HomeStartup NewsSTARTUP DIGEST: PharmEasy buys Thyrocare, Zomato to back Grofers, Mobikwik raises $20 mn

STARTUP DIGEST: PharmEasy buys Thyrocare, Zomato to back Grofers, Mobikwik raises $20 mn

There were several important developments in the startup space during the day on Monday. Here are the top stories from the startup universe today:

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By Aishwarya Anand  June 28, 2021, 9:26:01 PM IST (Updated)

STARTUP DIGEST: PharmEasy buys Thyrocare, Zomato to back Grofers, Mobikwik raises $20 mn
There were several important developments in the startup space during the day on Monday, which include healthcare platform PharmEasy has acquired Thyrocare promoter stake for nearly Rs 4500 crore; foodtech major Zomato along with Tiger Global are set to invest $120 million into e-grocery platform Grofers; homegrown game streaming platform Loco has secured $9 million for its first round of fundraising as an independent company; Union minister Piyush Goyal has accused US e-commerce giants of flouting Indian laws by indulging in predatory pricing practices; American VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new $2.2 billion fund to invest in crypto networks and tech giant Amazon will buy encrypted messaging app ‘Wickr’. Here are the top stories from the startup universe today:


PharmEasy to acquire 66% stake in Thyrocare

Healthtech unicorn PharmEasy is buying 66 percent of promoter A Vellumani’s stake in Thyrocare for nearly Rs 4,500 crore. In return, Vellumani has committed Rs 1,500 crore for a 4.9 percent stake in Pharmeasy. Thyrocare promoters will sell stake at Rs 1,300 per share.

Docon Technologies, a full subsidiary of API, will be the acquirer and will make an open offer for an additional 26 percent stake.

“We are strong in consultations, treatment and technology. One large missing piece for us was diagnostics. When we looked at Thyrocare, it seemed like the perfect marriage,” told Siddharth Shah, co-founder and CEO of API Holdings, to CNBC TV18.

The PharmEasy-Thyrocare deal comes at a time when online pharmacy sector is witnessing a wave of consolidation - the Tata-1mg deal, Reliance buying Netmeds and PharmEasy itself purchasing Medlife ahead of a potential IPO.

Zomato, Tiger Global to turn Grofers into unicorn with $120 mn funding

IPO-bound foodtech company Zomato is set to back e-grocery player Grofers, and, along with TIger Global, will pump in nearly $120 million into the company, as per sources.

The round will value Grofers at a little over $1 billion, turning it into the latest unicorn. Zomato could also look at a possible acquisition of Grofers post its IPO, which is expected in a few months.

The talks are in the final stages as per sources, and come a year after similar discussions between the two companies for an M&A had fallen through the gaps.

Zomato and Tiger Global did not comment.

Fintech startup Slice raises $20 million

Fintech startup Slice has raised $20 million from existing investors Gunosy and Blume Ventures among others.

The firm also announced the addition of two features to its "super card". Members can get up to 2 percent rewards on every card transaction which are instantly redeemable to cash, the credit card platform said in a statement.

"Members can 'slice' their card bills over three months for free, which means they can get up to 90 days interest-free period - the longest in the industry", it added.

Slice said it has seen rapid growth since the launch of its card in 2019. It has now three million-plus registered users and growing consistently at 25 percent month-on-month, the statement said. The company also claimed that its super card is accepted at 99.95 percent of merchants across the country that accept Visa.

Logistics startup GoBolt raises $20 million in Series B

Logistics startup GoBolt has raised $20 million in its Series B round, led by Paragon Partners Growth Fund II and existing investor Aavishkaar Capital. The funding round also included a small secondary component as well as debt lines from private banks, the company said.

Sumeet Nindrajog, co-founder and senior partner from Paragon Partners, will be joining the Board of Directors. With the fresh influx of capital, the company is also looking to expand its offerings into SaaS-based & E2E logistics solutions.

GoBOLT provides line haul express solutions to the ecommerce and non-ecommerce industry, and claims to have achieved a ~6x revenue growth over the last three years.

The company raised $5-$6 million as part of its Series A round in 2018 from investors led by Aavishkar Bharat Fund. It raised $1 million from angel investors in 2016.

Mobikwik raises $20 million from ADIA; valued at $700 million

The UAE's sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has picked up a minority stake in the IPO-bound digital payments player Mobikwik for nearly $20 million

The latest round of funding from the ADIA values the company at $700 million, according to a Registrar of Companies filing by Mobikwik. The Series G round comes just months after it raised $5 million from a clutch of investors.

