Deal Talk: Milkbasket, WMall closing in on new funding rounds; Everest Fleet gets over $1 mn

TechCircle brings you a round-up of technology investment and M&A deals reported from across newsrooms. 

Milkbasket

Micro-delivery startup Milkbasket is in advanced stages of discussions with private equity funds to raise upwards of $50 million, TechCrunch reported. The Series C round is expected to be closed in two months.

Founded in 2015 by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket positions itself as the online version of local mom-and-pop grocery stores but with more stock-keeping units (SKUs). It claims to have an assortment of over 8,500 SKUs. The startup supplies perishable and non-perishable products that are bought in smaller quantities but with higher frequency.

It competes with a number of bigger players in the online grocery delivery market like Bigbasket, Grofers, Amazon and Flipkart.

In its most recent fundraising, the company raised Rs 15 crore in venture debt from InnoVen Capital in June. Earlier in the same month, Milkbasket raised $10.5 million in Series B round led by existing investor Unilever Ventures, the venture arm of consumer products company Unilever Plc along with Mayfield India, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and a few Indian family offices.

It also acquired Bengaluru-based PSR Supply Chain and Noida-based online grocery venture Veggie India in recent months.

WMall

Bengaluru-based social ecommerce startup WMall is in talks to raise $10 million in a fresh round of funding, The Economic Times reported. 

Venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures is leading the round while its existing backer SAIF Partners is expected to participate in the round.

The startup had earlier secured $1.8 million from Venture Highway and SAIF Partners, the report said.

Founded by Harmin Shah, Rishabh Verma and Anubhav Singh, WMall is a business-to-consumer (B2C) social commerce platform, especially targeting women in tier-II & tier-III cities to help them buy trusted products online. It sells products on social platforms such as WhatsApp and YouTube, and also through its app. It offers service in two vernacular languages. 

The video content is created by its community members or designated product experts, which is pushed out through these social platforms to enhance the buying experience of its users. It sells kitchen essentials, home decor, apparels, and lifestyle products.

Everest

Business-to-business (B2B) fleet management service provider Everest Fleet has raised $1.1 million from Rockstud Capital Investment Fund (RCIF), Artha Venture Fund-I and a group of angel investors, YourStory reported.

The deal marks the debut investment of RCIF, a sector-agnostic early-stage venture capital fund. 

The fresh funds will be used to increase fleet size and to expand driver partner network, the report said.

Everest helps cab aggregators scale operations besides assisting them with effective assets utilisation, driver management and overall operations.