Edition #8. Women get a bit of a raw deal from venture capitalists. But this week was somewhat different.
A handful of startups, mostly from the consumer space, with women founders on board raised early stage capital.
Naiyya Saggi, who exited Good Glamm Group last year, raised a $1.4 million pre-seed round for her new venture EDT. It’s a design-forward consumer appliances company that’s just emerged from stealth mode. The round was led by Sauce VC. The other institutional investors in the round were Consumer Collective by Atrium and Peak XV’s Spark. Saggi founded the company earlier this year with industrial designer Vyasateja Rao.
D2C haircare brand Moxie Beauty raised a $15 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company was founded in 2023 by Nikita Khanna and Anmol Ahlawat. Bessemer is currently investing here through a $350 million India fund raised this year. Existing investor Fireside Ventures was part of the latest round.
Climate tech also got a nod. Aurassure, co-founded by Akanksha Priyadarshini in 2022, raised a nearly $3 million pre-Series A round led by Zerodha’s investment firm Rainmatter and Unicorn India Ventures. The Bhubaneswar based company offers real-time climate intelligence for enterprise users.
And, social media influencer Kusha Kapila’s shapewear brand Underneat picked up a $6 million pre-Series A cheque from Fireside Ventures and other investors. Kapila founded the company this year with Vimarsh Razdan. Mamaeath co-founder Ghazal Alagh was an early investor in the company.
It isn’t a co-incidence that all of these companies have mixed founder teams — the odds of attracting investors are higher than women-only founder teams.
DealStreetAsia's Female Founders in India 2024 report found that nearly 91.9% of all equity and debt funding for startups went to all-male founding teams, and they closed larger rounds. Startups co-founded by women raised $1.4 billion in 2024, up 30% from 2023. But, the share of women co-founded startups in overall fundraising declined to 8.8% against 9.25% in 2023, the report found.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
More Deals
Norwest Venture Partners invested Rs 750 crore (around $84 million) in automotive components maker Padmini VNA Mechatronics, picking up a minority stake. “This is our first investment in the auto component + mobility space,” Norwest India managing director Niren Shah said in a LinkedIn post.
ChrysCapital and Dragon Funds led a $180 million investment in consumer analytics company MoEngage. Schroders Capital and return backers TR Capital and B Capital joined the round. The infusion closes out MoEngage’s Series F round at $280 million. Last month, A91 Partners and Goldman Sachs led a $100 million investment as part of the round.
L Catterton joined the Haldiram’s cap table, investing an undisclosed amount in the packaged food company. Haldiram’s was valued at $10 billion earlier this year when Singapore’s Temasek picked up a 10% stake in the company for about $1 billion. Alpha Wave Global and International Holding Co (IHC) also subsequently invested in the company.
Ronnie Screwvala’s family investment firm Unilazer Ventures led a $1.8 million pre-seed round in edtech CuePilot AI. Eximius Ventures and Titan Capital participated in the round.
Japan’s SBI Holdings and 360 One Asset joined a $50 million Series B round in space-tech startup Digantara Industries. UpGrad founder Ronnie Screwvala and existing investors Peak XV Partners and Kalaari Capital also participated in the round.
BitKraft Ventures invested $13 million in stock market advisory platform StockGro as part of the startups Series B1 round. This follows a $16.7 million Series B raised by the company earlier this month from public market investor Mukul Agarwal and Param Capital.
360 One Asset led a $7 million Series A round in space and defence tech startup Sisir Radar. Existing investor Shastra VC participated in the round. The company had raised a $1.5 million seed round earlier this year from Shastra VC, INVSTT and Riverwalk Holdings, a venture capital firm backed Singapore’s Thakral Group.
Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath joined a group of investors to lead a $3 million seed round in analogue watch maker Rotoris. Actor Vivek Oberoi, Venture Catalysts, 100 Unicorns and social media influencer Tanmay Bhat were part of the round, apart from a number of founders including Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh and Snitch’s Siddharth Dungarwal.
Exits
KKR has agreed to sell its stake in financial services firm Avendus to Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group. Avendus co-founder Ranu Vohra will also exit his stake, reported at 6-7%, as part of the deal. Financial details of the proposed transaction were not disclosed. KKR acquired a controlling stake in Avendus in 2015 and has been in the market for a buyer since early last year.
Quadria Capital booked a partial exit from its 2024 investment in Nephrocare Health Services, which went public this week. The dialysis services company listed on the bourses at a premium of around 7 percent over the issue price of Rs 460 per share. Quadria remains the company’s largest shareholder post-IPO, retaining a 30% fully diluted stake. Investcorp, 360 One Special Opportunities Funds and International Finance Corporation were also sellers in the IPO.
Funds
Lightspeed Venture Partners is closing out the year with a massive $9 billion-plus warchest spread across six vehicles, as the Silicon Valley venture capital firm prepares to double down on AI investments.
“This is the strongest and most strategic fundraise in Lightspeed's history. We’re executing against a future that looks very different from the past…” Lightspeed’s Bejul Somaia, who leads investments in India, said in a statement from the firm.
How the $9 billion-plus breaks down:
Fund XV-A — $980 million
Fund XV-B — $1.2 billion
Select VI — $1.8 billion
Opportunity Fund III — $3.3 billion
Co-Investment Fund I — $600 million
Other single investor vehicles — $1.25 billion
Commitments for its funds have come from all over the world, including South Korea, Japan and Mexico, Lightspeed’s chief business officer Michael Romano told The New York Times.
Speciale Invest is raising a Rs 1,400 crore ($156 million) growth fund to back deep tech startups at the Series A and B stages. Growth Fund II comes nearly three years after the firm raised its first growth fund. In August this year, it raised Rs 600 crore ($68 million) for its third flagship early stage fund.
Krafton announced a Rs 6,000 crore India-focused growth fund to expand its investments beyond gaming to sectors such as AI, fintech, content, logistics, consumer goods, media, sports, and healthcare. The gaming company teamed up with South Korean internet major Naver and Mirae Asset to launch the fund, dubbed the Unicorn Growth Investment Fund. Krafton has been investing directly in startups here for a while and has invested over $200 million in India’s digital entertainment ecosystem so far.
Quickly, before we go
On Monday, we’ll be dropping a new episode of Unscripted. This one is packed with fun stories and great insights on early stage investing in India. Plus, we’ll be diving into family offices stirring up the venture capital market.
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That’s a wrap for this week. We’ll be back next Saturday.
Have a good week ahead.
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