Since March 2021, Mobikwik has raised over Rs 235 crore, the filing showed.
As part of these fund raises, it recently added investors such as ex-Blackstone India head Mathew Cyriac, Padma awardee Sat Pal Khattar, and ex-Infosys chief investment officer V G Dheeshjith as new shareholders. Its other investors include Sequoia Capital and Bajaj Finance.

According to investment banking sources, Mobikwik is working on Rs 1,200-crore primary share sale, which is likely to hit the markets by September.
Loco raises $9 M in seed funding from Krafton and Lumikai

Homegrown game streaming platform, Loco has secured $9 million for its first round of fundraising as an independent company. The seed round was led by South Korean gaming firm, Krafton, as well as Lumikai, India’s first gaming and interactive media fund. The round also saw participation by Hashed, Hiro Capital, North Base Media, Axilor Ventures, and 3one4 Capital.

The new investment will fuel the platform’s innovation efforts across game streaming technology and gaming content. With this raise, Loco will be spun off into an independent entity from its parent, Pocket Aces, a digital entertainment company.

Pocket Aces founders Anirudh Pandita and Ashwin Suresh will lead Loco going forward, while co-founder Aditi Shrivastava will continue to lead Pocket Aces.

Doceree closes Pre-Series A funding round

Physician-only platform Doceree has raised a pre-Series A funding for an undisclosed amount led by existing and new investors.

The company will use the fresh capital to expand its programmatic offerings and advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of physician marketing, it said in a statement.
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ince its inception in 2019, Doceree is working with five of the top 10 pharmaceutical manufacturers and three global advertising agency networks.

It is slated to expand to Europe later this year, the company added.
Mobius raises an undisclosed funding from new investors
Tech product firm Mobius has raised an undisclosed funding from new investors Naresh Naik ex MD at Morgan Stanley, Kishore Ganji, founder, CEO at Astir IT Solutions and Rajesh Manthena, vice chairman of AOI Hyderabad.

In the first year of business, Mobius was able to generate Rs 25 crores in transactions on its gaming platform 777Games. This is an unparalleled feat in the gaming industry when compared to first year growth rates, the company claimed.

In 12 months, Mobius has scaled to 500k+ registered users, company added.
Sachin Bansal’s Navi Mutual Fund launches Nifty 50 Index Fund
Navi Mutual Fund has announced the launch of Navi Nifty 50 Index Fund. The mutual fund platform is a part of Sachin Bansal’s BFSI group Navi.

The new fund is an open-ended equity scheme that would replicate the Nifty 50 Index, Navi Mutual Fund said in a statement.

The investment objective of the scheme is to achieve returns equivalent to Nifty50 index by investing in stocks of companies comprising the index, subject to tracking error, the fund house said in a statement.

The 10-day NFO will open on 3 July and close for subscriptions on 12 July.

Ola electric scooter set for July launch

Ola is all set to launch its electric scooter in July and has set up a strategy in place that includes roping in new, experienced professionals and setting up a hyper charger network across the country to cater to its scooters.

While speaking to CNBC TV18, GR Arun Kumar, Group CFO of Ola electric said that the company will start E-Scooter deliveries will start from August, 2021. He also added that the first phase of Ola's factory construction will have a capacity of 2 million vehicles.

“The first phase of plant will have 2 million vehicle per annum capacity and every 2 quarters we will end up putting in additional lines as we see demand pickup. You can expect us to do upwards of a million vehicle in the launch year. We will much ahead of in the coming years as we are also launching globally – in U.S, Europe, simultaneously with India,” said Arun Kumar.

The anticipated price of the scooter is around Rs 1 lakh.

“Expect very competitive pricing from Ola. We will have a slew of models catering to various strata of customers,” Kumar told CNBC TV18.

OLA Chairman and CEO Bhavish Bhavesh Agarwal had told CNBC TV18 in March that all core technologies had been engineered in-house including the motor, battery pack, battery management system, vehicle computer and software.

D2C firm boAt forays into personal grooming with ‘Misfit’

D2C lifestyle consumer tech firm boAt has forayed into the personal grooming category. As part of its category expansion strategy, boAt will launch grooming appliances such as beard trimmers, shavers, groomers among other products under a sub-brand brand called Misfit.

