Podcasts about elevation capital

“We are obsessed with patient experience and outcomes. EBITDA is just a byproduct.”This philosophy has guided MOC Cancer Care and Research Centre to profitable growth while delivering exceptional chemotherapy care through 24 community cancer centers. Founded by four medical oncologists, MOC began with a vision to bridge the massive gap between expensive private hospitals and overcrowded government facilities. Today, MOC is India's largest network of purpose-built centers that focus exclusively on delivering standardized, high-quality cancer care closer to patients' homes.MOC's model built on the two cornerstones of enhancing the cancer patient's journey and improving the medical oncologist's experience has proven remarkably successful. What's even more impressive is their roster of 48 medical oncologists with zero attrition - unheard of in an industry where doctor mobility is the norm.In this conversation with Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital), co-founders Dr Vashisht Maniar, Dr Ashish Joshi and COO Manish Jobanputra discuss their journey of creating a standardized, patient-centric cancer care delivery system.In this episode, you will gain insights on:> Identifying the structural inefficiencies in India's cancer care system> Scaling standardized care across multiple centers> Creating a dual focus on patient journey and caregiver experience> Building doctor satisfaction through autonomy and support> Achieving growth through patient outcomes

"When you walk into any Vridhi branch, the first thing you see is our values on the wall." This isn't just a decorative choice for Ram Naresh Sunku. For this founder who started his journey in a small town in Andhra Pradesh and couldn't speak English, values and trust have been the cornerstone of building one of India's promising affordable housing finance companies. In this insightful conversation with Ishwar (AVP, Elevation Capital), Ram Naresh takes us through his journey of building Vridhi Home Finance, which has scaled to over ₹200 crore AUM with 50+ branches across five states. A rare combination of deep mortgage expertise and technology-first thinking, Vridhi is reimagining affordable housing finance for India's underserved segments. In this episode, you will gain insights on: Transitioning from corporate leader to founder Building a values-first organization Technology's role in traditional mortgage business Creating the right founding team Scaling in affordable housing finance The art of liability management

"No one really knows what happens in 70% of Earth's surface” This stark reality drove Gaurav Seth and Vinit Bansal to create PierSight, a spacetech startup using SAR and AIS-equipped satellites to pierce through this maritime blindspot and bring 24/7 visibility to the world's oceans. When the former ISRO scientist Gaurav and National Instruments engineer Vinit first collaborated on a prototype that normally takes months to build, they completed it in just six weeks. This "aha moment" sparked a journey to revolutionize maritime surveillance through a constellation of all-weather imaging satellites. In this illuminating Day One conversation with Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital), Gaurav and Vinit discuss their journey of building PierSight, why they chose SAR vs optical imaging, their unique approach to team building, going after the right applications, what it takes to win defence contracts, and early market validation while navigating the challenges of building a deep-tech startup in India.

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Wednesday, October 30, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started. As Sebi comes down hard on futures and options trading, the National Stock Exchange is seeing fewer trades. Turnover and trades on the NSE have hit a six-month low. Ram Sahgal writes that average daily turnover fell nearly 12% to ₹1.07 trillion in October, with only 734.3 million trades taking place. Market experts said that Sebi's incoming clampdown on F&O trading is the main reason for the decline. Additionally, increased selling by foreign investors has contributed to a pessimistic market sentiment. Swiggy is gearing up to “deliver” an IPO in early November. The quick commerce company is eyeing a valuation of $11.3 billion with a price band of ₹371-390 p er share. The IPO spells huge gains for Swiggy's early backers like Accel, Apoletto, and Elevation Capital, with returns possibly soaring up to 35 times their initial investments, reports Priyamvada C. The IPO will be a mix of ₹4,499 crore in fresh issues and a secondary sale of 175.1 million shares. Swiggy is looking to expand its quick commerce arm, Instamart, and scale up its network of dark stores. As Swiggy steps into the public market, it's set against the backdrop of its rival Zomato's recent profitability and booming market cap.  Bharti Airtel recently announced a unique CEO transition plan with a 14-month wait before the new chief takes the helm on January 1, 2026. This prolonged handover period raises questions: What's the ideal CEO transition time? Shelley Singh tackles that question in today's Primer. Traditionally, CEO transitions can vary. For instance, Starbucks and Boeing witnessed rapid transitions due to performance crises, with new CEOs stepping in within a month. However, planned transitions generally allow six months to a year for a new CEO to settle in, providing clarity on a company's direction to investors and employees.  India and Canada are at loggerheads. Diplomatic tensions between the two nations have affected geopolitics and harmed their trade. Previously on an upward trajectory, trade has dropped from last year's total to $3.38 billion in the first five months of this fiscal year. India's imports from Canada and exports both saw minor reductions, contributing to a widening trade deficit, reports Rhik Kundu. This slowdown in trade comes at a time when global trade is generally muted due to economic slowdowns in major economies and geopolitical tensions.  It's tough to grow out of your parent company's shadow. Peak XV (pronounced fifteen) Partners is experiencing just that. The venture capital firm is experiencing a decline in brand value since it was hived off from global brand Sequoia last year. Shelley Singh writes that despite inheriting assets worth $9.2 billion, Peak XV  recently announced a reduction of 16% in its growth fund. It also reduced its management fees, reflecting a diminished brand prestige. Its leaders assert that such a move is necessary to remain competitive, and maintain that the firm's image and economics are still unparalleled. 

