Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. Then, I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise.

Last week 25 startups raised $638 million; as expected, the number of deals and the amounts raised continue trending upwards for the ecosystem. Investors are watching the unlocking process with anticipation to give further guidance on where the short-term trends will go.  

This week, 23 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 12 last week), making my weekly analysis cut. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week!

Name: Fable Fintech

Amount Raised: Undisclosed amount from Pentathlon Ventures, Ashish Kacholia, Lashit Sanghvi, Sumeet Kanwar.

What does Fable Fintech do?

Edited from Tracxn: Money transfer software for banks and other business entities. It provides multi-country, multi-currency, omnichannel, KYC/AML compliant rem-tech products. It offers a white label remittance solution for a billion-dollar money transfer business.

Why do I like Fable Fintech?

India does over $290 billion in exports and a slightly higher amount in imports. However, remitting money to or from India is highly complex for the end-user. Moreover, there are myriad rules from the regulators that get further entangled with the bank’s internal processes.  The opaqueness and the confusing process is a significant impediment for those that want to invest or do business in India.  

Add to that the massive fees and markups levied by the banks; you have a sector waiting to get disrupted!

Name: Mars by GHC

Amount Raised: $5.2 million from Khosla Ventures, Quiet Capital, W Health Ventures, and Weekend Fund and angels.

What does Mars by GHC do?

Edited from Yourstory: Mars by GHC provides a full-stack solution for patients with conditions like hair fall, sexual health, weight loss, skin care, etc.  

Why do I like Mars by GHC?

While the male wellness sector is crowded, I love the unique set of backing Mars investors. It will be interesting to see how Mars makes its mark without burning up the cash on CAC. The key will be the returning customer ratio and referrals that the platform can generate, and they should concentrate on their content strategy.

Name: Convin

Amount Raised: Rs 2.5 crore from Titan capital and 9Unicorns.  

What does Convin do?

Edited from Tracxn: Provider of cloud-based conversation intelligence solutions. The platform enables businesses to capture conversations from multiple platforms, transcribe conversations, and analyze them to generate insights into the market, which helps understand customer requirements, tracking sales, and more. It also allows members to highlight the most critical parts of the call, uncover coaching opportunities, and create a playbook to handle specific scenarios using the best tracks of deals that have closed.

Why do I like Convin?

The number of sales taking place without belly-to-belly meetings means that sales managers must equip themselves with Convin-like tools to review, train and upskill their salespeople. Convin’s price point might be steep for an Indian audience, but there are several western geographies where their services could be highly valued!