The Venture Intelligence Blog

RVCF has invested for significant minority stake from SME Tech Fund in Pune based SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd., which is India’s leading Civil, Construction and Infrastructure ERP Software Product Company. SoftTech Engineers has array software products under the names of AutoDCR, Opticon, PWIMS. Various leading Municipal Corporation, Government Departments of Various States, Architects and Builders are using the products developed by the company in India and Gulf countries.  Commenting on the transaction Mr. Vijay Gupta, CEO, SoftTech Engineers said that “The Company has been witnessing growth from both its institutional clients including the Municipal Corporations in various States, Government Departments, etc and private markets wherein Builders and Architects and construction companies have shown demand for such software products developed by SoftTech Engineers . The capital infusement from RVCF II will help the company increase sales and marketing -specially oversea...

Online vendor for fresh fruits and vegetables Greencart has secured US $1.5 million in its first round of funding from Techno Group. The funds will be used in expanding operations and distribution channels besides to augment the sourcing network. The Mumbai-based portal, founded by Rajiv Tevtiya, Kiran Tevtiya and Devidas Mule, went live in 2013 and offers more than 1,500 products in over thirty categories. Greencart claims that its products come with an adulteration free assurance and maintain international standards of freshness and hygiene. The products are currently delivered across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai & Thane.  Source: Business Line   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter....

Angel investors Ronnie Screwvala and K Ganesh have seed funded Oximity, a global online media startup for user-generated news. Co-founded by former Wall Street banker Sanjay Goel and German IT entrepreneur Christian Hapke, Oximity connects sources of news directly to readers in over 180 languages globally. The US-based start-up rides on technology to create a large network of self-empowered news writers and readers. Started six months ago, Oximity has more than 2,500 writers generating 700 news stories daily. Its writers and readers are spread across 200 countries, while the company has existing offices or staff in Berlin (Germany), London (UK), San Francisco (USA), Ramallah (Palestine), Moscow (Russia) and Guangzhou (China). Users can write stories for themselves or on behalf of their organizations. Oximity helps in monetizing their content while charging users on a 'freemium' model — free basic services and top up charges for the rest.  Source: Times of India   ...

Indix Corporation , a SaaS + Big Data product intelligence platform company, today announced that it has closed $8.5 million of a $9 million Series A-1 round of financing,co-led by Avalon Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. This investment will allow Indix to scale its R&D and go-to-market activities.  Founded in 2010, Indix is based in Seattle with a product development and engineering team in Chennai, India. Since the launch of its platform in October 2013, the Seattle office has grown to nine employees and the company now employs a total of forty-six people in India and the United States. Indix’s product offerings include a product intelligence application for brands and retailers, and APIs for products, prices, promotions, stores and more to power business systems and consumer applications. Indix’s current customers include some of the world’s top 50 Internet brands and retailers. “Our mission at Indix is to organize, analyze, and visualize the world’s product in...

TLabs, the start-up accelerator run by Times Internet has announced its 5th batch. Here are the details of the firms in the Spring 2014 batch:  Fashupp : a social fashion platform to discover and create interactive make-ups of latest fashion trends and looks. Fashupp provides catalogue of more than 200 thousand apparels and accessories currently.  ParallelDots : a tool that allows any content archive to be presented in a story. For publishers and bloggers, it automatically creates timeline of any event using their archives.  Vidgyor : enables broadcasters and content distributors monetize live TV streams by inserting targeted mid-roll ads on any Internet-connected device.  Ghar360 : a cloud-based 3D augmented reality platform for home design that allows users to customize and visualize their home before they buy or build.  Spayee : enables institutes to set up cloud based smart digital libraries comprising of eBooks and other educational c...

Chennai-based Everest, which works under the brand QED has developed a range of tools that have been used at by over 20,000 children in 100 schools so far. About a fifth of these schools are government-run, a category that Everest hopes to focus more on by establishing science centres that will act as a node for a cluster of government schools. Everest will use the funding to set up science labs in schools across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.  Source: Economic Times   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Bangalore-based education start-up Skyfi Labs has raised funding from angel investor network Chennai Angels, as well as investment bank Spark Capital. Started in 2010 by IIT-Kanpur graduates, Skyfi provides engineering students hands-on training in courses ranging from robotics, aero-modelling and mobile app development among others. It has trained over 25,000 students from across 150 colleges. The firm will use the current round of funding to expand to 1,000 new colleges, and to strengthen its back-end technology.  Source: Nextbigwhat.com   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Mumbai-based Bookstreet, a start-up that provides solutions for past exam papers called ‘Smart Solutions’, written by university professors, has been selected to participate in the BSE-Ryerson Incubation Center’s first incubation programme. Bookstreet is co-founded by Sandeep, an IIT Delhi alumnus and Archana, a Chartered Accountant. A marketplace for solutions to past exam papers for undergraduates, it offers a platform to authors to solve question papers for various subjects and sell them directly to students. Source: StartupCentral.in Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Bangalore based Sports365, the e-commerce company backed by Tennis player Mahesh Bhupathi that retails sports and fitness products, has raised funding from Powerhouse Ventures. The transaction was advised by Delhi-based law firm Gnarus Partners .  Sports365 was launched in 2012 and offers products across categories such as racket sports, fitness, shoes, leisure, apparel and fan goods. Brands available on the site include Yonex, Quechua, Reebok, Puma and Wildcraft. Powerhouse Ventures, which invests primarily in mobile-Internet innovations, is part of the network of angels that invests with accelerator GSF. Some of the companies that it has invested in with GSF include Airstream, Browntape, Timesaverz and Triptern.  Source: Startupcentral.in   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our pro...

