Tag: Startup Funding

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Startups in India To Get Major Boost As HDFC Bank’s SmartUp Grants Aims To Empower Social Sector Startups; Here’s How To Apply

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Mumbai, February 10: With an aim to help and empowering social sector startups in India, HDFC Bank has launched an initiative and has invited applications for the same. We are aware that India is home to one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world.The HDFC Bank has invited applications from startups across all sectors and solo entrepreneurs for its SmartUp grants.

The SmartUp grants by HDFC Bank under #Parivartan –the bank’s umbrella CSR brand. It is aimed at finding and deploying long-term, sustainable solutions at scale, to address social issues and contribute to the economic and social development of the country, the bank said in a statement.

This year, the HDFC bank informed that it will focus on start-ups creating social impact at scale in sectors such as Education – technology (ed-tech) and skill development, among others. Reports inform that the startups will be evaluated basis their market reach, penetration and scalability of the product, degree of social impact in beneficiaries’ lives and economic viability of product at scale.

The HDFC Bank has partnered with nine start-up incubators registered with Govt of India’s MeitY platform to screen, mentor, and monitor start-ups.  The nine incubators are from premier institutes and include IIT – Delhi, IIT – BHU, AIC BIMTECH Noida, IIM Kashipur, GUSEC Gujarat, C-CAMP Bangalore, Banasthali University – Jaipur, Villgro Incubation – Chennai, and T-HUB Hyderabad.

Here’s how startups can apply for the HDFC Bank’s SmartUp grants:

  1. The startups in India can apply for the HDFC Bank’s SmartUp grants on February 16.
  2. After the application process, the bank and incubators will jointly reach out and engage with them through the SmartUp portal hosted on Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s website.
  3. The incubator partners will then screen and shortlist applications and the SmartUp team will select finalists.
  4. Thereafter, finalists will pitch their startups to a jury comprising the senior management of the bank.
  5. It must be noted that the startups will be evaluated basis their market reach, penetration and scalability of the product, degree of social impact in beneficiaries’ lives and economic viability of product at scale.

Smita Bhagat, Country Head – Government, E-commerce and Start-ups, HDFC Bank, said: “Enterprises working in the social sector are doing commendable work in changing the lives of millions of Indians. SmartUp grants is one way of offering our support and encouragement in this journey. We want to be a pillar of support for social entrepreneurs who want to bring a positive change to the society.”

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Startup

Vedantu to Nykaa; 5 Startups That Raised Amid COVID-19

The new normal in today’s world is with the least physical contact, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything is unpredictable similarly, seeing the change in consumer behavior is natural. Fighting with odds, many Indian startups continued to raise funds in tough times.

That’s true, the pandemic has unquestionably changed the funding scene in India, but truly has created many new possibilities for those startups that can adapt to the current environment. There are some startups that have already shown a trend- defying growth, which created a benchmark and ray of hope to many startups.

In current time two situations were going on in the startup ecosystem, one where a handful of startup able to raise funds, and the other hands a few startups is still struggling. Hence, we are going to list a few startups which successfully raised millions of funds and blooming in their sector.

Vedantu

The ed-tech sector has come into the spotlight since the lockdown started. Vedantu is one of the online class venture, founded in 2014 by Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash, and Vamsi Krishna. They provide online tutoring classes from class 1st to 12th and even for medical and engineering exams.

As per this ed-tech startup has raised $100 million and valuing the company at 600 million. The startup owner claimed they have recorded growth of 220% in the period of lockdown, with 2 million students subscribed.

InCred

Mumbai based NBFC InCred, founded in 2016 by Bhupinder Singh, which started with operations with consumer lending then expanded into small business lending in 2017. As per the company stated, they have a loan book over Rs 2,000 crore.
As per the latest reports of April 2019, the digital lending platform has successfully raised Rs 600 crore in led by the Dutch development finance institution FMO.

