Deal Talk: Sequoia may back Whatfix; Embibe buys Mockbank; truMe raises $0.1 mn

Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India is in talks with SaaS platform Whatfix to invest up to $30 million in the startup at a post-money valuation of $150 million, Mint reported, citing sources.

According to the report, existing investors, Eight Roads Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and Cisco Investments, are also likely to participate in the round.

In March, Whatfix, owned by Quicko Technosoft, raised $12.5 million in its Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures.

Founded by Vara Kumar Namburu and Khadim Batti in 2013, the company makes software adoption easier for companies. The products involve onboarding, performance support, change management and training.

trueMe

Gurugram-based truMe, an identity and access management ecosystem platform, has raised $145,000 from US-based angel investor Rajan Kaistha. In a statement released by the startup, it said that the fresh funds would deepen the company’s footprint in Delhi-NCR and help expand operations to Mumbai and Bengaluru.  The company will also use the proceeds to invest in talent and technology.

truMe is the flagship product of Mobico Comodo Private Limited, an IT product startup in the identity and access management space. The company, which owns the truMe patent, is helmed by three entrepreneur friends – Babu Dayal, Pramod Uniyal and Lalit Mehta; the latter two are batchmates from IIM, Ahmedabad.

Embibe

Reliance-backed edtech startup Embibe has acquired MockBank, an online test preparation startup for public sector job exams, multiple media reports said. MockBank provides exam preparation courses and mock tests for government job entrance exams across sectors including banking, railways, staff selection commission, civil services, and insurance sector.

The acquisition is expected to help Embibe boost its presence in the government jobs segment. Started in 2013 by Konark Singhal, Ramesh Narayanan, and Manesh Jain, MockBank’s investors include Blume Ventures, Mercatus Capital and Slideshare co-founder Amit Ranjan. According to media reports, Embibe had earlier acquired an engineering and medical entrance exam training portal 100Marks for an undisclosed amount in 2015.

Zilingo

Singapore-based fashion marketplace Zilingo has acquired software company nCinga Innovations in a $15.5 million cash and stock deal, it said in a statement. Sri Lanka-based nCinga Innovations was founded in 2014. The company offers an IoT platform to enable real-time production monitoring on factory floors and data analytics tools.

“We have partnered with them (Ncinga) for a long time and their work has been crucial to our mission of creating a transparent, sustainable, economically viable and socially responsible apparel supply chain,” said Zilingo co-founder and CEO, Ankiti Bose.

Zilingo was founded in 2015 by Bose and Dhruv Kapoor. With this acquisition, it wants to expand its Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software across its global network of six thousand factories and 75K businesses, which will later help the company enter untapped markets.