The company said that Misfit will be targeted at millennial consumers who are looking to replicate salon-like grooming at home. Misfit is being positioned as a self-care and grooming brand which has been launched with a limited portfolio including T200 grooming kit and T50 Trimmer targeted at male consumers, it added.

Both the products will be available across Flipkart and boAt websites starting June 28. The company will also launch a range of women's personal care products in the market soon.

Esports industry to grow at 46%, touch Rs 11 billion by 2025: Report

The esports industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent to touch Rs 11 billion by 2025, stated a report by EY. The estimate figure is a fourfold jump from the current industry size which is expected to reach Rs 2.5 billion this year.

The report highlights that by creating over 11,000 jobs, esports will generate around Rs 100 billion of economic value for India between 2021 and 2025, comprising investments, in-app purchases, winnings, taxes and related consumption.

The Indian esports prize pool accounts for a meagre 0.6 percent of the global prize pool, but is expected to reach nearly 2 percent by 2025. The prize money pool in India is expected to grow at 66 percent CAGR to reach Rs 1 billion by 2025, according to the report titled ‘Ready. Set. Game On!’.

According to the report, it is estimated that India has 1.5 lakh players and nearly 60,000 teams. As esports becomes a viable profession for the youth, the number of players playing esports is expected to reach 1.5 million by FY25.

Further, over 90 percent esports players participate in online mobile esports tournaments.

Twitter appoints US-based Jeremy Kessel as new grievance officer for India

Social media giant Twitter appointed California-based Jeremy Kessel as the new grievance officer for users in India on Monday, a day after interim resident grievance officer Dharmendra Chatur stepped down.

The appointment of Kessel, who is the Global Legal Policy Director of Twitter, comes under the new IT rules which require social media intermediaries to have a designated official to address complaints from Indian subscribers.

However, Kessel’s appointment is likely to again become a flashpoint between the Central government and Twitter as the new digital rules mandate that the grievance officer must be a resident of India.

The development comes amid an ongoing tussle between the Centre and the microblogging site over the new digital rules that came into force on May 25.

WhatsApp appoints Manesh Mahatme as head of payments in India

WhatsApp has appointed former Amazon executive Manesh Mahatme as a director to lead the growth of its payments business in India.

As director, WhatsApp Payments-India, Mahatme will focus on enhancing the payments experience for users, scaling the service and work towards contributing to the messaging app’s vision of digital and financial inclusion in India, according to a statement.

Foreign ecommerce companies violated Indian laws, says union minister Piyush Goyal

Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday said many foreign e-commerce companies have blatantly flouted Indian laws.

"Unfortunately, many of these large e-commerce companies have come into India and very blatantly violated the laws of the land, in more ways than one," Goyal said at an event by the Stanford India Policy and Economics Club.

He said that many of the practices which these companies follow are against the interest of consumers and the government has recently come out with draft rules for e-commerce companies or marketplace models, which are applicable to all entities including Indian.

These rules are to protect consumer interest, he said at a webinar. "The Indian market is big and we welcome all players to come and participate. But clearly, we have to have them working within the rules and laws of the country.

Unfortunately, many of these large e-commerce companies have come into India and very blatantly flouted the laws of the land, in more ways than one," the minister said.

"I have had several engagements with these large companies, particularly the American ones, I can see a little bit of arrogance of their being big and their ability to finance large amounts of money in the initial stages to try and capture the Indian market or larger part of the Indian market particularly certain products to the detriment of our mom and pop stores," he added.

Goyal said it was "very" unfair that just because they are large and have large pools of low-cost capital, they should be allowed to get away with hurting domestic interests or domestic consumer interests.

"So, I think it will be good that all companies follow the law of the land and do not use muscle power or money power to try and hurt Indian interests," he said.

Recalling one of his comments made on an announcement of an ecommerce giant investing $1 billion in India, Goyal said that the company was doing that funding because they had incurred losses in the previous two years.

In January 2020, the minister stated that Jeff Bezos's firm Amazon was not doing a favour to the country by doing investments and questioned how the online retailing major could incur such big losses but for its predatory pricing.
They have to invest it because the company used that money to do predatory pricing, to probably subsidise some products and capture a larger share of the market to the detriment of small mom and pop stores, he said.

"…and when questions about it keep fobbing off, they keep delaying giving the information and when people complain to CCI (Competition Commission of India), they immediately start forum shopping in the law courts of India. "If these companies have nothing to hide and if they are doing honest business practices, why do they not respond to CCI?" he questioned.

