Salt, a cross-border payments platform focused on businesses, said it has raised $500,000 (Rs 3.7 crore) in a pre-seed funding round.
The investors including Prashant Pansare, founder of Backer Capital, Airmeet; Amit Goel, ex-MEDICI; Vishrut Bubna of Verak previously, BimaPe; Supermorpheus, and from founders of startups, including IIMJOBS, Cashoverflow,Orange, Health, Cloudnine Hospitals, Bizongo, Loconav, Yellow Hospitality, Praxify, Letstransport, and NetNet also took part in the round.
With the new round of funds, the company will use it to build the engineering team, product development as well as building new features as per the product roadmap
Founded in 2020 by Ankit Parasher and Udita Pal, Salt, aims to empower the Indian SMBs and MSMEs by simplifying their banking operations and have more efficient global transactions.
"We are at a cusp of growth in the Indian Impex industry, with Govt pushing for a higher share in the world trade to become an export hub. We require robust banking and compliance products for this industry to support the scale of transactions in a rapidly changing regulatory environment coupled with higher customer expectations” Ankit Parasher, Co-founder and CEO of SALT said in a statement.
Ishitva, an Ahmedabad-based robotic startup, said it has raised Pre-Series A round of over $1 million (Rs 7.4 crore) led by Inflection Point Ventures.
The company said the funds raised will be used in growing sales and expanding the R&D team.
Ishitva said it uses Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, IoT Industry 4.0 to build efficient solutions which help in sorting complex waste. The company aims to focus on leveraging industry 4.0 tools to systematically sort out waste and assess the quality of recyclable waste.
“According to MoHUA, as of January 2020, India generated 1,47,613 MT of solid waste. This is a serious situation that our country is headed to and we are seeing startups taking on this challenge to address the waste generated in the country.” Mitesh Shah, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures said.
Ishitva currently offers solutions including SUKA (AI-powered air sorting), YUTA, (AI-powered robotic sorting), and Netra AI Vision system which helps in identifying waste and smart bins.
PAN Group, a multi-interest business group, has launched an online furniture startup InnoDesigns. The company said it will invest 75 crores (around $10 million) into the new venture and will be led by Neetii Maacker.
The company said it will start from 2 southern cities Kochi & Coimbatore.
“We have launched first in the south of India and in the coming few months in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, NCR and other regions of India” Nidhey A. Pan, Founder, and CEO of InnoDesigns, said
InnoDesigns said customers can choose any furniture design that can further be built by various listed and rated carpenters, small & medium scale manufacturers in their locality.
The platform aims offer great flexibility and affordability to the customers where the high cost and margin of the expensive showrooms get nullified, and customers get the ultimate benefit.
Empire Packages
Full-service law firm Lakshmikumaran and Sridharan (L&S) said it has assisted Japanese listed company Oji Holding Corporation to acquire an 80% equity stake in Punjab-based Empire Packages Private Limited.
The acquisition will enable Oji Holding Corporation to expand in India giving them access to the paper and packaging industry in the country. It said in a statement.
L&S supported Oji Holding Corporation with legal due diligence of Empire, cross-border regulatory aspects, execution, and negotiation of transaction documents.
“Foreign companies are viewing India as a lucrative investment option. This will ensure the growth of our domestic market manifolds. L&S is closely associated with numerous companies for advising and assisting in such cross-border transactions that bring added value to our economy.” Sudish Sharma, Executive Partner, Corporate Advisory and M&A practice at L&S said.
