Fintech startup PhiCommerce, house-of-brands firm Innovist and agritech startup Suind have raised early-stage funding, the companies said Wednesday.
PhiCommerce has raised $10 million (Rs 83 crore) in a Series A1 funding round led by existing Singapore-based investor Beenext. The round also saw participation from Opus Ventures.
The Pune-based company will use the funds for expansion into international geographies and the development of solutions to improve its digital payments offerings.
Founded in 2015 by Jose Antony Thattil, Tushar Ashok Shankar, Anil Sohanlal Sharma, and Rajesh Hanumantrao Londhe, PhiCommerce provides an omnichannel digital payments platform to businesses, banks and networks.
Its digital payments processing platform, PayPhi, enables businesses to accept digital payments across online, in-store, on-the move and doorstep channels with value-added plug-ins for various industry segments.
“We plan to utilize these funds to roll out new products. On the back of our success in the Indian market, we also will be expanding our services to other geographies” said Thattil, co-founder and chief executive officer, PhiCommerce.
In FY23, the startup managed to clock Rs 34 crore in net sales and reported a net loss of Rs 9 crore, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.
Innovist, which is the parent company of Bare Anatomy and Chemist at Play, has raised $7 million (Rs 58.3 crore) in a Series A funding round led by Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund.
All the existing investors, including Sauce.vc, 72 Ventures (the family office of the Falguni Nayar and Sanjay Nayar) and Accel India participated in the funding exercise.
The Gurugram-based startup will deploy the funds raised for product development, market expansion and hiring talent. Founded in 2018 by Rohit Chawla, Sifat Khurana, and Vimal Bhola, Innovist is a house of brands focused on beauty and personal care. Its brands Bare Anatomy and Chemist at Play, amongst others, sell beauty and personal care products.
Last year, the startup secured pre-Series A funding of $3.5 million. The round was led by Accel and 72 Ventures and saw participation from investors including Sauce.vc, Arihant Patni (Patni Family Office), Jani Ventures Inc, Nihir Parikh, Rashmi Kwatra (Sixteen Street Capital), Kunal Shah (Cred), Alok Mittal, and Shripad Nadkarni (Maverix Platforms and Fingerlix).
Suind has secured Rs 5 crore (about $600,000) in a seed funding round led by early-stage venture capital firm Sunicon Ventures. The round also saw participation from Zetta Farms and undisclosed angel investors.
The company will use the capital for developing its technological stack, improving the scalability of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven crop protection platform and expanding its presence, both in India as well as in Europe.
Founded in 2020 by Kunal Shrivastava and Kevin Kleber, Suind is an agritech startup that operates from Bangalore and Zurich. The startup aims to improve crop protection by integrating drones, computer vision, and data analytics, thus offering solutions for real-time crop monitoring and treatment.
It specialises in developing low-power vision-based AI for drones allowing its drones to operate fully autonomously in plantation terrains like tea, rubber and fruit orchards, among others.
