, investments, catalytic capital, blended finance and innovations has the potential to solve climate challenges facing Indian agriculture. Government, policymakers, industry, funds, investors and startups have to work together to build long-term and ever-lasting solutions to make Indian agriculture climate resilient and sustainable.

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La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a leading pension fund in Canada, today announced an initial investment of $20 million in the Fundamentum Partnership, a VC fund promoted by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Helion founder Sanjeev Aggarwal.

With an initial corpus of $100 million extendable to $200 million, Fundamentum will invest in consumer technology businesses, particularly ventures that are solving unique Indian problems. It will lead investment rounds from $10-25 million in companies that have attained the product market fit, have an initial momentum and are looking to scale up. Fundamentum is a platform for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs and will have on board India’s leading entrepreneurs, as investors and mentors.

It will focus on investments in consumer and enterprise technology businesses across retail, logistics, travel and outsourcing. Fundamentum will combine financial and intellectual capital to scale these businesses.

The investment in Fundamentum’s first growth fund (Series B) is a new strategic investment for CDPQ, enabling it to diversify its activities in India, a priority market. In addition to the investment in Fundamentum, CDPQ will also explore direct investments in Fundamentum’s portfolio companies.

Michael Sabia, President and CEO, CDPQ, said: “The Fundamentum management team has a remarkable track record in the technology sector. By fostering long-term investments and acting as a mentor to companies, the team provides an entrepreneurial approach that is fully aligned with that of CDPQ. As India ranks as the world’s third largest technology startup hub, this new partnership will enable the selected start-ups to scale their businesses and participate in one of the fastest growing parts of the country’s economy. We view this as the beginning of a long‑term partnership leading to subsequent rounds of investment.”

CDPQ is a long-term institutional investor that manages funds primarily for public and parapublic pension and insurance plans. As at December 31, 2017, it held $238.2 billion in net assets. As one of Canada’s leading institutional fund managers, CDPQ invests globally in major financial markets, private equity, infrastructure, real estate and private debt.

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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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Gaana, a leading digital music service in India, is raising $115 million in new round of funding from Chinese internet giant Tencent, with participation from its seed investor Times Internet.

Tencent is the majority shareholder of Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest music
streaming business. It also operates Joox, a leading music streaming platform in Southeast Asia.

Gaana intends to use the capital to further invest into technology to use AI to personalize
music experiences for each consumer, to further develop its subscription product for paying
users, and to develop aligned music experiences for Gaana consumers.

Gaana claims to have crossed 60 million monthly active users in December last year.

Gaana was incubated seven years ago by Times Internet. Over the last four years, its mobile app grew 700 per cent in consumption. Eighty-eight per cent of Gaana’s monthly users come from India.

Prashan Agarwal, CEO Gaana, said: “Music streaming is the future of music consumption
globally, and in India, we’re only 10 per cent of the way towards building a business useful for 500 million Indians. Tencent will be a great partner to help us enable India to access and enjoy unlimited music at their fingertips.”

“Gaana is a leading music streaming platform in India, where millions of users stay tuned to its rich music library including its exclusive Bollywood content,” said Martin Lau, President of Tencent Holdings.

“As more affordable mobile data plans are driving smartphone penetration in India, we believe growth in the music streaming market will accelerate. By investing in and collaborating with Gaana, we look forward to bringing more innovation and better experiences to all Indian music lovers.”

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Visa, a leading payments technology company, today announced the launch of India’s first proof-of-concept (PoC) to showcase open loop contactless toll payments at National Highway Authority of India’s (NHAI) Manesar toll plaza.

Once commercialised, open loop payment systems (compatible with contactless cards issued by any bank or provisioned in enabled devices) could significantly reduce congestion and waiting times at toll plazas.

The Manesar toll plaza closed user group PoC employs a unique Offline Data Authentication method compared to the conventional method. By significantly reducing waiting times and costs, the technology helps improve the flow of traffic across the toll lanes. The technology would allow consumers to use their existing bank issued contactless cards for payments across India’s toll plazas.

