Start-Ups

To kick-start its product strategy in India, Revolut India, the Indian registered entity of London-based fintech player Revolut, has acquired international money transfers company Arvog Forex. While Revolut India did not disclose the purchase price, a source familiar with the transaction estimated it to be around $4.5 million.Revolut will work with the Mumbai-based forex firm to obtain a forex licence and begin offering remittance and forex services to Indian customers. The company entered the Indian market in April 2021 to make most of the deepening of digital financial services in…

Wakefit is one of the few growth-stage startups that have managed to cross Rs 400 crore revenue mark within 5 years of its inception. The sleep solution cum furniture company has registered 2.07X growth in its operating revenue to Rs 408.59 crore in the last fiscal year from Rs 197.44 crore in FY20, Wakefit’s annual financial statements show. Wakefit has made 94.74% of its income through the sale of manufactured mattresses, pillows and accessories which shot up 2.07X to Rs 387.1 crore in FY21 from Rs 187.16 crore in the preceding…

Secunderabad-based CRM Runo, a startup that provides call management CRM solutions, has raised $500,000 in a pre-Seed funding round led by Unicorn India Ventures. Runo, founded in 2018 by Rajsekhar Pattnaik and P.V. Vamsi, offers a full-featured Customer Relationship Management suite in a mobile app, with products ranging from Call Management to Sales CRM, Collection CRM, and POS CRM. The features can be customised according to the industry sector and the specific services offered by each business, according to the startup. Every interaction and every prospect can be tracked until…

Nazara Technologies, a digital gaming and sports platform, reported a 17 percent drop in consolidated profit after tax to Rs 14.8 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2021 on Friday. In the previous fiscal quarter, the company had a profit after tax of Rs 17.9 crore. Its consolidated revenue from operations increased 42.48 percent to Rs 185.8 crore in October-December 2021, compared to Rs 130.4 crore the previous year. The company’s consolidated PAT increased by more than fourfold to Rs 42.8 crore for the nine months ended December…

TheMathCompany, a data analytics and data engineering firm, has approved the buyback of shares for existing shareholders, including the firm’s co-founders. According to TheMathCompany’s regulatory filings with the MCA, all existing shareholders who will participate in the buyback will receive an issue price of Rs 155.32 per share, aggregating up to 93.2 crore or $12.5 million for 60 lakh equity shares and constituting 24.82 percent of the total equity up and free reserve of the company. According to the filings, the buyback is open to all current shareholders on a…

Nextspeed Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates fintech platform Swipe, on Friday said it has scooped up $2 million (around Rs 15 crore) as a part of its seed funding led by Y Combinator. The round also saw participation from a host of investors including Cred Founder Kunal Shah, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, Locus Ventures, Duro Ventures, K3 Diversity Ventures, Lish Lee Jung, among others. The startup said that it plans to use the fresh funds to touch over India’s one million businesses by the end of 2022. It also…

As new-age companies, flush with money, continue to hire, many of them are looking for senior talent outside of India. Expansion into new geographies, especially for companies with a strong product-market fit, as well as a search for more developed skills in emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, according to headhunters, are the driving forces behind this hiring. Hiring is primarily taking place in areas such as technology, product, design, and data science, where there is a talent shortage in India. Classplus, an edtech firm, is looking…

Spinny, a used car retailing platform based in Gurgaon, announced today that it has purchased a 100 percent stake in Scouto, an AI-powered car connectivity solutions startup, for an undisclosed sum. The deal, according to the company, will be one of the first in the AI-powered used car solutions segment, where Spinny is aiming to be the market leader. Spinny made the announcement nearly two months after raising an undisclosed amount of money from former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. Scouto claims to have built an end-to-end connected car technology suite that…

Indian startups raised more than $7 billion in funding in the fourth quarter of 2021 (October-December), up 18% from the third quarter, and 14 of these companies joined the ever-growing unicorn club according to a Nasscom-PGA Labs report. Unicorns are privately held companies with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more. According to the report, the number of deals closed in the October-December quarter increased by 52 percent to 184, up from 121 in the previous quarter. Fintech and retail tech were the most well-funded sectors, accounting for 24%…