Dunzo

Dunzo is a hyperlocal delivery app founded in 2015 by Kabeer Biswas currently, Dunzo has a firm place in the hyperlocal delivery space their services available in eight cities Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurugram, Pune, and Jaipur. Initially, they started with delivering individual sources, but with time they expanded in categories like groceries, fruits, and vegetables, fish and meat, etc.
In the current scenario, Dunzo has raised $28 million, and their funding round led by Google and Lightstone Fund. If we speak about an existing investor in the company is Google, and it was their first investment in an Indian start-up in 2017.

Nykaa

Mumbai – based e-commerce platform of fashion and beauty, founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012. They have played an instrumental purpose in shaping the beauty and lifestyle industry through its curated product in The Indian market in a great price range.
As per the latest reports in may Nykaa raised Rs 66.64 crore from their primary investor Steadview Capital. Later on, this round of investment company became valued at $1.2 billion, therefore, entering the startup unicorn club.

Unacademy

Another Ed-tech platform Unacademy founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini in the year of 2015. The platform was built for educators and new-age learners by focusing on producing educational videos and providing interactive classes to students. During the outbreak of pandemic and complete lockdown, they bulged with 20,000 Free Live Classes on their platform.

Recently, Unacdemy entered the Unicorn club by raising $150 million by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank valuing it at $1.45 billion, in just six months. Which got to them the second Ed-tech startup in the country after Byju’s.

In the gloomy sky, these startups’ growth acted as the silver lining as in these difficult times, not only these, but many more startups from Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore, and other cities were able to raise funds through hard work. We believe after reading the article you find motivation and see the silver lining in these puzzling times.

 

 

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Startup

What is a Startup? How Do Investors Add Value To Startups? All You Need To Know

Startups | Representational Image (Photo Credits: Pexels)

India is now becoming the world’s fastest growing startup ecosystem. In order to understand a startup ecosystem, one needs to know what a startup means! A startup is a young company that is usually founded by one or more entrepreneurs to develop a new and unique product. These entrepreneurs launch a service and bring it to market for people to use and benefit out of it. Startup, as the name suggests, begins with initial funding from the founders, their friends, families, relatives, among others.

Startups are becoming very popular in India. A start-up is basically a company or project begun by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. Startups face high uncertainty but some of them do go on to be successful and influential and become unicorns. The startup process can take a really long period of time and can go up to years to be successful. Hence, sustaining effort is required.

Over the long term, sustaining effort is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes. One needs to understand the basic concept that an entrepreneur is an individual while startup is an entrepreneurial team, and needs to work accordingly to achieve the desired goals.

How do Investors add value to Startups?

According to Startup India Portal, which is India’s largest online entrepreneurship, the investors, particularly venture capitalists (VCs) add value to startups in a number of ways. The Startup India Portal platform allows startups to network, access free tools & resources and participate in programs & challenges.

  1. Stakeholder Management: Investors play a key role in building up the startup. They help by managing the company board and leadership to facilitate smooth operations of the newly started firm. In addition, their functional experience and domain knowledge of working and investing with startups imparts vision and direction to the company.
  2. Raising Funds: Investors are best guides for the startup to raise subsequent rounds of funding on the basis of stage, maturity, sector focus etc. and aid in networking and connection for the founders to pitch their business to other investors.
  3. Recruiting Right set of people: Sourcing high-quality and best-fit human capital is critical for startups, especially when it comes to recruiting senior executives to manage and drive business goals. The venture capitalists, with their extensive network can help bridge the talent gap by recruiting the right set of people at the right time.
  4. Proper Marketing of the Product: VCs assist with marketing strategy for your product/service.
  5. Merger and acquisition opportunities: The venture capitalists should be alert about the merger and acquisition opportunities in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable greater value addition to the business through inorganic growth.
  6. Organizational Restructuring: As a young startup matures into an full-fledged established company, the venture capitalists help with the right organizational structuring and introduce processes to increase capital efficiency, lower costs and scale efficiently.

In India, the Government, under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, has started and promoted Startup India initiative to recognize and promote startups. This initiate is aimed to develop Indian economy and attract talented entrepreneurs.