NHAI operates around 400 toll plazas across India’s national highways through which more than 20,000 vehicles pass each day. With vehicles queued up for an average of five to ten minutes to complete a toll payment, congestion and waiting time at toll plazas account for a significant portion of the $21.3 bn (comprises $6.6bn in cost of delay and $14.7 bn in additional fuel spent) that India is estimated to lose each year.

Announcing the launch of the PoC, TR Ramachandran, Visa’s Group Country Manager, India & South Asia said, ”Visa payWave, our contactless payment technology allows, users to simply wave and pay using a card or devices like smartphones and is relevant for all modes of transport –- metros, buses, and the railways as our experience with Transport for London has shown.”

Indian Highways Management Company, a company specifically set up by NHAI to carry out electronic tolling, has commissioned the deployment of the Manesar PoC. A key objective of the PoC is to assess the advantage of contactless payments in increasing the number of vehicles passing through the toll plaza.

This PoC furthers the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Payment Vision 2018 of moving India to a cashless society. According to the RBI, toll collections are largely cash based, and efforts to migrate to electronic payments have been sporadic and isolated. As a result, India has a range of different toll collection systems across the country, not only causing confusion and inconvenience to commuters, but also pushing them further into cash payments.

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Picture Credit: Pixabay

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The company, the shares of which rose to a record $40.90 on Tuesday on the Nasdaq, will have a war chest of more than $500 million with the completion of its latest round of fundraising, allowing it to take on the likes of Booking.com and newer domestic player Paytm among others, reports Economic Times.

“The fundamental belief was to bolster our arsenal, and to have the war chest available,” said Deep Kalra, chief executive of India’s largest travel operator, which is raising the money as it closes an equity financing round for a 9 per cent stake. “The use of the funds, or proceeds, will largely be inorganic.”

Kalra did not specify exactly how much the Gurgaon­headquartered company plans to set aside for potential acquisitions, but it’s expected to have over $500 million on its books after the latest funding round.

Expected to close on May 5, this will see the company raise $165 million from its existing backers, MIH Internet SEA Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of multinational internet and media group Naspers Ltd, and Chinese travel operator Ctrip.com International. Both investors will maintain their current shareholding, which stands at about 11 per cent for Ctrip and 43 per cent for MIH Internet.

The company will separately raise an additional $165 million through a private placement, under the terms of which it will issue about 4.5 million ordinary shares at $36 apiece.

Morgan Stanley India is acting as sole placement agent for the transaction, it said, without disclosing the identity of the investors. MIH Internet SEA had made a pro rata cash infusion of $82.8 million in MakeMyTrip in February, bringing the total cash and cash equivalents and term deposits of the company to an estimated $236.6 million as down 4.9 per cent, on the Nasdaq on Wednesday morning local time for a market capitalisation of $3.49 billion.

On the prowl

“We want to have a good enough kitty that allows us the flexibility to look at inorganic opportunities,” Kalra said. “We’re still in a scenario, where we are investing in the hotel’s space. Like I have said before, it’s not going to flip overnight, and we have to make sure that we have the fire power to do what it takes, to not only maintain leadership but grow it.”

Kalra engineered the largest M&A deal in the Indian internet space last year by merging his company with closest rival Ibibo Group. MakeMyTrip’s revenue from its hotels and standalone basis, contributing almost 67 per cent to overall revenue for the three months period.

The company is believed to be in talks with a number of ventures for potential investments and outright acquisitions. Last week, The Times of India reported that the Nasdaq­listed company was in talks to invest in smaller rival, online budget hotel operator FabHotels. This interest comes as MakeMyTrip has realised that building a good supply of hotels rooms is important for the business.

“In India, the challenge is not in terms of discovery of hotels, but the quality. That is why the hotels business can be built the way overseas players have built it,” said an investor briefed on the matter.

