Funding Rundown: Tiger Global backs Money View, Nothing gets $70 mn, JIFFY.ai secures $53 mn & EthSign catches Sequoia Capital’s eye

Here’s the lowdown of the top deals from the startup space.

Bengaluru-based lending fintech Money View has raised $75 million in a Series D round which has taken the company's valuation to $625 million, as fintech players continue to attract investor interest amidst the rapid digitisation of financial services.

Tiger Global, Winter Capital, Evolvence India, Accel along with other investors including South Park Commons, Trusted Insight and Dream Incubator participated in the round, the company said.

Founded in 2014 by IIT Delhi alumni Puneet Agarwal and Sanjay Aggarwal, the company offers personalized credit products like instant personal loans, cards, BNPL and personal financial management solutions and has partnered with over 15 financial institutions to offer credit/financial products on its platform.

The fresh funding will be used as growth capital to scale the core credit business, grow the team, and expand its product portfolio with services like digital bank accounts, insurance, and wealth management solutions, the company said in a statement.

UK-based consumer tech company Nothing has raised $70 million in its Series B funding round, which was co-led by EQT Ventures and C Ventures with participation from GV, Tony Fadell’s Future Shape, Gaorong Capital and Animoca Brands.

The new investment brings the total raised by Nothing to $144 M till date. Fresh capital will be used to create new product categories in partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and its Snapdragon platform, and grow operations at its new London Design Hub, led by ex-Dyson Head of Design Adam Bates.

“With this round of financing, we have the fuel to realise the next phase of our vision of a seamless digital future,” said Carl Pei, Nothing CEO and Co-founder.

Nothing claims to have shipped over 400,000 units of its first product — a pair of carbon-neutral wireless earbuds named ear (1) — since its launch in August last year.

JIFFY.ai, an app-based low-code/no-code intelligent automation platform, has raised $53 million as part of its Series B funding round led by Fidelity-backed venture capital firm — Eight Roads Ventures.

Iron Pillar and R-Squared also participated in this round alongside existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Reaction Capital and Rebright Partners.

“This funding will advance our mission to help build autonomous enterprises of the future by applying artificial intelligence and automation to transform enterprise operations,” said Babu Sivadasan, Co-founder and CEO, JIFFY.ai.

JIFFY.ai’s HyperApps (as-a-service) consists of pre-packaged automation applications that can be extended across the enterprise to accelerate end-to-end automation.

The platform combines Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Intelligent Document Processing, no-code workflow management and software creation.

EthSign, a web3 agreement signing and execution platform, secures $12 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors, which includes all three offices of Sequoia Capital — U.S., China and India.

The round also saw the participation of Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, Hack VC and Circle Ventures among others besides angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase) and Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder of Polygon).

EthSign is an e-signing platform that utilizes blockchain technology to offer a decentralized, customizable and transparent version of traditional signature service.

With its Web3 technology (decentralized identity, smart contract platforms and decentralized storage networks), the platform enables users to comment on, edit and access each version of an electronic agreement securely.

“EthSign is unlocking the full potential of smart contracts by making it easy for organizations and individuals to seamlessly adopt and incorporate them in their daily workflows and business scenarios. We believe it can become the de-facto platform for multiparty collaboration and consensus across both Web2.0 and Web3.0," said Rohit Agarwal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India.

Launched in June 2021, EthSign claims to have gathered more than 13,000 signatures.

Wellcurve, an integrated e-commerce platform which curates brands, products, and information dedicated to a healthier lifestyle, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Benevolent Capital — one of the leading investors in Thrasio.

The round also saw participation from angel investor Tommy Rosen, an investor in Thrive Market — a U.S.-based e-commerce platform for organic food.

Founded by Nikhil Mehra in 2019, the New delhi-based Wellcurve is an e-commerce platform for health and nutrition with over 1,500 varieties of curated products. It plans to utilise the fresh funds to expand its network of health experts on the platform and augment the technology to further personalize the user experience.

Wellcurve integrates content and commerce, allowing users to discover information, shop for healthier food alternatives, find healthy recipes and engage with health experts, nutritionists, fitness enthusiasts and home chefs.

The platform claims to have recorded growth of 500 percent in the last 12 months with an annual recurring Gross Merchandise Value of Rs 17 crore.

Besides launching its private label, the startup further aims to add 50 new D2C health and nutrition brands online within the next 3-6 months.

Pune-based Dreams Redeveloped has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round led by Indian Accelerator.

Founded by S Lakshminarayanan and Harish Menon, Dreams Redeveloped is a platform that seeks to help senior citizens to navigate the complex process of redevelopment.

“We conducted India’s first redevelopment expo in December and the enthusiasm with which property owners and developers participated provided us a good impetus and validated the whole platform approach,” said S Lakshminarayanan, Founder, Dreams Redeveloped.

The startup wants to utilise the fresh capital to further build and expand the AI-enabled platform which connects the entire redevelopment ecosystem.

“We believe in the platform approach in an uncharted area like redevelopment, which would be a huge untapped market in bigger cities. Also, having interacted with the Founders, we believe their hands-on knowledge will come in handy towards building a nation-wide platform for redevelopment,” said Mona Singh, Co- founder, Indian Accelerator.

HooLiv, a New Delhi-based co-living startup, raises non-dilutive growth capital by trading subscriptions on Recur Club — a subscription-based financing platform. This is its second round of funding having previously raised a seed round in early 2020.

Startups operating in the co-living space were directly impacted by the pandemic. Not only were investors skeptical, but valuations were also on the lower end.

“With the funding environment improving considerably now and with the scale that we have been able to achieve by financing through Recur Club, we stand a much better chance to raise the next round at a much better valuation,” said Chinmoy Mishra, HooLiv.

“Non-dilutive capital and/or alternate financing platforms such as Recur Club is a wonderful way to infuse growth capital while not having to worry about dilutions and valuations,” he added.

Recur Club facilitates companies to sell their recurring revenue streams as a tradable asset class. The trading platform connects organizations directly with institutional investors to trade their subscriptions for upfront capital.