In Brief: WhiteHat Jr may raise $50 mn; GPX India launches open cloud exchange in Mumbai

Mumbai-based educational technology startup WhiteHat Jr may raise $50 million from venture capital, private equity and sovereign funds, The Economic Times reported. GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, Renuka Ramnath-led home-grown private equity firm Multiples Alternate Asset Management and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, among others are likely to invest in the company, the report said. Last year in September, the company secured $10 million in a Series A funding round led by existing investors Omidyar Network India and Nexus Venture Partners. In April, it raised $1.3 million (Rs 9 crore the) in a seed funding round from venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners and impact investor Omidyar Network India Advisors.

GPX launches open cloud exchange at its Mumbai campus

GPX India, which provides carrier-neutral data centre, has rolled out GPX open cloud exchange at its Mumbai campus. The service will enable a direct, private, and secure connection with multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) hosted inside the same GPX data centre campus, according to a statement. Additionally, the service will help enterprises in connecting with multiple cloud providers via a single port, while accelerating their cloud adoption and establishing enterprise edge nodes to optimise their hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud network strategies. 

Flipkart issues equity shares to Singapore-based holding entities

Singapore-based Flipkart’sholding entities have infused about $90 million in Walmart-backed ecommerce platform, Inc42 reported. Flipkart Internet issued fresh equity shares to Singapore-based Flipkart Marketplace and Flipkart, the report said. The company issued 3,14,289 shares at a face value of Rs 1 with a premium of Rs 21,476. Last month, Flipkart infused $60.7 million in its business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Flipkart Internet.

Entrepreneur First hires two venture partners

London headquartered talent investor Entrepreneur First (EF) has appointed Venkat Raju as its venture partner in India and Benedict Evans as its global venture partner. In their new roles, Raju will work closely with the Entrepreneur First startups in India across areas such as technology, business model and go to market strategies. While Evans comes on board as an advisor to EF’s global portfolio and will support the current and upcoming cohorts at the Investment Committee. Raju has over three decades of experience in business, technology, and general management while Evans has over 15 years’ of experience in the tech and media industries.

Arvind Singhal joins ed-tech startups Vedantu as COO

Bengaluru based Vedantu Innovations, which runs an eponymous interactive online tutorial platform, has appointed Arvind Singhal as its chief operating officer. In his new role, Singhal will lead the company’s growth strategy and scale up the organisation while working closely with sales, marketing, academics, operations, and customer experience teams. He will be based in Bengaluru and will report to the CEO and co-founder of Vedantu, Vamsi Krishna. Prior to the current role, he has worked with Asian Paints, Marico, Nokia, Reliance Communications, McDonald’s, TaxiForSure, Ola, BlueStone and Blackbuck.