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 28 startups raised $705 million; the slowdown in China has only increased the confidence in India! The week saw another 2 unicorns getting added to India’s burgeoning unicorn list. SEBI’s approval of the Nykaa IPO will further increase the tailwinds for the ecosystem.
Could we see another 15 unicorns added to the list before bidding goodbye to 2021… I think so!
This week, 20 deals were in the early-stage rounds, 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: NFTically
Amount Raised: Under $1 million from Nitish Mittersain, Gaurav Munjal, Sujeet Kumar, Kunal Kapoor, Surojit Chatterjee, and others.
What does NFTically do?
Edited from Tracxn: Online marketplace for diversified NFTs. It enables users to buy or sell NFT, digital arts, or tokens and set up NFT stores, shops, websites, and storefronts. It supports NFTs such as digital art, collectibles, utility, trading cards, and more.
Why do I like NFTically?
I went on record last week on my fascination with the NFT space; therefore, it is evident that NFTically would make this list. The serious concern for me is the fast pace at which (almost) every social media or crypto platform is launching an NFT marketplace.
That NFTically is doing this as an end-to-end white label service could make things very interesting!
Name: SALT
Amount Raised: $500,000 from Prashant Pansare, Amit Goel, Vishrut Bubna, Supermorpheus, and angels.
What does SALT do?
Edited from Tracxn: Payment gateway solutions for international payments. It provides tools for businesses to manage currency accounts, payments, collections, and expenses. It offers multiple business accounts, reports on company finances, virtual & physical corporate cards, and more.
Why do I like SALT?
“Build in India, sell to the world” is a favorite VC theme, but “Bill in India, collect from the world” is yet to catch up. A $400 billion export market is pining for innovation and ease – need I say more about the potential?
Name: FloCareer
Amount Raised: $5.7 million from Data Point Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Orios Venture Partners.
What does FloCareer do?
Edited from Traxcn: Online recruitment platform with job board and assessment. Job seekers can give online assessment tests, get a personalized learning map, mentor experts, and apply for jobs. Employers can search for pre-assessed and pre-interviewed candidates and connect with them. Employers can also post jobs on the platform.
Why do I like FloCareer?
It won’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that recruiting is 1 of the top 5 most painful activities for a startup founder. There is a broken ecosystem between the sharing of a profile to the person joining an organization. Many HRtech solutions are trying to solve some parts of this journey, but perhaps just FloCareer, which is trying to solve the entire pain point!
Whether (and what) the customers will pay for the value they receive, we will find out!
Honorable Mention: Leap.club
I have purposefully excluded the leap.club’s investment round of $810,000 led by Enzia Ventures, Kunal Shah, Whiteboard Capital, Titan Capital, Artha India Ventures, and its users.