TeaBox, a Siliguri-based e-commerce company which sells different types of tea, has raised $1 million from Accel Partners. TeaBox, founded by former KPMG consultant Kaushal Dugar in 2011, has shipped around 10,000 kilo-grams of tea across 65 countries. His family has been in the tea industry since 1940s. The company is looking to use the funds to triple its sales in the international markets.  Source: Nextbigwhat.com   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

YourNest Angel Fund, Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Ray Stata have invested in Uniphore Software Systems , a Chennai-based player in Indian language speech recognition solutions. This round of investment was led by IAN members Nagaraja Prakasam and M V Subramanian. IAN member Prakasam will join the board of the company. The funding will be primarily used to expand Uniphore's global presence, by foraying into other non-English speaking regions such as southeast Asia and the Middle East. Uniphore will also look to strengthen its speech-based products, creating more context-aware, personalised applications. Source: Times of India   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Pangea3 founder Sanjay Kamlani and Deepak Shahdadpuri, founder of DSG Consumer Partners, have joined Neville Taraporewalla, Jaspreet Bindra, Umeed Kothavala and Nirav Mehta as investors in Mumbai startup Digital E-Life that runs intimate lifestyle products e-store Thatspersonal. The angel consortium’s combined investment in the venture is around Rs 3 crore ($489,883) and has been made over multiple rounds in the past 12-18 months.  The company, founded in 2012, is currently in the market to raise its first institutional round. Since going live last January, the company claims to have signed on 11,400 registered users on its platform and claims user a traffic conversion rate of 1-2%. It offers consumers discreet packaging and self-pick up options. The company currently employs 18 people.  Source: Startupcentral.in   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital...

Online retailer of educational services and learning products, Bookadda, has acquired KoolSkool in a cash and stock deal. KoolSkool sells an eclectic range of products ranging from books to toys, learning aids, school supplies, hobby products as well as sports gear and apparel, for all ages. Co-founded by entrepreneur Hemant Kohli and Arjun Mendu Kumar, Bookadda sells school, college and professional educational products and services.  From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: Bookadda had raised angel investment from K.Ganesh in Jan-12.  Source: Nextbigwhat.com   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Delhi-based Oravel Stays, which runs short-stay accommodation portal Oravel.com, has received funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Oravel had raised seed funding from angel investors like Fame Cinemas founder Shravan Shroff, former Starcom MediaVest Group South East & South Asia CEO Ravi Kiran, Everest Flavours managing director Anand Ladsariya, Nirvana Venture Advisors co-founder and chairman Amit Patni and Aditya Birla Private Equity CEO Bharat Banka.  The company, founded in 2012, was also part of the first batch of VentureNursery’s accelerator program and Oravel CEO Ritesh Agarwal had received a $100,000 grant as part of 2013 Thiel Fellowship program in October 2013, which he has invested in the venture.  Source: MediaNama    Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our pr...

ChrysCapital, SAIF Partners, Seedfund and Kotak Realty Funds were adjudged the leading investors in the Private Equity, Growth Capital, Venture Capital and Private Equity in Real Estate segments respectively during 2013. The awards were given away as part of the Venture Intelligence “Awards for Private Equity Excellence” (APEX) at APEX’14, the annual conclave of the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital industry, by Mr.Sanjeev Aga, Former CEO of Idea Cellular . Accepting the “Best Private Equity Investor-2013” Award, Ashley Menezes, Managing Director, ChrysCapital said, "ChrysCapital’s conviction on the Indian IT outsourcing sector during the period of slowdown following the global financial crisis paid off and ChrysCapital has been able to realize these investments with attractive returns.” During 2013, ChrysCapital had sold its stake in publicly listed large cap IT Services company HCL Technologies (in one of the largest PE exits in this sector) as well as from mid...

Omidyar Network and existing investor Michael and Susan Dell Foundation have invested INR 28 crores in Mumbai-based NBFC company IntelleGrow. The funding will be used by the company to increase its loan book to INR 500 crore,up from its current INR 50 crore book size. This is the second round of institutional funding for the company which had raised.10 crore from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation in February last year.  Source: Times of India    Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Social venture firm Aavishkaar Venture Management has invested Rs. 18.6 crore in luxury lifestyle brand Mela Artisans, a company founded in 2010 by Navoze Mehta and Sonali Mehta-Rao. Mela is headquartered in the US but sources products from artisan clusters in states like UP and Rajasthan. Mela has launched its collections with a number of high-end retail boutiques and chains, including, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdales, across the US, Europe and Latin America. It also retails through its website. The latest investment will be used to expand its collections, grow its distribution channels domestically and internationally, and reach out to a wider range of artisan societies across India.  Source: Economic Times Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal...