Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. From that list, I pick out three companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things. Click here to learn about my rationale behind this weekly exercise.
Last week, 23 startups raised $501 million. While we are finally back to funding happening more frequently (almost a deal announced every 7 hours!), this is just a precursor for things to come. I would expect December to only get bigger and better as funds look at closing out this year at a high!
This week, 15 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 11 last week), which made the cut for my weekly analysis. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked two as my favorite funding news from last week!
Name: Grip
Funding Amount Raised: Undisclosed from Anicut Angel Fund with participation from Gemba Capital and other angel investors.
What does Grip do?
Edited from Tracxn: Grip Invest is an online platform for investing in physical assets such as vehicles, equipment, furniture, among others. It provides tools for leasing investments to corporates, availing monthly rentals, and connecting users and asset owners. Also, acts as collateral to manage overall risks and depreciation of assets.
Why do I like Grip?
Millennials and established HNIs have become obsessed with the idea of passive income. Since the early days of making high-interest rates from banks are long gone, these new platforms will pique investor interest. As investors in LenDenClub, investor interest in the platform has gone up 20x in the last four months.
Therefore, if asset risk and investor expectations are managed prudently, Grip can make logical sense in a diversified fixed-income portfolio for millennials.
Name: ERPNext
Funding Amount Raised: Rs 10 crore from Rainmatter
What does ERPNext do?
Edited from Tracxn: ERPNext is a web-based open-source ERP software on the cloud for small and medium businesses. Its solutions include accounting, CRM, HRM, project and sales management, and warehouse management. The software has a Model-View-Controller architecture with metadata modeling tools that add flexibility for users to adapt the software to unique purposes without the need for programming. It provides an embedded reporting system with office suite integration along with report customization.
Why do I like ERPNext?
ERPNext is a brilliant platform that is looking at breaking the monopoly of SAP or Oracle at a fraction of the price. I believe that this is a much-needed platform. Nithin’s endorsement gives a lot of confidence in the company’s stability and the quality of the technology; therefore, more power to them!
Check out my funding picks from last week here.
