Deal Roundup: Springboard sweeps week’s fundraise; Byju’s buys WhiteHat Jr

In a lean week for fundraising in India’s technology startup ecosystem, six startups raised about $38 million while three others did not disclose the funding amount.

Total funding this week saw a 295% drop compared to last week. 

Edtech platform Springboard, which raised $31 million in Series B funding, accounted for 82% chunk of the total. 

It was, however, a strong week for inorganic growth in deals. Byju’s acquired online coding language courses provider WhiteHat Jr in a $300 million all-cash transaction. Online car marketplace Spinny bought rival Truebil, and content and e-commerce platform POPxo was acquired by direct to consumer beauty brand MyGlamm.

Funding

Springboard: The Bengaluru and San Francisco-based SlideRule Lab-run edtech startup raised $31 million in Series B funding led by new investor venture capital firm Telstra Ventures.

Eduvanz Financing: The Mumbai-based startup which runs an eponymous online student loans platform, raised about $3 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital and Vistra ITCL, an entity of Unitus Seed Fund India II.

Drink Prime: Bengaluru headquartered Waterwala Labs-run smart water purifier maker, raised about $2.9 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator programme Surge.

inFeedo: The Gurugram-based people analytics-focussed software provider raised $700,000 in a bridge funding round led by global startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Bolo Indya: The Gurugram-based short video platform provider raised $300,000 in a series A round of funding from new investors in Eagle10 Ventures, India Accelerator and others. 

Data Sutram: The Kolkata based Extrapolate Advisors-run provider of location-based data intelligence raised $267,000 from investors Uday Sodhi, Mitesh Shah and Nitin Jain of the Indian Angel Network.

Fitspire: The Delhi based Starcap Wellness-run digital-first vegan nutrition brand has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round from Easy to Pitch co-founders Nikhil Parmar and Priyanka Madnani, and singer Sukhbir Singh, TechCircle reported.

Wobot: The Delhi-based artificial intelligence-powered video analytics provider raised an undisclosed amount in a bridge round of funding from Sequoia Capital India in a bridge round of funding it dubbed as a pre-Series A round.

Probus Smart Things: The New Delhi-run based IoT smart grid automation startup raised an undisclosed sum in a seed funding round from venture capital firm Unicorn India Ventures.

M&A

WhiteHat Education Technology: Online learning platform Byju’s acquired the Mumbai-based provider of online coding language courses, in a $300 million all-cash deal.

Truebil: Online car retailing platform provider Spinny acquired Mumbai-based rival startup Truebil to offer a full-stack retail platform for cars.

POPxo: L’Occitane-backed direct to consumer beauty brand MyGlamm acquired the content and e-commerce platform in a mixed cash and equity deal.