Funding Rundown: Prime Venture Partners closes 4th fund at $120 mn; Niyo raises $100 mn in Series C; bitsCrunch raises $3.6 mn & Nithin Kamath, Kunal Shah to invest in Kalvi

Here are the top deals from the startup space.

Early-stage VC fund Prime Venture Partners has marked the final close of its fourth fund at $120 million. According to the venture firm, the fund was oversubscribed and has exceeded its target of $100 million in commitments. With this, the total capital raised by all of Prime Venture’s funds has risen to over $250 million.

From the new fund, the company aims to invest in disruptive technology startups across sectors like Fintech, Edtech, Healthtech, Consumer Internet and SaaS. In addition to this, the company will also invest into new areas such as EVs, Web3 and Gaming infrastructure platforms.

Prime Venture’s fourth fund was backed by International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, a top-tier university endowment, a top tier Fund of Funds and several global technology entrepreneurs, along with its existing investors.

Prime Venture Partners have incubated startups including ZipDial (acquired by Twitter), Ezetap, SmartOwner, Synup, HackerEarth, happay, Vidgyor, Maya, KredX, MoneyTap and NiYO.

Neo-banking startup Niyo, has raised $100 million in its Series C round of funding led by Accel & Lightrock India with participation from Beams Fintech Fund.

Existing investors Prime Venture Partners, JS Capital along with others, also participated in the funding round. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to Niyo on the transaction

The company said it will utilise the funds for product innovation, marketing and branding, increasing its distribution footprint, and hiring top talent across functions. Niyo is also looking to provide comprehensive financial services to over 30 million users through both organic and inorganic expansion, it added.

The startup recently launched a fully digital salary account this month and is in the process of launching personal loans, credit cards, integrated forex and other banking products in the next three months.

Incepted in 2015, the company currently serves around 4 million customers across its banking and wealth management products with over 10,000 new users added daily to its platform. Niyo claims to have processed over $3 billion worth of transactions.

Blockchain analytics firm bitsCrunch has raised $3.6 million in a private round of funding from lead investor Animoca Brands with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, Polygon Studios, and others.

The round also saw participation from Borderless Capital, Bison Funds, Mapleblock, Morning Star Ventures, Shima Capital, GravityX, Thykeblock Ventures, and Spark Digital Capital. Angel investors from Ex-CxO Huobi, CxOs of Biconomy, Frontier, and experts from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Facebook also pitched in.

The company will use the fresh capital to expand the team and it also plans to have dedicated teams for our securing services like Scour, Liquify and Crunch DaVinci.

Fintech platform for gig workers, KarmaLife, has received $2.2 million in pre-series A round, led by Artha Venture Fund (AVF). Netgraph Investment, LV Angel Fund, Singularity Ventures. This is AVF’s 16th investment from its $33 million micro-VC fund.

Angel investors including Abhinav Sinha (CDC Group PLC), Amit Jain (CEO -Global Equity London), Balesh Sharma (MD -Vodacom South Africa, Ex-CEO Vodafone Idea), Vamsi Udayagiri (Founder Hesa), Vikram Kailas (MD & CEO Mytrah Energy) and Prateek Agarwal (ex-CBO BharatPe), also participated in the round.

The startup plans to utilize the funds for further product development, team expansion, and employer partnerships, it said in a statement.

The company claims to have access to 130,000+ users and is eyeing a 10-fold user growth in the next 12 months. It is also clocking a 40% MoM growth in credit disbursement since July 2021 and will surpass Rs 500 crores in disbursals by the next fiscal.

KarmaLife said it plans to scale its business by partnering with 150+ new employers and will be launching various innovative financial products such as liquid savings and micro-insurance customized for this segment.

Edtech startup Bhanzu has raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by Lightspeed India.

The round also saw participation from notable angel investors such as Nitin Gupta (CEO of Uni), Maninder Gulati (Global Chief Strategy Officer at OYO), Ashish Gupta (exHelion MD), Gaurav Munjal (CEO of Unacademy), Kunal Shah (CEO of Cred) and Biswa Kalyan Rath (stand-up comedian) among others.

According to the startup, this funding will be utilised to scale Bhanzu’s live classes in USA, Canada, the UK, and the Middle East. Bhanzu will also use the funds to accelerate hiring specialised tech and product teams.

Bhanzu is a math-learning focused edtech platform founded in November 2020 and currently has over 30,000 students and parents, while clocking 1 million+ teaching hours.

Edtech startup Kalvi is in the process of raising $1.7 million in its seed funding round which will be led by over 30 founders of unicorns and global corporate leaders.

The on-going round saw participation from Nithin Kamath (Zerodha/Rain Matter), Sujeet Kumar (Udaan), Kunal Shah (Cred), Rahul Chari (PhonePe), Ankit Bhati(Ola/Amnic), Dr Kumar Muthuraman (University of Texas, Austin) and Anupam Mittal (People Group).

Founders and CXOs from startups like Haptik, Byju’s, Unacademy, 1Mg, Rapido, Zolve, Rupeek, INCREFF, Bright Champs, Yellow.ai, iZooto, Onsurity, OYO, among others also pitched in.

Global leaders from Microsoft, Google, Flipkart also joined this funding round.

Kalvi supercharges the traditional computer engineering degree construct using their proprietary and instructional design called 'Quadrangle'.

Bitcoin rewards platform GoSats has been accepted into the accelerator Y Combinator programme.

The startup will be part of the Incubator’s Winter 2022 batch and will be receiving $125,000 in funding as part of the program, it said in a statement.

“As we embark on the next phase of our growth, with the imminent launch of our Bitcoin rewards card, we are thrilled to partner with Y Combinator at this stage. We were looking forward to applying and being part of the YC family,” said Roshan Aslam, CEO & Co-founder at GoSats.

GoSats was also a part of the first cohort run by Accel Atoms program. The company claims to have created 100,000 Bitcoin users and is growing at 40% Month on Month.

EV startup Accelero Vehicles has bagged Rs 1.7 crores in a seed funding round led by Social Alpha and LetsVenture.

The investment will support the company’s growth through product development, pilot opportunities, enhancing production capacity, expanding to new geographies, and strengthening the sales and marketing team, a statement said.

“We aim to make electric mobility accessible to every household, especially to the underprivileged. With robust build quality, patented technology, financing options and life time customer support, we believe we are uniquely placed to scale rapidly in the coming years,” said Anant Jain, the founder of Accelero.

According to Smita Rakesh, Vice President and Partner, Social Alpha, “Accelero will also use the rapid prototyping lab and other facilities at Social Alpha’s Clean Energy International Incubation Centre (CEIIC) in Delhi. Social Alpha is also supporting Accelero in market access in new geographies and achieving scale rapidly.”

Accelero Vehicles has operations in multiple cities & plans to have a pan-India footprint in 3 years.

D2C fashion clothing brand Label Shaurya Sanadhya has raised an undisclosed amount from revenue-based financier Velocity.in.

“The funds raised from Velocity.in will be used to expand our product line as well as generate more brand awareness." says Shaurya, Founder, Label Shaurya Sanadhya.

According to reports, the apparel industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.1% to reach $118 billion by 2028. Label Shaurya Sanadhya said it plans to tap this sectoral tailwind and grow exponentially by leveraging its unique, designer apparel and high-quality social media content.