Advertisement

Clip App Raises $1M; IvyCap to Close Second Fund of Rs 600 Cr; Cisco India President Dinesh Malkani Quits & More

Flipkart is planning to enter the brick-and-mortar space to boost growth which is slowing down in the online market

Here is a list of deals that happened in Indian Startup Ecosystem today. Read a brief description about all of them:

1. Bengaluru-based digital media video startup, Clip App has raised close to $1 million in a seed round led by India Quotient and Shunwei Capital, a China-based investment firm.

The company plans to use the newly raised funding to enhance its product features for the video only app. The startup which claims have an organic growth of over 100,000 users within three months, largely from tier-II and tier-III markets plans to focus on acquiring users over the next two to three years.

Founded in March 2017 by Nav Agarwal, Clip App is presently growing organically, as the company is focusing on enhancing the product and building upon its features before aggressively marketing Clip App. The app specifically caters to tier-II and III user’s focuses on Hindi speaking users.

2. IvyCap Ventures is in the advanced stage of closing its second fund with a corpus of Rs 600 crore. The firm has raised about Rs 500 crore with soft commitments in place for the remaining Rs 100 crore. It had made the first close of the new fund at Rs 300 crore in April 2016.

About 15-25% of the new fund's corpus will be used for follow-on investments while about 10% will be directed towards seed-stage bets. “The remaining 65-75% will go into series-A and series-B rounds, which would be investments in fresh companies," managing partner of the fund Vikram Gupta told ET.

Through the new fund, IvyCap is looking to write larger cheques of up to Rs 40-50 crore for its series-B investments in healthcare, fintech, consumer tech, B2B and agri-tech.

“We have deployed Rs. 100 crore so far. We are looking to deploy about 25-30% of the corpus ( Rs. 150-180 crore) by March 2018," said Gupta.

3. Cisco India and SAARC President Dinesh Malkani has put in his papers at the networking solutions giant to take on a leadership role at a startup.

Malkani will continue in his role until July 31 and remain associated with Cisco till the end of September.

"Dinesh has played a key role in driving our growth, talent and digital transformation initiatives in India... This is a perfect time for a new leader to build on that foundation," Cisco Asia-Pacific and Japan President Irving Tan said in an emailed response.

4. Flipkart is planning to enter the brick-and-mortar space to boost growth which is slowing down in the online market, a person familiar with the matter told ET.

The company is in advanced talks with Giordano for a licensing deal to sell the Hong Kong-based apparel and accessory retailer’s products both offline and online in India.

The plan is to set up a chain of Giordano-branded physical outlets here, as well as offer the products on its digital platform, the person said. Flipkart will appoint sub-franchisees with brick-and-mortar expertise to operate the offline stores.

5. Financial advisory startup Upwardly (Triskaidekaphillia Solutions Pvt. Ltd) has raised seed funding from a clutch of senior finance industry executives to fuel growth.

Upwardly is backed by investors including Sreeram Iyer, chief operating officer at ANZ Bank for 20 countries, Suvo Sarkar, senior executive vice-president and group head, retail banking and wealth management at Emirates NBD, and Anita Gupta, head of equity strategy at Emirates NBD and Likemind Ventures.

Founded in June last year by former Myntra executive Prateek Mehta, Shashank Agarwal of ANZ, former Urban Ladder executive Prithvi Raj Tejavath and former JP Morgan Chase executive Vivek Agarwal, Upwardly which currently facilitates goal-based investments in mutual funds, aims to expand its offering and grow its 10-member team.





Around The World

Advertisement