IPEM - PE HubPE Cube s'invite dans l'agora du Private Equity - l'IPEM Paris du 9 au 11 septembre au Palais des Congrès - pour donner la parole aux acteurs de référence de l'industrie du PE venus du monde entier et les faire réagir aux grandes questions et enjeux de notre industrie.Au micro dans cet épisode : Julien Godard, Senior Partner chez Elevation Capital PartnersDécouvrez le regard de notre invité sur les 3 questions suivantes :➡ How can Private Equity strengthen itself to continue its growth?

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Wednesday, 18 September 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started.Indian benchmark indices, the Nifty and the Sensex, saw a marginal rise on Tuesday as traders remained cautious ahead of US Fed's policy decision. The Nifty ended the session with a 0.14% gain while the Sensex ended with a 0.11% rise.On Tuesday, we wrote about Brookfield's plans to venture into the semiconductor fabrication sector. The sector is hot — today, Gulveen Aulakh and Shouvik Das report that the Adani Group wants a piece of this pie too. It's planning a joint venture with Israel-based company “Tower Semiconductor”. The JV will be based in Maharashtra's Raigad district. While the chips to come out of this factory will meet the Adani Group's requirements, they will also cater to foreign demand.Millions of investors are trying to make a small fortune in IPOs. Every new listing, irrespective of its size, is oversubscribed dozens of times at least. Why? Cases like Bajaj Housing Finance, which doubled when it debuted on Dalal Street on Monday. Listing day gains aren't a new concept, but it's incredibly difficult to secure an allotment for a new IPO. Sashind Ningthoukhongjam writes about strategies one could adopt if they want better chances at securing allotment. You can apply via the shareholder quota, or the small high net investor quota as well. This is a good read for you if you've missed out on some of the blockbuster IPOs we've had this year.Urban Company's early investors, Steadview Capital, Elevation Capital, and Accel, are eyeing a partial exit, planning to sell off stakes worth $100-150 million. This move is part of a broader trend where early backers cash out before a company hits the public markets, and Urban Company is preparing for an IPO next year. These secondary sales let old investors liquidate at a valuation slightly under Urban Company's estimated $2.6 billion—a strategic move as they near the end of their fund cycles. Mint's Sneha Shah and Priyamvada C report on the secondary share sale at Urban Company - something that reflects a broader trend in the Indian startup scene.What's your portfolio mix?.... Most savvy investors would say stocks, mutual funds, gold and real estate. But there's a new player in town: “Rare Collectibles”. Dipti Sharma writes that Indian investors are diversifying into luxury items like art, vintage cars and luxury watches. Rare Japanese whiskeys are part of such investments too, as the market now has both buyers and sellers. Some experts believe that these collectibles will turn into a key asset class. What rich Indians once bought for personal enjoyments, are now treated as investments that could give you decent returns.Back in 2013, India launched a plan to strengthen small farmers by creating Farmer Producer Companies  or FPCs, giving them the power to negotiate better deals and manage resources collectively, similar to successful dairy co-ops like Amul. Farmers buy shares in these FPCs, which then operate under the Companies Act—this shields them from political and bureaucratic hassles and allows them to tap into government grants. Fast forward to today, and there are over 9,000 FPCs with more than 2 million members, about 28% of whom are women, writes Sayantan Bera. These FPCs have broadened their reach, securing licences to sell everything from seeds to processed foods, helping farmers get better prices and market access. However, it's not all smooth sailing. Many FPCs struggle with getting enough working capital; high interest rates from loans make growth tough. Is Adani's semiconductor play a long term game?Struggling with IPO allotments? Tips to boost your chancesUrban Company's early backers Steadview, Elevation, Accel to sell partial stakeFrom pink dogs to fine wine, India's wealthy diversify into rare collectiblesMicro Amul: Are farmer-run companies the next big idea in Indian agriculture?

