The Data Driver

OneAssist Consumer Solutions announced it has closed an $18 million Series C funding. The investment round was led by existing investor Sequoia Capital with participation from its other existing  investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Assurant Inc. along with a new investor Moonstone Investments. The investment positions OneAssist to grow the significant market opportunities in the categories it operates in as well as develop new product segments.
With increasing penetration of Smartphones, payment cards and payment mechanisms as well as new opportunities covering home appliances and gadgets, the company aims to create and strategically build on the assistance and protection category in India.
With the #DigitalIndia revolution driving India, OneAssist plans to invest it’s capital in technology, service and innovative products while being focused at enhancing Customer Experience. The company aspires to expand its reach through key partnerships, improving distribution and by increas…

Goodera, a global CSR & Sustainability Management technology platform, co-­‐headquartered in Bangalore and Menlo Park, today announced its Series A round  of  funding  of $5.5mn from Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network. Varsha Rao, previously Head of Global Operations at Airbnb also participated in this round along with other prominent angels.
Goodera is a CSR Lifecycle Management platform embedded with strong domain expertise, providing corporates automation and intelligence across monitoring and evaluation, impact measurement, grant making, reporting and employee volunteering. Goodera helps solve the critical need for corporates and non-­‐profits to have last mile visibility of progress and impact measurement of their CSR projects. It enables effective governance in deciding and managing CSR projects, provide insights through dashboards for different stakeholders and data driven stories of change for powerful communication. Additionally, Goodera enables companies to invo…

Leading tech-focused venture capital firm IDG Ventures India (IDGVI) has launched the 2017 Innovation Program (#IDGIP2017) to reach out to emerging disruptive startups across its core sectors of consumer tech, software, health-tech and fintech products space. This program shall be applicable to startups looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds between $0.5M to $5.0M.
For the program, IDGVI will be collaborating with Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL), the Indian affiliate of Seattle-headquartered Amazon Web Services, Inc. Unilever Ventures (UV) is the Venture Capital and Private Equity Arm of Unilever, which offers start-ups and later-stage companies the opportunity to receive equity investment and operational support from Unilever. UV has a strategic relationship with IDGVI as an investor and will evaluate companies as part of this program for potential co-investments. Also, the shortlisted companies will receive technology mentorship from the AIS…

Microsoft Accelerator’s tenth cohort, comprising 14 startups, graduated at the Summer 2017 edition of Think Next, in Bengaluru. Think Next is Microsoft Accelerator’s flagship forum, which brings together thought leaders in technology, who are driving transformation via innovation. The graduating cohort was presented to an audience of over 400 representatives from leading corporates, investors, industry thought leaders and Microsoft leadership.
The cohort underwent an intensive 14-week program at the Microsoft Accelerator in Bengaluru to increase their Enterprise Readiness Quotient.  The 14 startups are Acebot, Active.ai, FirstHive, Heckyl, Karomi, Lavelle Networks, LetsTransport, QuestionPro, Sigtuple, Syscloud, Tricog, vPhrase, WittyParrot and Zenatix.
Event Highlights Think Next Summer 2017 saw keynotes by Team Indus on ‘Mission to Moon‘, and Everwell on ’Scaling to the next Billion’. One of the highlights of the day was a session where Microsoft presented a well curated set of sta…

foodpanda shared that Naspers, a global internet and entertainment group and one of the world’s largest technology investors, is investing EUR 387 million ($431.45 million USD) into parent company Delivery Hero, primarily into newly issued shares and at a valuation in line with Delivery Hero’s previous valuation.This investment will help fuel foodpanda fuel growth plans and strengthen India position.
On the announcement, Saurabh Kochhar, CEO, foodpanda India, said, “We are constantly looking to strengthen and enhance our food ordering and delivery experience. We recently launched the India app and have made significant investments in technology and delivery ecosystem. This funding will help further our goals in making the foodpanda experience impeccable, for each of our customer. ”
With this development, Naspers will also be represented with one member on Delivery Hero‘s Supervisory Board. Niklas Östberg, CEO of Delivery Hero, said: “We are delighted to welcome such a renowned and st…

Paytm announced an investment of $1.4 billion by the SoftBank Group, the Japanese Internet and telecom major, in One97 Communications Limited, the entity that operates India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform under the Paytm brand. This investment will help Paytm grow its leadership in the country’s payment ecosystem, expand its user base and build a suite of financial services products for its users.
Paytm plans to invest Rs 10,000 crore (approximately $1.6bn) over the next three to five years towards its commitment to enabling half a billion Indians to join the mainstream economy. As a part of this vision, the company will soon launch the Paytm Payments Bank, a mobile-first product that will reach every corner of the nation, and focus on the millions of unserved and under-served Indians.
Speaking on the occasion, Paytm Founder & CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “We are at an inflection point in our journey with Paytm. This investment by Softbank and support of the in…

