NIRA : A FinTech StartUp Raises $1 Million In Seed Funding

Indian fintech sector has seen many startups raising new funding recently and keeping the trend, NIRA, a Bengaluru based fintech startup has raised $1 Million in seed funding from angel investors in UK and India.

Image source: https://www.facebook.com/nirafinance

The startup was founded by Nupur Gupta and Rohit Sen in 2017. NIRA is providing and helping individuals with instant small value loans who have limited access to traditional modes of finance. It mainly provides instant loan of Rs 1 lakh for 1 year term.

The new funds will be used to accelerate growth, expand its core team and boost its technology.

As per NIRA's website, it has partnered with Federal Bank for providing instant loans and one can easily get instant loan of Rs 1 lakh in just 3 minutes by uploading documents on either mobile app or web.

GamingMonk - An E-sports startup has raised Rs 4 Crores in new funding round

Online gaming and e-sports startup GamingMonk has raised fresh funding of Rs 4 Crores from Japan based incubate fund, Rajan Anandan -VP Google India and Stellaris Ventures, Smile Group, AdvantEdge, Samir Khurana and others.

Pic Source: https://www.facebook.com/GamingMonk/

The New Delhi based gaming startup was founded by Abhay Sharma and Ashwin Haryan in 2014. Since the day startup has launched, it has organised around 200 online competitions. The online gaming market is rapidly increasing in India with the introduction of high internet speeds and highly efficient hardware and gaming consoles.

The awareness amongst youth is great and many youngsters are taking it seriously and even thinking to make big in professional online gaming.

GamingMonk organises both offline and online gaming competitions around games like PUBG, DOTA2, Call of Duty, Clash Royale to name a few.

The recent funding in the online gaming space in India has shown that investors are keenly watching it and India is going to be amongst the top online playing nations in world soon.

Financial planning startup, Cube Wealth raises Rs 14 crore in new round of funding.

Wealth management and financial planning startup, Cube Wealth led by serial entrepreneur Satyen Kothari has raised new round of funding of Rs 14 crores from Beenext,  Asuka Holdings and 500 Startups.

New funds will be used to expand and grow sales in new cities like - Mumbai, Delhi/NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Kolkatta and Hyderabad and also will target non-resident Indians based in Europe and Japan.

Cube Wealth mainly target customers with annual income of Rs 10 lakhs and above. 

Satyen Kothari is the the serial entrepreneur who has earlier co - founded Citrus Pay which was later acquired by PayU in 2016. He also founded couple of more startups like Trapezo and Lotus White before founding Cube wealth.

Online poker company 9stacks secures Rs. 21 crores in Series A funding round

After technology, social, gaming and non-tech startups, it's time for the online poker to secure some funding. Yes, you read it right.

Delhi based 9stacks, an online poker startups has recently raised Rs 21 crore from an early stage venture capitalist firm WaterBridge Ventures and few existing angel investors.

Pic Source: https://twitter.com/9stacksonline

The startup was founded by Sudhir Kamath, Pratik Kumar, Abhinav Nigam and Rishab Mathur in 2017. As per company's website, 9stacks India's fastest growing online poker platform. It is the chosen poker destination for both expert and amateur players in India.

Playing poker is 100% legal in India and 9stacks offer secure and reliable platform for all the players who want to learn or try their luck in online poker.

BYJU's secured Unicorn status post $100 Mn from General Atlantic

After PayTM and OYO it's time for the edu tech major Byju's to attain the unicorn startup status. With fresh round of $100 million from General Atlantic India, the valuation of online education startup has crossed $2 bln mark. 

Pic Source: https://byjus.com/

After launching The Learning Mobile App - BYJU's in 2015, the startup is growing exponentially. The Bengaluru based startup has recently crossed Rs 1 Bn monthly revenue.

The online tutoring startup has so far got 2500000 app downloads and is present in almost 1701 plus towns and cities across globe according to the stats present on Byju's website.

According to a recent report by Google and KPMG, Online education in India will see approximately 8x growth in the next five years and the edtech market that has a potential to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from where it stands now i.e. $247 Mn.

Simplilearn, Meritnation, Edukart, Vedantu are the major Indian startups competing with Byju's for getting significant pie of Indian online education market.

Global AI StartUp NetraDyne gets $8 mln more from India's largest conglomerate Reliance Industries

NetraDyne, A global leader in artificial intelligence technology has received second round of $8 mln funding from Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries. Reliance Industries has already invested $16 mln last year in June 2016.