Global players check in

This comes as global travel operators such as Expedia and Priceline Group­backed Booking.com have set up shop in the country and are rapidly expanding their bouquet of services across the country. Apart from global players, local operators such as Oyo Rooms and Treebo Hotels have established a strong presence in the budget hotels space.

Newer entrants, such as Alibaba Group­backed Paytm have allocated a significant amount of cash to grow its travel business. In March, media reports stated that One97 Communications, which operates Paytm, had earmarked.`300 crore to ramp up its travel marketplace, while also expanding its team to more than 250 over the next twoquarters. “This (market) won’t become a bed of roses overnight,” Kalra said. “There will always be players, Indian or international, throwing their hat in, and hoping to get a piece of this very lucrative pie.”

After the merger with Ibibo Group, MakeMyTrip has also outlined aggressive plans to establish its dominance in the budget hotel segment. The online travel market is expected to grow from $11 billion in FY16 to $18.9 billion by FY20, according to an October 2015 Goldman Sachs report.

In the space, hotel bookings earn 15­20 per cent commission while air travel gets 6 per cent, making hotels a much more profitable proposition. In the last two years, action has shifted to this market.

In an earlier conversation, MakeMyTrip India chief executive Rajesh Magow had said that the company was forecasting up to 75 per cent of its overall top line to come from the hotels and packages segment over the next three to four years.

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International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, has invested US$2 million in Singapore-based VC firm SeedPlus to support early-stage technology entrepreneurship in Asia.

The investment falls under the IFC Startup Catalyst programme (ISC), which supports entrepreneurs and early-stage companies through investments in various seed-stage structures.

IFC’s investment will help SeedPlus to support up to 20 startups. The programme will also help create hundreds of jobs and through its acceleration cycles, help support local entrepreneurship.

SeedPlus was launched by leading VC firm Jungle Ventures, in partnership with SGInnovate, Accel Partners (India) and Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates, etc. Supported by Google and PwC Singapore, SeedPlus is focused on investing in and helping build Asia’s most disruptive startups across SaaS, mobile, financial technology, Artificial Intelligence and cyber security and other emerging technology areas. Its injects up to US$1 million in each startup.

“The SeedPlus investment aligns with IFC’s Venture Capital group’s strategy to invest in innovative technology companies across emerging markets. Today, there are several fast-evolving, transformative technologies disrupting key industry sectors, enabling entrepreneurship and innovation to flourish in emerging markets, particularly in Southeast Asia, which we see as a growing market for us this year,” said Pravan Malhotra, IFC’s VC lead for Southeast Asia and Asia Internet investments.

“Singapore’s role as Southeast Asia’s hub for venture funding and tech talent will only continue to grow, and amid this landscape, IFC can play an increasingly vital role as a seasoned investor and advisor. The platform also aligns with IFC’s approach to build and support local, sustainable ecosystems for entrepreneurship and venture capital in emerging markets. IFC’s funding and direct investments in portfolio companies will boost seed capital availability, mobilise institutional capital and will better position companies for follow-on funding, sustainability, and job creation,” said Rana Karadsheh, IFC’s Country Manager for Singapore.

SeedPlus is focused on investing in companies that target large addressable markets in Asia and have the ability to expand on a global scale. In India, it has invested in Moglix, an Indian B2B e-commerce platform specialising in the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) industry.

Picture Credit: Pixabay

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Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) & IoT-focused early-stage venture fund pi Ventures announced the first close of their maiden fund at $13 million.

pi Ventures, a $30 million fund, is expected to make the final close within this year. Its Limited Partners (LPs) include SIDBI, India’s top lender for small businesses; prominent family offices from the US, Canada, Singapore and India; and leading entrepreneurs like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah, among others.

