Deals of the week

The big boys of India’s startups kept the cash register ringing this week down South. While Bengaluru’s Cure.fit attracted investors to park funds in the two-year-old healthcare and wellness startup, California- and Chennai-based software maker Freshworks became the newest entrant to India’s elite billion-dollar club with its fresh $100 million funding pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. Bengaluru-based food-tech startup Swiggy, which recently raised $210 million, acquired Mumbai-based on-demand delivery platform Scootsy for an undisclosed amount to boost its restaurant network for consumers.

Early this week, Cure.fit raised $120 million—led by existing investors IDG Ventures, Accel Partners and Kalaari Capital—in its series-C funding round. Chiratae Ventures and Oaktree Capital also participated in the fresh round of funding. Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal started Cure.fit with ex-colleague and former Flipkart chief business officer Ankit Nagori in 2016. The startup has four products under the Cure.fit platform: Cult.fit, a chain of premium fitness centres; Eat.fit, an online health food delivery service; Mind.fit, a provider of online-offline mental health and wellness services such as meditation and yoga; and Care.fit, which provides online-offline services in primary healthcare.

Founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnaswamy, Freshworks has so far raised $250 million from investors. The company provides software as a service (SaaS) solutions that make it easy for customer support, sales and marketing teams to resolve customer issues better. Over 150,000 companies including Honda, Hugo Boss, Toshiba and Cisco use its product. With the latest funding Freshworks joined the ranks of companies such as Ola, Paytm, Zomato that are valued at a billion dollars or more. The fresh funding round was co-led by marquee investors Accel and Sequoia, with participation from CapitalG, a growth equity fund of Alphabet Inc.

Health-tech startup HealthSignz raised $5 million in a funding round led by Kantilal Patel, founder of Nirvana Health Group, New Zealand’s largest primary healthcare group, and others. HealthSignz is an artificial intelligence-driven healthcare platform founded in 2014 by Hanumantha Rao Ch, Dr Vinod P. Nair, Dr Ram Papa Rao and Surendranath C.

Among other funding rounds, Bengaluru-based Amazon India led a $11 million series-B financing round in urban mobility startup Shuttl, along with Amazon Alexa Fund and Dentsu Ventures. The company’s existing investors Sequoia Capital, Times Internet, and Lightspeed Ventures, also participated in the round. The investment will help the Gurugram-based company to expand its geographical reach and serve more consumers across Indian cities.

On Thursday Swiggy, India’s largest food ordering and delivery platform, said that it had acquired Mumbai-based on-demand delivery platform Scootsy in an all-cash transaction. Swiggy did not disclose the financial details of the deal, but a report on The Economic Times said it was a “distressed sale” pegged at Rs 50 crore.

Online fashion retailer Myntra also has acquired Mumbai-based Pretr, an omnichannel retail platform. The acquisition is expected to boost Myntra’s online and offline capabilities. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

During the week Five Star Business Finance, a non-bank lender focussed on the South India market, also raised $100 million in a funding round led by global private equity firm TPG which saw participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, an investment fund managed by Morgan Stanley, and Sequoia Capital. Five Star is a non-banking financial company which provides loans to nearly 40,000 customers. The company focusses on lending to the under-banked population. The company manages nearly Rs 1,220 crore in assets across more than 150 branches in six states.

Watch this space to know more next week.