"Traditional wealth platforms are going to be inadequate for this emerging class of investors…" A new generation of tech and startup professionals is amassing wealth through ownership stakes in their companies, primarily through ESOPs. And these individuals are seeking compelling opportunities to reinvest in the ecosystem they understand best - needs that traditional platforms aren't equipped to handle. Yet, paradoxically, the very people building today's great companies often find themselves locked out of investing in them. Unless you're part of an exclusive network or compensated with ESOPs, the doors to startup equity remain firmly shut. This disconnect is what spurred Ankita Tandon and Joylita Saldanha to start Infinyte Club. Infinyte Club is addressing the unique needs of this segment by unlocking access to the coveted asset class of startup investments as their starting point, with a vision to become the money manager for the next-generation wealthy.In this conversation with Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President, Elevation Capital), Ankita and Joy take us through their journey of building a wealth management platform tailored for the Intelligent Investor - the employees, builders, and operators of India's burgeoning tech & startup ecosystem. They discuss the emergence of solo capitalists in India, the importance of building a team with "T-shaped” personas, and how their own fundraising experience informed their product design.

New Day One podcast episode! "We had just one month of runway left, and that was in a fixed deposit." This moment of truth in May 2022 sparked a bold decision that would define Seekho's trajectory. With their backs against the wall, co-founders Rohit, Keertay, and Yash took a leap of faith - they made the platform paid-only, with a subscription model. The bet paid off spectacularly, and today, Seekho boasts more than 500,000 paying subscribers. In this fascinating conversation with Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital), Rohit takes us through his journey of building a "Netflix for learning" targeted at the masses. Seekho makes learning easy and fun - with a learning-focused OTT platform that's tapping into India's massive appetite for bite-sized, engaging educational content. Rohit's journey is filled with counterintuitive decisions - from charging users upfront in a market known for its aversion to paying for content to running a lean team of just 18 people at this scale. These choices, driven by a deep understanding of the Indian consumer and a commitment to efficiency, have set Seekho apart. In this episode, you will learn about: Identifying and serving the learning needs of the masses Evolution of Seekho's supply engine Hiring for cultural fit rather than specific skills Balancing engagement and monetization for a consumer app

In Episode 6 of #PitchCraft, we shine a spotlight on Meesho as we delve into its remarkable evolution from a social selling platform in 2017 to a leading e-commerce platform in 2024. Discover how their pitch deck played a pivotal role in articulating market opportunity & building trust and credibility with investors. Join us as we dissect Meesho's maiden pitch deck with Co-founder & CEO Vidit Aatrey and early investor Mukul Arora from Elevation Capital.

In the latest episode of SummitUp, Vaas Bhaskar (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Kshitij Jayakrishnan (Vice President, Elevation Capital) from our fintech practice join Viswanathan V. (Head of Marketing, Elevation Capital) to discuss the incredible growth of India's fintech ecosystem and the $400 billion value creation potential in this decade.They explore how India became a trailblazer in fintech and the key drivers fuelling transformation in financial services. The episode dives into some exciting themes where we are actively looking for founders building innovative solutions. In future episodes, we will be double clicking on some of the themes that will unlock this value creation. Stay tuned!Dive deeper into these themes and discover more thought-provoking perspectives from our fintech practice at The Bottomline - https://bottomline.elevationcapital.com/

