Weekly Musings – Big start-up updates for the week to January 05, 2024

8 Jan 2024 , 09:37 AM

Startups raised close to $1 billion in the previous 3 weeks with funding of $527 million and $349 million in the weeks ending December 15 and December 22, 2023. However, the funding frenzy fell to $90 million in the week to December 29, 2023 and fell further to just $58 million in the latest week to January 05, 2024. Country Delight, the milk, and goodies online supplier, raised over 30% of these funds. The number of deals were lower at 9 deals in the latest week, compared to 10 deals in the previous week. When compared to the average of the last 5 weeks, the start-up funding in the latest week was -74% lower. Here is the story of start-up fund raising over the last 6 weeks in numbers.

Funding Week	Start-up funding raised
Week ending December 01, 2023	$62 million
Week ending December 08, 2023	$85 million
Week ending December 15, 2023	$527 million
Week ending December 22, 2024	$349 million
Week ending December 29, 2023	$90 million
Average of previous 5 weeks	$223 million
Week ending January 05, 2024	$58 million

The start-up funding for the latest week ended January 05, 2024 was lower on a week-on-week basis, and also sharply lower compared to the average of the last 5 weeks. In fact, this is the second week in succession when the start0-up funding in the week has stayed under $100 million. Here is the story of the major start-up funding deals of the week.

Country Delight to raise $20 million from Temasek

One of India’s leading Dairy Technology companies, Country Delight, is raising $20 million in funding from Temasek. The fund raising is being done at an enterprise valuation of over $750 million. The sum of $20 million or Rs164 crore is being raised from Temasek and Venturi Partners; both of whom are existing early investors in Country Delight. It runs a digital mobile based app to supply milk and other dairy products of the highest quality to customers on a demand basis.

The company not only supplies milk, but other dairy products like curd, paneer, cheese, and ghee too. In addition, Country Delight also supplies vegetables and other home needs through its platform. For the last reported full year numbers of FY22, the company had reported net losses of Rs186.4 crore. Country will issue Compulsory Convertible  Preference Shares (CCPS) to investors against the funds raised. The company plans to use the funds to expand its business with delivery logistics to more geographies and also invest in the technology stack to improve its business offerings. 

Captain Fresh bags $13 million for business expansion

Captain Fresh, the B2B seafood start-up has bagged funding of $13.25 million or Rs110 crore. The funding was raised from Nekkanti Sea Foods with participation from Shakti Finvest Private Ltd. The company will use the funds to fund its capital expenditure and business expansion plans. The funding will be through the issue of compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) for the said amount. 

While Nekkanti Sea Foods led the funding round with Rs50 crore, Shakti Finvest Private Ltd chipped in with another Rs30 crore, with the balance coming from high net worth investors. Captain Fresh was founded in the year 2019 by Utham Gowda as a farm to retail platform for animal proteins. It directly procures from agents and farmers and supplies it across the B2B, B2R and B2B2C channels. It competes with the likes of Licious, Fresh To Home and Good to Go. It also plans to expand its operations to Europe and the US. 

OneCard secures $11.44 million funding via the debt route

OneCard has raised $11.44 million or Rs95 crore from Alteria Capital. This will be in the form of debt fund raising. The board of OneCard has passed a resolution to issue a total of 9,500 non-convertible Debentures of Rs1 lakh each. These debentures will bear annual interest of 13.85%, which is a fairly steep rate to be raising funds at. OneCard is already a fintech unicorn, which means the valuation based the last funding round is above $1 billion.

OneCard was founded in 2018 by Anurag Sinha, Rupesh Kumar and Vibhav Hathi. It offers co-branded credit cards in partnership with banks like Federal Bank and BOB Financial. It also offers credit card related services like CIBIL score check and expanse management applications. The fund will be deployed for business operations.

Wiz Freight secures $11.2 million funding in Series B funding round

Wiz Freight, the supply chain start-up has secured funding of $11.2 million or Rs93 crore as part of the Series B funding round. The company plans to use these funds for financing its growth plans, expansion, general corporate activities and to improve its tech stack. Wiz Freight was founded in the year 2020 and it helps exporters and importers to manage cross border shipments. The company claims to have shipped 45,744 TEU (total equivalent units) and 2,882 air tonnage of freight.

The funding round was led by Japan based  SBI Investments with participation from Tiger Global, Nippon Express Fund, Axilor Technologies Fund, Arali Investments and Unikon Shipping Ventures.  The company will be raising these funds via quasi equity through the issue of cumulative convertible preference shares (CCPS). Overall, the company plans to raise $30 million in the Series B round and the funding has been done at an indicative valuation of $175 million. 

CureBay raises $7.4 million from Elevar Equity

HealthTech start-up, CureBay has raised $7.4 million or nearly Rs62 crore from as part of the Series A1 round of funding. The funding was led by existing investor, Elevar Equity. Some of the founding team and existing leadership team also participated in the funding round. The start-up plans to use the funds to build an intelligent and robust health data platform. It will also hire more than 200 professionals for key tasks; which will include data scientists, diagnostics experts, and pharmacy experts. 

CureBay was founded in the year 2021 and offers tele consultation with doctors and also supervises a network of micro satellite health centres. HealthTech platforms and online consultation units have been one of the major segment in which the investors have shown intense interest in funding.

Digital stories back on FII radar

That is not the kind of news you have seen for some time, but Paytm has now emerged as the top pick of BOFA Securities for the first quarter for 2024. Paytm had listed in 2021 and continues to trade well below the IPO price, despite the recent rally. BOFA has reiterated its price target of Rs1,165 for Paytm which entails the stock rallying over 70% from current levels. Paytm is also expected to turn profitable in this year and brokerages are of the view that the recent RBI curbs on digital consumer lending would have limited impact on Paytm. The good news is that digital stocks are back on the FII radar.