Co-founded by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni, pi Ventures invests in early-stage startups that focus on solving problems in healthcare, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors using AI, ML and IoT. The VC fund plans to invest in 18-20 startups from this fund over the next three to four years.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, said: “India is the dark horse in the AI race given it has lot of data, brilliant data science talent and early adoption environment due to broken processes and we are happy to play a part in helping India leapfrog with AI. We are thankful to our early backers, investors and founders who have chosen to work with us. We are very excited to play a role in building a strong AI based product ecosystem in India.”

pi Ventures has made three investments so far in the healthcare and energy-efficiency space, namely SigTuple, Zenatix and ten3T.

SigTuple is in the medical diagnostic space and is creating a deep learning-driven, cloud-based solution for detection of abnormalities and trends in medical data, for blood diagnosis.

Zenatix is a data-driven energy efficiency company that uses advanced machine learning based models and delivers 10-30% energy efficiency to large commercial consumers of electricity along with predictive insights to prevent downtown.

ten3T is in continuous monitoring of medical data like ECG in real time through its own smart patches to enable mobile ICU for smaller hospitals.

The VC firm was started in mid2016 by Singhal and Umakant Soni, both come with rich experience in setting up, building and scaling companies. Manish was co-founder & CEO at LetsVenture and a prominent angel investor. He has rich product experience having worked with Sling Media, Ittiam Systems, and Motorola.

Soni was Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder of one of the first AI BOT company out of India, called Vimagino

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Mobile balance management services startup True Balance has closed a INR 100 crore (US$15M) funding round that has been led by SoftBank Ventures Korea, a venture capital arm of the SoftBank Group, and IMM Investment Corp.

The Series B round also saw participation from a clutch of leading South Korean investors, including, Mega Investment, Korea Development Bank and Capston Partners, and comes about 11 months after the Gurgaon based company raised an undisclosed sum in equity financing in a round that was also led by SoftBank Ventures Korea.

While the exact financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, it is believed that the investors now hold about 10%-15% stake in the two year-old company. The latest investment round has been made in to South Korea-based parent company Balance Hero, which owns and operates its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary, Balance Hero India.

This, however, is not an investment from SoftBank’s new $100 billion, technology-focused Vision Fund, the largest pool of private capital assembled, and which will now be the primary investment vehicle for the Tokyo-headquartered Japanese telecom, technology and internet giant’s bets in India going forward.

Also Read: Subscription-only business news portal The Ken raises $400,000 funding

SoftBank Ventures Korea is a venture capital fund founded in 2000 as an affiliate of SoftBank Korea, a holding company of SoftBank Group.

Founded by Cheol-won (Charlie) Lee, True Balance is an Android app that allows users to check their mobile call and data balances, without the need for internet connectivity. It provides consumers with real time information on the best plans and offers from telecom operators, and helps them earn and recharge their prepaid mobile accounts.

“India is the second biggest market for smartphone users, and with 220 million users it has even surpassed the US market in terms of active unique smartphone users. This data speaks volumes for the scale of the Indian market, and the opportunities it provides for any player in the mobile-connected ecosystem,” Lee chief executive, True Balance, said.

True Balance stands apart from the likes of Paytm and Freecharge, as it focuses primarily on mobile balance management, compared to its larger peers, which have turned their focus more towards, payments and mobile wallet transactions.

“We have introduced an important feature- One-Click recharge, and we want to be the one-stop destination for Indian mobile users for their balance management,” Lee said.

According to the CEO, the mobile app sees about 2 million daily active users, and the company is now exploring options to expand its operations to South and South-East Asia. True Balance, which has clocked about 30 million downloads, plans to set up shop in Indonesia by the end of the year, followed by China and South America, according to Lee.

“The most impressive investment of the previous year was Balance hero…Within the first year of investment, there was 3000% growth in app downloads, and this denotes the company’s growth. Due to rapid expansion of Indian market, the company’s estimated potential seems to be even greater,” said Gyu Hak Moon, president and chief executive of SoftBank Ventures Korea.

Also Read,

Paytm raising US$200-250M from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba

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