There is a saying within Solar Square that customer service is not a department but the entire company. This philosophy, ingrained in its DNA, is made evident by the fact that over one-third of its monthly orders come in through word-of-mouth referrals. Solar Square pivoted from being a bootstrapped B2B solar company to a full-stack residential brand when founders Neeraj Jain, Shreya Mishra and Nikhil Nahar believed it was the perfect moment to go after a $50 billion opportunity. Three years into the pivot, Solar Square has helped more than 10,000 homes and 100 housing societies switch to solar and is today India's leading residential solar company. In this conversation with Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital), Shreya and Neeraj speak about creating a new market, addressing the trust gap in the residential solar segment, and accelerating the transition to clean energy, one rooftop at a time.  In this episode, you will gain insights on: Pivoting from B2B and identifying the residential opportunity Going full-stack vs conventional asset-light marketplace model Trust markers in residential solar Being brutally honest about PMF Scaling an operationally-intensive business

Ryan Smith's story is a fascinating one. In this episode, we cover: making $100k in one day while in college, being drafted by two MLB teams, building a $700M+ business with his wife, and much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing, rating, and reviewing it with this link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/real-conversations/id1594231832 Follow Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacoboconnor Follow Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansmithelevation/ Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-o-connor-89a708167/ Subscribe to my YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jacob-oconnor

We are excited to bring you an insightful conversation between Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital) and Ankit Agarwal & Varun Limaye (Co-founders, Mesa School of Business), who are building India's first startup-focused B-school to create entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow. Ankit and Varun observed that companies across India's startup and tech ecosystem were finding it difficult to hire talent with market-relevant skills and hands-on experience in business building, especially for business and leadership roles. Having worked in business functions across leading tech companies like Urban Company and Amazon, they understood the future needs of this growing sector and set out to deliver industry-relevant outcome-focused business education for professionals aiming to build a career in the tech ecosystem. The Harvard and Kellogg alumni discuss their first principles approach to reimagining every aspect of a higher education institution bottom-up and how they constructed a unique curriculum by involving the startup ecosystem. In this episode, you will gain insights on: Why Ankit and Varun zeroed in on higher-ed Closing the skills gap for business roles Offline, full-time program as a design choice Immersive startup-focused program structure and faculty How they built the founding batch Mesa's first 12-month in-person program with 60 handpicked students is currently underway, and applications for its 2025 cohort are now open. Apply here: https://mesaschool.co/

"Can we be the happiness and wellness reinforcement provider to an entire nation?" That's the bold vision Prashant Sachan is bringing to life with AppsForBharat. He passionately believes in building a foundation of trust, especially critical in the devotion space, ensuring that every aspect of AppsForBharat enriches, rather than exploits, the spiritual journeys of its users. This thoughtful approach to product building underpins the culture of AppsForBharat, which today has more than 3 million people turning to its Sri Mandir app to fulfill their spiritual and devotional needs every month. Prashant advises that if a product isn't receiving sharp user love, it's crucial to keep iterating and changing until it does — a philosophy evidenced by the unparalleled customer love for Sri Mandir. We are delighted to bring you an illuminating conversation between Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) and Prashant, where they deep dive into the early days of AppsForBharat. They discuss the acute need to provide reliable digital resources and access to services to enable devotion as a behaviour to move online. In this episode, you will gain insights on: Market gap that sparked the idea for AFB How Prashant's personal experiences influenced the company's mission Serving different user personas in the devotion space First signs of PMF Journey to monetization When should founders raise capital Chapters: 00:00 Coming Up. 01:00 Intro. 02:00 How did AppsForBharat start? 05:41 What does a typical Indian family look like? 06:30 I started exploring devotion. 07:32 AppsForBharat's daily impact in life. 08:08 User personas for AppsForBharat. 10:44 Sri Mandir: Enabler for devotion. 12:50 30% of users are small business owners. 14:34 What was the scope of opportunity for AFB? 19:18 Roughly 300M people pray daily. 20:28 Elevation Capital's AFB partnership decision. 24:58 First principles partnership approach by Elevation. 26:30 Figuring out the engagement loops. 27:14 What were the signs of early PMF? 31:20 User reviews matter. 33:14 How did AFB acquire its first set of users? 34:34 Scaling Strategy: Second phase approach. 37:08 Prashant's user-centric cultural approach. 39:36 Team building & culture at work. 43:42 People find their purpose eventually. 45:46 Roughly 3M people use the app every month. 48:10 Evolution of AppsForBharat's DNA. 50:22 Revenue and monetization metrics. 52:52 Learnings & takeaways for budding entrepreneurs. 58:54 How to approach the capital journey?