The fact that they are trying to evade that probably only justifies that they are probably indulging in predatory pricing, they are trying to influence market behaviour, their algorithms are trying to influence consumer choice and these are not permitted in India, he said.

"So very clearly, their irregular practices are the cause of their discomfort, if any, they should have submitted to the requirements of the Indian law," Goyal said.

He also said several countries like the US are working on anti-trust laws for e-commerce and the UK's competition and market authority has opened investigations into big tech mainly US forms, "now clearly the world is waking up to the realities of these large techs and big e-commerce companies".

"We in India have about 60 million mom and pop stores spread across the country…Today it may not look threatening. One can say how these companies would impact the villages, how will they reach out everywhere, but the strength of money power, technology and their ability to sustain for a long period of time, does pose risks to nearly 100 million people who are engaged in one form or the other through the small retail stores across the country," the minister said.

When these large companies talk about providing a million jobs or giving support to maybe 100,000 Indian small manufacturers, "I think very conveniently (they) forget to also say what will be the job losses because of their influence," he said.

GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY & STARTUP NEWS

UK bans Binance in latest cryptocurrency crackdown

Britain's financial regulator has ordered Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, to stop all regulated activity and issued a warning to consumers about the platform which is coming under growing scrutiny globally.

In a notice dated June 25, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Binance Markets Ltd, Binance's UK entity, "must not, without the prior written consent of the FCA, carry out any regulated activities with immediate effect". Binance did not respond to Reuters for comment.

While trading of cryptocurrencies is not directly regulated in Britain, offering services such as trading in cryptocurrency derivatives does require authorisation.

The FCA has told Binance that by June 30 it must display a notice stating "BINANCE MARKETS LIMITED IS NOT PERMITTED TO UNDERTAKE ANY REGULATED ACTIVITY IN THE UK" on its website and social media channels. It must also secure and preserve all records relating to UK consumers and inform the FCA this has been done by July 2.

The regulator did not explain why it taken the measures against Binance, which has said previously that it takes its legal obligations "very seriously" and engages "with regulators and law enforcement in a collaborative fashion".

Andreessen Horowitz triples down on Crypto with new $2.2 B Fund
Silicon Valley’s venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new $2.2 billion fund to invest more money in crypto networks.

The move follows a string of media reports in April that the firm, which been investing in crypto assets since 2013, was looking to raise as much as $1 billion to invest in cryptocurrencies and crypto startups, reports Reuters.

Andreessen Horowitz also said Bill Hinman, the former director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's division of corporation finance, will join its crypto arm as an advisory partner.

Cryptocurrencies have this year gained the backing of top-tier companies including BNY Mellon, BlackRock Inc, Mastercard Inc and Visa, sparking predictions that they will become a regular part of investment portfolios.

Philippine fintech firm raises $167 million from KKR & Co, Tencent

Philippine digital and financial services firm Voyager Innovations has raised $167 million for its expansion programme, including a venture into digital banking, Reuters reported.

Shareholders PLDT Inc, private equity firm KKR & Co Inc and Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd participated in the funding round.

Voyager, which serves millions of Filipinos through its e-wallet, digital payments and remittance units, welcomed a unit of the World Bank's International Finance Corp as a new investor.

Amazon buys encrypted messaging app Wickr

Tech giant Amazon has acquired the encrypted messaging app ‘Wickr’ to enable secure communication as employees largely work from home. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Amazon said in a statement it would incorporate Wickr in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division which offers cloud computing and other services.
AWS will continue to offer Wickr services including end-to-end encrypted communications which meet certain regulatory requirements, AFP reported.

The news comes following a congressional panel's approval of legislation which could limit the ability of large technology firms to acquire rivals that would limit competition.

IBM broadens 5G deals with Verizon and Telefonica with Cloud and AI

IBM will offer telecom operators Verizon and Telefonica new services ranging from running 5G over a cloud platform to using artificial intelligence, the US technology company.

Big technology players such as Microsoft and Amazon are vying for a share of 5G revenue by offering telecom operators next-generation software tools, Reuters report.

IBM, using technology it obtained from buying software firm Red Hat, will offer the telecom operators cloud services to run their networks and assist them in selling products tailored to customers.

No financial terms were disclosed about the tie-ups, which broadened IBM's existing partnerships with the two firms, report said.
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