Lucideus, an IT risk assessments and cyber security platforms provider, today announced they have closed an angel funding round of undisclosed amount.
The list of angel investors include:
Amit Ranjan - Chief Architect @ Digilocker Anurag Goel - CEO @ Cactus Communication                 Govind Rajan - ex CEO @ Freecharge       Jonathan Boutelle - ex Director of Technology @ LinkedIn/SlideShare Kulmeet Bawa - Managing Director @ Adobe Rajan Anandan - Managing Director @ Google Rahul Chawla - Managing Director, Head of Global Markets @ Deutsche Bank Salil Donde - ex EVP @ NASDAQ Sunil Kalra - Angel Investor Vellayan Subbiah - Managing Director @ Cholamandalam Finance Victor J Menezes - Angel Investor
The three investors who had invested in our last angel investment round (last year) include:
Anand Chandrasekaran - Director, Messenger @ Facebook Amit Chowdhary - Director @ Motilal Oswal PE Sanjay Baweja - CFO @ Suzlon Energy
Saket Modi, CEO & Co-founder, Lucideus said, “As a company…

foodpanda announced the launched of the new and refurbished India version of their mobile application to mark their 5th anniversary celebrations. The latest version, v 1.0.x, comes packed with a number of improvements and customizations for users in India.
With the new app, the users can now view multiple banners for filters, restaurants and live discounts & deals right on the home screen. While the filter banner will help the users segregate their food preferences, the restaurant banner will take users to the partner detail page. Along with that, an information banner on top will exhibit the trending offers of the day at the nearby restaurants. Bringing the convenience of streamlining choices on the home screen, users would be able to use Image filters to choose between various deals, express delivery and people's’ choice options.
With the new edition of the app, users will now be able to key in address in four different ways - enter location manually, use GPS, saved address…

News Corp VCCEdge,  India’s leading publisher of alternative investment, deals and startup news, data and information and part of globally diversified media, education and information services group, News Corp, has today released its Startup Deal Report Q1 CY2017.
Capturing funding deal activities encompassing private equity, venture capital, angel/seed investment transactions for the seventeen quarters ending March 2017, the report also offers information on mergers and acquisitions with sector and region-wise analysis.
Highlights of Startup Deals report Startup funding sees grim times ·         Startup funding activity slowed down drastically with deal-making slipping 47.45% vis-à-vis Q1 CY2016 ·         Cumulative deal values dipped by 45.76% Q-o-Q

Consolidation soon after a record year of startup funding in the year 2015 ·         M&A deals in the startup space witnessed a 75% jump Q-o-Q ·         Acquisition of Citrus Payments Solutions ($130mn), One Mobikwik ($41mn), ZipDia…

Fostered by its successful tryst in Chandigarh and Jaipur, Jugnoo now forays into the financial and tech hub of Haryana, Gurugram, with its ‘ready to eat’ food delivery service. Owing its genesis to Jugnoo’s versatile disposition, it is an on-demand meal service that garnered immense appreciation post its initial launch in August 2016.

In a robust push towards Indian government’s ‘Startup India’ initiative, Amazon.in’s global program ‘Amazon Launchpad’ witnessed close to 250 plus applications within 3 days of its launch. The program was announced earlier this month with an aim to make it easier for Indian startups to launch, market and distribute their products to millions of Amazon customers across India and around the world through a dedicated store.

74 BC Technologies operating commercial two wheelers under the “Baxi” brand, has partnered with MobiKwik, India’s leading mobile wallet provider to offer facility of paying for trips using MobiKwik. Customers can also add cash to their MobiKwik wallet through Baxi buddies, instead of transferring from bank accounts or credit cards, thereby supporting the cashless economy vision of the government.

At the recently concluded event re: Invent, 2016, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the Service Delivery Program to help customers identify partners that provide expertise in a specific service or skill area. TO THE NEW, a leading digital technology company is happy to announce its recognition in the program for AWS CloudFront & RDS for PostgreSQL capabilities.

Lenskart.com, the brand responsible for revolutionizing eyewear in India has raised funding from Premji Invest, the investment office of Mr. AzimPremji, Chairman and Founder of the Wipro Group. Lenskart’s aim is to expand access to high-quality and affordable eye-care products across India.

Red Hat recently announced the finalists for the 2016 Women in Open Source Awards. The finalists in the academic category include three women from India who are full-time students pursuing computer science and engineering degrees.

TLabs, the leading Indian start-up accelerator, sets new horizons for the budding Indian establishments by joining the Stripe Atlas Network. Stripe Atlas is a new service from Stripe that gives entrepreneurs access to some fundamental tools and infrastructure for starting and growing a global internet business. The Stripe Atlas Network is comprised of a group of more than 60 partners around the world who can invite local entrepreneurs to join the program.

RAW Pressery, a cold-pressed fresh juice company, recently received Series B funding worth $4.5 million from three equal partners - Sequoia India, Saama Capital and DSG partners. This was a follow-up to the first round that invited $1.8 million from Sequoia India in February 2015. The fresh capital will give an impetus to the company’s plans of introducing new flavours, increasing production capacity and initiating brand-building activities.

The Pune based bespoke products start-up icustommadeit.com has raised $ 4 million from Times Group’s Brand Capital, Siddhivinayak Skyscrapers, an undisclosed corporate giant and Dinesh R. Challa, IIT Roorkee alumnus; in its Pre-series A funding round.

Startup Village chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar has been nominated by the Indian government as a member of the International Board of Governors of the United States-India Science and Technology Endowment Forum (USISTEF), which supports and fosters innovation and techno-entrepreneurship through application of science and technology.

Zone Startups India, an international joint-venture between Ryerson Futures Inc (Toronto) and the BSE Institute, announces expansion of its accelerator space, with the support of the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Government of India.