FutureTech

WeWork Inc. is making its first acquisition as a public company — and the first since current CEO Sandeep Mathrani took over from the company’s embattled co-founder, Adam Neumann. WeWork, headquartered in New York, has agreed to acquire Common Desk, a coworking startup with 23 locations in Texas and North Carolina. Common Desk will continue to exist as a separate brand. The majority of Common Desk’s locations — 19 out of 23 — are managed by management agreements, a common hotel industry arrangement that allows the company to run a…

Isthara Coliving has acquired Letsmobility, a software product engineering firm, in order to digitise its operations and introduce cutting-edge technology solutions to the fragmented coliving industry. The Hyderabad-based firm will collaborate with Letsmobility to create Framework 2.0, which will improve the digital interface of the company’s customer-facing applications. “At Letsmobility, we have always aimed to engineer high-impact tech solutions, accelerate growth and add tremendous value to brands in a rapidly changing ecosystem,” cofounder Gaurav Sharma said. “By joining forces with Isthara, the products we develop will be in better use…

Retool, a low-code platform based in San Francisco, is expanding its presence in India with exclusive offerings as it gains traction among IT service providers and startups alike. The company, which was founded in 2017, was recently valued at $1.85 billion. Low-code development platforms (LCDP) offer a development environment for creating application software using a graphical user interface rather than traditional hand-coded computer programming. Retool is launching a free tier that will allow developers to create more apps and share them with more teammates right away. Hubbler, Appy Pie, ToolJet,…

Platform for full-stack financial servIndia.Groww became one of the most valuable fintech companies after raising $251 million in a round led by Tiger Global at a $3 billion valuation. Next Billion Technologies (NBT) operates Groww’s share broking and investment platform, which reported revenues of Rs 40.41 crore and a profit of Rs 2.73 crore. But there’s more: NBT is a subsidiary of Billionbrains Garage Ventures (BGV), which is a subsidiary of Groww Inc USA, the ultimate holding company. While financials for the US-based holding company are unavailable, we examined the…

Darwinbox, a human resources technology platform, has raised $72 million in a Series D round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEV, and SCB 10X. DarwinBox received $15 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of the global customer relationship management giant Salesforce, a year ago. According to Darwinbox, the company’s valuation after this round will exceed $1 billion, bringing the total investment raised by the company to more than $110 million….

Indiamart Intermesh Ltd., a business-to-business marketplace, has agreed to acquire 100 percent of accounting platform Busy Infotech Pvt. Ltd for a whopping 500 Cr. TheB2B firm is also a participant in Simply Vyapar Apps Pvt. Ltd.’s Series B funding round. It is also acquiring 75,000, 0.0001 percent compulsorily convertible debentures of Legistify, a startup that provides software tools to firms to manage their legal workflows, through its wholly owned subsidiary Tradezeal. Busy Infotech, founded in 1997, is one of the largest accounting software companies in the country, with a pan-India…

Edtech startup upGrad has moved the majority of its information technology infrastructure to Amazon Web Services to rapidly scale its online learning experience. According to AWS, the unicorn led by Ronnie Screwvala was able to double its user base to two million in eight months and quadruple the time spent on its platform during the same time period. “Going all-in on AWS allows upGrad to meet the rapid growth of their learner base as it scales to more than 100 countries, and provides a secure and personalised experience to learners…

Flint, a Bengaluru-based cryptocurrency startup, has raised $5.1 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital India and GFC. Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, IOSG, Better Capital, Antler India, and MSA Capital were among the 11 institutional investors who participated in the round. The valuation at which the funding was raised was not disclosed by the company. This funding round was also attended by over 60 angel investors from around the world. Kunal Shah, founder of CRED, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, Kunal Bahl, co-founder of Snapdeal via Titan Capital, comedian…

Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator programme, has begun its sixth edition with the admission of 20 early-stage startups. The accelerator will begin on January 27th, with founders participating in a 16-week virtual programme. The Surge platform provides startups with scale-up assistance, as well as $1-$2 million in capital from Sequoia and co-investments from other investors. Since its inception three years ago, the has evaluated 10,000 businesses. With the addition of the sixth cohort, the Surge community now includes 246 founders from 112 startups in over 15 industries, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS),…