Deep Rooted, a farm-to-consumer (F2C) brand for fruits and vegetables, on Thursday said it has raised $12.5 million (around Rs 98 crore) as a part of its Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures with participation from existing investors including Accel, Omnivore and Mayfield.
The Bengaluru-based startup plans to deploy the fresh proceeds to expand its footprints across southern pockets, boost technology stack and onboard talents across marketing, technology and business.
Founded by Avinash B R, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali and Santhosh Narasipura in 2020, Deep Rooted provides urban consumers access to fresh produce sourced directly from farmers.
“With IvyCap partnership, we look to expand across South India, working directly with farmers and delivering the freshest fruits and vegetables to urban consumers” said Avinash B R.
“Fruits and vegetables as a category are ripe for disruption. Deep Rooted, with its razor-sharp focus on F&V, has already showcased a sustainable and profitable view of the opportunity while delivering value to both the farmers and end consumers,” said Ashish Wadhwani, partner at IvyCap Ventures.
Fintech firm Aye Finance has secured Rs 65 crore (around $8 million) in a debt funding from Geneva-based market access platform Symbiotics Investments.
The firm plans to use the fresh funds to scale its credit portfolio bringing a larger population of the underserved population of micro enterprises into the folds of organized lending, it said in a statement on Thursday.
Gurugram-based Aye Finance is a platform which provides business loans to small and micro enterprises across India. It claims to have deployed advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions in most of its critical business processes.
“Aye has been making affordable loans a reality for the historically credit starved micro enterprises of India since 2014. We have addressed the credit requirements of this sector by customising our entire business model to the unique needs of this first-to-credit segment having small ticket loan requirements with no collateral to offer and limited tech experience,” said Sanjay Sharma, founder and managing director of Aye Finance.
Prashant Bhardwaj, regional manager - South Asia at Symbiotics Investments, said, “This social bond is a confirmation of Symbiotics Investments strategy to make sustainability, social and green bonds accessible to financial institutions active in emerging and frontier markets. In addition, the bond’s proceeds will increase the access of funds to the missing middle MSME segment via the strong distribution network of Aye Finance.”
Fintech platform Univest, on Thursday said it has raised Rs 3.8 crore in a pre-seed funding round from a clutch of angel investors.
The firm will use the fresh money for product launch and team building.
Univest, founded by Pranit Arora and Avnit Dhamija this year, offers unique investment ecosystem enabling influencers and investors to discover stocks, research, trade, share information and track stocks through its exclusive platform where investments are made easy, intelligent and transparent.
“A problem for majority retail investors is the identification of the right time to exit a non-performing stock investment and convert to a better investment opportunity. There is an abundance of information available in markets, but the task of being prescient bears its own challenges. Univest addresses this issue, and has set out on a mission to provide its customers quality, actionable insights on existing portfolios, while leveraging the same knowledge to pinpoint towards new investment opportunities with high ROIs. Our goal is to assist each individual investor’s journey in growing their wealth, while building a community of educated, self-reliant investors,” Arora said.
Savart
Hyderabad-based wealthtech firm Savart has raised $1.5 million (around Rs 11 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts’ Angel Fund.
The round also saw participation from existing investor Beenext Asia Fund and a host of angel investors.
The firm plans to use the fresh funds to double down on its marketing efforts, ramp up the product suite expansion and expand its global reach.
Founded by Sankarsh Chanda, Savart helps users create long term out-performance with their mutual fund and stock investments using its proprietary research system – APART (Advanced Process Automation & Research Technology).
"We are glad to have the faith of investors who believe that Savart's journey to becoming India's largest investment advisor is just one step in our journey to be the world's largest & impactful asset management business," Chanda said.
“We are delighted to back this very young and dynamic entrepreneur trying to make investing easier and simplified with pioneering technology that precedes most robo-advisories in India,” said 9Unicorns.