Shreya Mishra is the CEO and Co-founder of SolarSquare, a venture-backed startup dedicated to driving the growth of residential rooftop solar installations in India. In late 2022, they successfully secured a series A funding round led by Elevation Capital, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital and others.In this episode, Shreya and Cody discuss the elements necessary for market adoption of rooftop solar in India, including consumer sentiment, financing options, permitting, government subsidies, net metering policy, system maintenance, and even the form factor of the panel installation setup itself, due to the unique nature of many Indian rooftops. And she recounts the ways in which SolarSquare is supporting or innovating in each of these areas. She's building an ambitious company and we enjoyed learning about the Indian context surrounding rooftop solar.  This is a big topic, and this episode covers a lot of ground.  In this episode, we cover: [01:48]: Shreya's journey from fashion tech founder to solar entrepreneur[04:07]: How Shreya learned the ins and outs of the solar industry [07:22]: The evolution and key inflection points of the Indian solar market[11:33]: India's policies for residential solar[13:46]: How India is streamlining processes with a National Solar Portal[16:31]: The permitting process for homeowners with a solar setup[21:50]: Sectors and regions with the highest solar adoption rates[25:43]: How SolarSquare addresses challenges unique to the Indian market, including roof architecture, cyclone risk, and lack of professional solar service providers[28:03]: A deeper dive on SolarSquare's modular prefabricated solar pergolas[35:59]: The emergence of financing options for residential solar in India[43:08]: SolarSquare's staffing and focus on operational excellence over marketing [46:07]: The role of large corporate players in the solar market [48:34]: SolarSquare's financing history[52:02]: How India's economic growth is driving increased electricity consumption and Shreya's vision for the future[55:10]: SolarSquare is hiring!Get connected:Shreya Mishra LinkedInCody Simms X / LinkedInMCJ Podcast / Collective / Instagram*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.Episode recorded on Oct 3, 2023 (Published on Oct 19, 2023)

In this episode, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) sits down with Mohak Nahta (Founder, Atlys) to dissect the journey of building Atlys, the only ‘On Time' visa provider for Indians. Atlys breaks visa applications down to their most fundamental, easy-to-understand elements. The intricate visa application process remains a significant pain point, especially in countries like India, where passport strength often poses challenges. Dated embassy websites, reliance on agents and the often hefty commissions add layers of complexity for millions of travelers, making the whole visa process an anxiety-ridden experience. Enter Atlys. Having personally grappled with the perplexities of immigration and visa systems, Mohak feels a deep connection with Atlys and is committed to transforming the travel experience. Initially positioned as a B2C solution for the US market, it saw organic adoption among Indian expats who then started recommending the product to their friends and family in India. The platform soon turned its sights towards catering to countries with weaker passports, starting with India. With its user-centric approach, Atlys simplified the convoluted visa application process into a streamlined, easy-to-follow procedure. Through innovations like auto-populated information from passport scans, integration with official portals, and elimination of redundant questions, the platform manages to make visa applications a breeze to complete in a matter of minutes. Atlys has grown its GMV 8x in the last eight months and went from working with 1 agent to 2000+ agents for its B2B product since inception. The episode delves deep into the inception and mission of the platform, Atlys' journey from its US origins to its focus on India, the tech stack powering the automation of the visa application lifecycle, value proposition of the product, early signs of PMF, equipping travel agents with Atlys' B2B solution, challenges faced, and advice for emerging entrepreneurs on the importance of selecting the right investment partners. For our listeners, if you're seeking a hassle-free visa application experience, Atlys is your go-to solution. If you're an entrepreneur with a groundbreaking idea, write to us at dayone@elevationcapital.com. In this episode, you will gain insights on: Atlys' US origins to its focus on India Tech stack powering automation of visa applications Early signs of PMF Equipping travel agents with a B2B solution Elevation's early investing framework Reflections on being a solo founder Early stage challenges Future product roadmap Importance of having the right capital partners

