Deal Roundup: Unacademy valuation jumps to $2 bn, Cars24 turns unicorn

Edtech startup Unacademy, in the last week of November, added two large global investors to its cap table at a significantly higher valuation. The round saw its valuation increase four-fold, from $500 million to $2 billion, in just nine months.

The week also witnessed online used car marketplace Cars24 entering the unicorn club with its $200 million in a growth funding round.

Overall, $309 million was raised this week across 20 deals. Seven startups did not disclose the investment amount.

While beauty products e-tailer Nykaa provided exits for its early investors via a secondary infusion from Fidelity, fintech startup Cashfree, D2C dairy startup Country Delight, and vegan beauty brand Plum raised significant rounds this week. 

In terms of mergers and acquisitions, financial exchange platform EbixCash, marketing automation Netcore and edtech firm Upgrad made strategic deals this week.

Funding

Cars24: Gurugram-based Cars24 raised $200 million in a growth funding round, led by DST Global, with participation from returning investors Exor Seeds, Moore Strategic Ventures and Unbound, at a valuation of $1 billion. 

Cashfree: Bengaluru-based payouts service provider and payments gateway Cashfree secured $35.3 million in a Series B funding round. The round was led by financial services-focused Apis Growth Fund II, with participation from returning investors Y Combinator Continuity Fund and Korean venture capital firm Smilegate Investments. 

Country Delight: Direct-to-consumer essentials brand Country Delight bagged $25 million in a Series C round of funding led by Elevation Capital. Asset management firm IIFL AMC also participated in the round through its schemes. Other investors included Matrix Partners and Orios Venture Partners. 

Plum: Mumbai-based vegan beauty products brand Plum landed $15 million in a Series B funding round led by Faering Capital, with participation from Trifecta Capital and returning investor Unilever Ventures.

DailyHunt: Online news aggregator Dailyhunt raised $10 million from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Indian-origin investor Raj Ganguly-led B Capital Group. 

Cityflo: Mumbai-based bus service Cityflo secured 7.7 million in a Series A round of funding, led by Lightbox Ventures. Returning investor India Quotient and other angel investors also participated in the round.  

M&A

EbixCash-AssureEdge: End-to-end financial exchange platform EbixCash acquired a 70% stake in Mumbai based BPO (business process outsourcing) firm AssureEdge Global Services to streamline its fulfilment, collections and last mile delivery. Financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed. EbixCash will rebrand itself as EbixCash Global BPO services to reflect the AssureEdge acquisition.

Netcore-Hansel.io: SaaS-based marketing automation technology company Netcore Solutions acquired Hansel Software-owned real-time, no-code, product experience platform Hansel.io, in a cash and stock deal. The buy will help Netcore accelerate its journey to build customer experience and engagement cloud capabilities, as well as expand use cases across user onboarding and activation, feature adoption, retention and experimentation for mobile app companies. 

upGrad-Gate Academy: Mumbai-based higher education services provider upGrad Education announced its entry into the test preparation market with the acquisition of The Gate Academy (TGA). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. upGrad said it will invest over Rs 100 crore in its new subsidiary and develop over 20,000 hours of content in multiple languages to provide access to at least 1 million test takers annually.

GlobalLogic-ECS Group: Digital product engineering company GlobalLogic acquired London headquartered ECS Group to add cloud-centric solutions to its portfolio, expand its financial services footprint and advance its European strategy.