Pic Source: https://www.netradyne.com/

Reliance Industries has made this investment through its wholly owned subsidiary Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings Ltd.

NetraDyne is a high-end artificial intelligence based technology-driven company providing products around fleet management, automotive, security and surveillance.

It seems Reliance Industries is seriously looking to encash the buzz of artificial intelligence. It will help the behemoth to make new products around new technologies.

NowFloats partners with Sui Dhaaga - Made in India

According to various social media sites, Hyderabad based startup NowFloats which help small and medium enterprises to get online, boost their sales and business by helping them discovered online has partnered with the biggest film production and distribution company in India, Yash Raj Films, for their next movie, Sui Dhaaga - Made in India, starring Anushka Sharma and Varun Dhawan. 

Pic Source: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nowfloats/

According to media sources, the film is based on the Make In India campaign launched by the Indian Government in 2014, which was aimed at promoting the country's indigenous textile industries. It is a heartwarming story of pride and self-reliance.

NowFloats was founded by Jasminder Singh Gulati, Nitin Jain, Ronak Kumar Samantray and Neeraj Sabharwal in 2012 with the mission to enable small and medium sized businesses to bring their businesses online in a simplified manner.

The startup is currently backed by Blume Ventures, Omidyar Networks, Iron Pillar, IIFL and Mumbai Angels.

Indian home design startup, Livspace raises Rs 500 crore from Goldman Sachs and TPG Growth

Bengaluru based, home and interior design startup Livsapce has raised Rs 500 crore in series C funding fromTPG Growth and Goldman Sachs. Existing investors also took part in the funding round.

Pic Source: https://www.livspace.com

Livspace was founded by Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava in 2015. As per Livspace website, the startup is present in 7 cities across Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida and Thane in India and have served to around 5231 happy customers. Livspace has also got around 2000 plus registered designers on its platform.

Livspace is the renowned player in the home interior and decoration segment. With this new funding, Livspace has raised around $100 million so far. As per media reports, Livsp
ace is going to use this new funding to increase its footprint in more cities and to grow the designer ecosystem along with their technology.

Google One to launch paid subscription services in India soon.

Pic Source : https://one.google.com/

After Google PAY, Google has again come up with another new project for India, Google One for all. 

Google rebranded its storage services earlier known as Google drive sometime back and the company was of the view that all paid Google drive customers would be migrated to Google One. Now, Google is launching paid subscription services for all in India anytime soon after launching same in US last month.

According to one blog post by Pavni Diwanji, VP of Google One "Users in India will soon be able to enjoy more options to fit their storage needs-whether you're working, connecting with friends, or preserving your memories"

Google one will be providing storage capavities from 100 GB to 30 TB as per various media resources.

Samara-Amazon acquires Indian supermarket chain MORE

Pic Source : www.morestore.com

The competition for winning the major pie of Indian retail market has gone to the next level. Media sources have confirmed that, Samara Capital and Amazon has just signed the deal to acquire Aditya Birla Group’s food and grocery retail chain More, at an valuation of around Rs 4200 crore. 

Samara will take the majority 51% in ABRL while Amazon's investment arm, Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC will own the balance 49%.

Aditya Birla Retail Ltd. (ABRL) is solely responsible for managing and operating around 570 More chain of stores in India.

After, Walmart and Flipkart's $16 billion engagement, this is the next big announcement.

Amazon has already set aside budget of around $500 million to invest in its food retail business in India and is all out there in the market to acquire big names and earn the major stake in ever increasing Indian retail market.

Ola to enter New Zealand with fresh funding of $50 Million from two Chinese investors.

Ola, our own make in India startup has raised fresh round of $50 million funds at a valuation of roughly $4.3 billion from Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF). As per media reports, Sailing Capital and CEECF will hold a combined stake of more than 1% in OLA.

With backing of these new funds, the Indian competitor to Uber is all set to enter into New Zealand market with launch of its services in Auckland. New Zealand will be the third foreign country after Australia and UK where Ola will be starting its operations.

Ola is also trying hard to capture a sizeable share of Indian food delivery business where market is currently dominated by Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats. 

According to media sources, Ola will be looking to raise fresh funds in coming months from new investors as well, including Singapore’s Temasek. The race to become the largest in car riding space has already begun. Let's see who will touch the finishing line first.