In this episode, co-hosts Bob Fraser and Ben Fraser are joined by guest Ryan Smith, the co-founder of Elevation Capital. Ryan share insights from his decades of investment expertise. Focusing on self storage and mobile home parks, he shares insights gained through navigating multiple economic cycles. Ryan offers valuable perspectives on strategic investing at various stages of the economic cycle, coupled with his take on the current macro environment, including interest rates, inflation, and recession concerns. Connect with Ryan Smith on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansmithelevation/ Connect with Bob Fraser on LinkedIn ⁠⁠ht⁠tps://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-fraser-22469312/⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Ben Fraser on LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwfraser/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Invest Like a Billionaire podcast is sponsored by Aspen Funds which focuses on macro-driven alternative investments for accredited investors. Get started and download your free economic report today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://aspenfunds.us/report⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Join the Investor Club to get early access to exclusive deals. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.aspenfunds.us/investorclub⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, so you never miss an episode. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.thebillionairepodcast.com/subscribe

Joining us in The Deep End today is Amrit Singh. Amrit Singh is the co-founder of Loop Health, the fastest-growing health insurance startup in India. Loop Health has raised over $40M, led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital. As we delve deeper into the meta-series of longevity, we engage in a captivating conversation with Amrit, exploring how Loop Health incentivizes health for its users. We'll also venture into the exciting frontiers of the longevity movement and the pivotal role health insurance plays in ensuring our well-being for the long term.

In this episode, Amit Aggarwal (Principal, Elevation Capital) speaks with Shaurya Gupta and Divyansh Ameta (Co-Founders, Wishlink) on their journey of building Wishlink, a platform enabling creator-led commerce through personalized storefronts. The duo, along with Chandan Yadav, started Wishlink in 2022 with a keen insight: influencers and content creators, despite owning prime internet real estate (user attention) and being a key source of consumer influence, were failing to capture their fair share of value. Recognizing that over 55% of social media users engage with brands and discover products through these platforms, they saw an opportunity to optimize this process and make it mutually beneficial for consumers, brands, and creators. Thus, Wishlink was born. By developing a sophisticated tech stack, Wishlink drives transparent and measurable attribution for brands, thus enabling creators to generate consistent, meaningful income. Their efforts have culminated in fantastic growth, with the company recently doubling its monthly GMV to Rs 10 crores in just 2 months, working with 250+ content creators and 60+ brands. By leveraging technology across the value chain, Wishlink is revolutionizing creator-led commerce, especially in the context of India's booming $70B+ e-commerce market, predicted to grow 2-3X in the next 5 years. Join us as Shaurya and Divyansh discuss Wishlink's genesis, its unique problem-solving approach, and their dreams of rewriting the playbook for e-commerce. They delve into their data-driven product development, the experiences and insights shaping their operations, experiments to achieve PMF, and the impact of Wishlink on the rapidly growing creator economy. This enlightening conversation also explores the challenges faced by Shaurya and Divyansh, the lessons learned, and the tremendous potential of creator-led commerce in the digital age.

Apple's annual flagship meet, the worldwide developer conference starts today at 10:30 p.m. India time. On day one of the week-long events, almost everyone is expecting the iPhone maker to finally reveal its version of an extended reality headset. Apple is also widely expected to release the next iterations of its Mac computers as well as the beta version of iOS 17 operating software for its iPhones. Also in this brief, Puneet Chandok, head of AWS in India and South Asia has quit; and Venture Intelligence on how startups are faring in India at the series A level. Notes: Apple's annual flagship meet, the worldwide developer conference starts today at 10:30 p.m. India time. On day one of the week-long events, almost everyone is expecting Apple to announce an extended reality headset. Much of the rest of the week will be more around developer sessions. Apple, which has come under scrutiny for taking as much as 30 percent of the in-app sales made by developers via its ecosystem, is hitting back with a report in which it says the App Store ecosystem generated an impressive $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022. Puneet Chandok, the head of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in India and South Asia, has resigned, surprising industry insiders just weeks after AWS announced a $12 billion investment plan for India by 2030, TechCrunch reports. AWS confirmed the development to TechCrunch, adding that Vaishali Kasture, head of enterprise, mid-market, and global businesses at AWS India and South Asia, will assume the role of interim leader of commercial business at the unit with immediate effect. Pixxel, a private commercial satellite company in India, has raised $36 million in a Series B funding round. The funding includes participation from new investors such as Google, alongside existing investors Radical Ventures, Lightspeed, Blume Ventures, GrowX, Sparta, and Athera, according to a press release last week. The investment will advance Pixxel's mission to build the world's first and highest-resolution hyperspectral satellite constellation, delivering actionable climate insights globally, according to the company. It will also support the development of Aurora, Pixxel's AI-powered analytics platform for accessible hyperspectral analysis. The funds will enable the launch of six satellites in 2024 and 18 satellites by 2025. Pixxel, founded by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal five years ago, has so far raised $71 million in VC money, according to the company. A study by Venture Intelligence reveals that less than one-third of startups that receive seed funding can secure follow-on funding in the form of a Series A round. Venture Intelligence, which tracks the VC and private equity investments in India, has released the findings of its study in the 2023 edition of its series A landscape report. Out of over 2,500 startups that raised seed funding between 2015 and 2022, only 29 percent managed to raise a Series A round, according to Venture Intelligence. The number of companies raising Series A rounds increased by 8% annually from 2017 to 2022, which is an indication of the maturity and quality of the startup ecosystem in India, according to Venture Intelligence. The study also highlights Sequoia Capital India as the top investor in creating successful pipelines for Series A rounds, followed by Blume Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, Accel India, Elevation Capital, 3ONE4 Capital, Axilor Ventures, India Quotient, and Kae Capital.

In this episode, Chirag Chadha (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks with Vedang Patel (Co-Founder & CEO, The Souled Store) on the journey of building The Souled Store, India's largest fan merchandise destination and one of the most loved casualwear brands. Founded in 2013 out of a sheer passion for pop culture, The Souled Store started with the belief that India needed a dedicated fan merchandise destination. The core insight was that the customer, back in the day, had only two extreme choices when it came to purchasing fandom-based apparel - super expensive US imports or the cheap, poor-quality fakes that were sold in unorganized retail markets. The Souled Store caught on to this missing middle and launched fan merchandise with proprietary designs, and at an affordable price, largely scaling the business through their own channels. Over time, as the company witnessed very high retention, the team realized that the customers came to TSS, not just for designs, but also for the right quality of fabric and fit. The Souled Store then started evolving into a casual-wear brand, and this segment now contributes to ~40% of the revenue. The company now boasts of having a registered user base of ~5 Mn customers and an annualized net revenue run-rate of INR 300 Cr while being PAT profitable. TSS is a true D2C company, with 90%+ revenue coming from its own channels - web, app, and offline stores. Tune into this episode to hear Vedang sharing his thoughts on building a brand and its essential elements. Vedang also speaks about bootstrapping for the first 6 years and how that built discipline, frugality, and good culture.

Arnav Kumar is the Founder of Leap Finance, a digital platform that helps Indian students access loans for studying abroad. He completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Applied Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 2010. After graduation, he worked at Deutsche Bank as an Analyst and then joined UrbanTouch.com as a Vice President. In 2013, he founded Sokratik, but unfortunately, he could not find product-market fit and had a suboptimal GTM strategy. Later on, he founded Zoomo in 2014. He then joined Elevation Capital (previously known as SAIF Partners) as an Associate Vice President. Finally, in 2019, he founded Leap Finance. About Leap Finance: From Sundar Pichai to Indira Nooyi and Satya Nadella to Laxman Narasimhan, Indians today lead the world's most influential companies. Increasingly, young Indians are going beyond geographical boundaries - to study at the best global schools and pursue global careers. Leap Finance supports future leaders from India in their quest for global impact. They create modern financial products and services that help Indian students pursue a global career. From choosing the right university and the best financing option to lining up job interviews and introductions, Leap Finance invests heavily in your success. Leap Finance (www.leapscholar.com) offers counselling and related services for study abroad aspirants.

Abhishek Goyal is the Co-founder, Vice Chairman, and Executive Director of Tracxn, a leading research firm that provides market intelligence data on private companies. Since its founding in 2012, Tracxn has secured funding from top investors like 3one4 Capital, Elevation Capital, Prime Venture Partners, and angel investors including Sachin and Binny Bansal, and has grown to become a highly profitable business. After much success, Tracxn debuted on the NSE in October 2022, becoming one of the few venture-backed startups to go public. Abhishek's strategic leadership and unwavering commitment to excellence have been vital in the growth and success of the company. Before Tracxn, Abhishek gained experience working with esteemed organizations such as Amazon Development Centre (India) Private Limited, Yahoo Software Development India Private Limited, and Accel. He also served as a consultant with 3i Infotech Limited and Erasmic Consulting Private Limited. Abhishek has been recognised as part of the '40 under 40' list by Fortune India in both 2018 and 2019, highlighting his success as a young entrepreneur. He holds a bachelor's degree in technology with a specialization in computer science and engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Episode Notes: 1. What was it like before and after Tracxn's IPO? (3:38) 2. Why did Tracxn's founders choose to go public instead of selling the company? (6:10) 3. How has Abhishek's leadership role changed since the IPO? (7:30) 4. How did Tracxn's investors learn about the IPO process, and what was their reaction? (15:53) 5. What's the best analogy for a company going public? (20:20) 6. Why did Abhishek choose to become an entrepreneur? (22:30) 7. What was Tracxn's first milestone? (26:00) 8. Would Abhishek do things differently if he had to build Tracxn again? (30:30) 9. What were some of the toughest days as a founder? (33:33) 10. What is Abhishek's superpower as an angel investor? (38:18) 11. What's the biggest lesson Abhishek has learned over his career? (44:23) 12. Abhishek tips on leadership and management (47:15) 13. What advice would Abhishek give his younger self? (57:00) . . . Social Links: Tracxn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tracxn Abhishek Goyal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhishekTracxn Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash

GUEST INTROIshan Rakshit is the Co-Founder of Shopflo, a checkout infrastructure platform for Direct to Consumer brands. He was formerly an investor with Elevation Capital, which invested in early stage startups out of India. WHAT YOU LEARNAre your clients bringing their payment processing to ShopFlo?What made you want to focus on a global market this time around?Why go after the Indian market if you knew it wasn't the best one?How is fundraising changing in 2023?Would you rather be a founder or an investor in this market?What made you want to become an investor?Did spending time as an investor make you a better founder?What's the most important thing you've learned from being an investor?What's the most important thing you've learned from being a founder?How do you know you can trust someone?What are some of the issues you're currently facing?And much more! EPISODE LINKShttps://shopflo.comishan@shopflo.com

In this episode, Deepak Gaur (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Nitin Saluja (Co-Founder & CEO, Chaayos) on his journey of building Chaayos, India's most loved & largest tea cafe chain. Nitin started Chaayos in 2012 with the core insight that getting consistently good quality tea outside home in a hygienic environment was a regular struggle for consumers. While a bunch of organized players had started entering India with coffee as the primary beverage, tea is the beverage of choice for India, and therefore starting a tea-cafe chain felt obvious to him back then. With a focus on supreme quality, and by keeping personalization at its core, Chaayos has found fantastic consumer acceptance, and the company has now scaled to 200+ outlets across 6 cities in India. By leveraging technology across the value chain, from delivering consistently personalized chai across outlets through Chai Bots to building a very sophisticated loyalty engine & measuring retention cohorts in an offline business, Chaayos is demonstrating how new-age QSRs can be built out of India. Listen to Nitin as he talks about Chaayos' genesis, early journey, scaling up, and dreaming big. Nitin also covers the framework he used to narrow down the problem statement, his experiments to achieve PMF, the depth-first approach to outlet expansion, and building the right team.

In this episode, Poorvi Vijay (Associate Vice President, Elevation Capital) speaks to Sneha Roy (Co-Founder, Murf) on her journey of building a world-class AI-powered text-to-speech platform from India. Murf is an AI-enabled online voice-over studio that allows users to generate and edit voice overs which allows users to generate and edit voice overs and sync them with visuals in a simple and inexpensive way. Whether it is creating a new product explainer video or creating a podcast, you can choose from 120 + Murf Voices to serve a variety of use cases. Murf helps users to go from text to speech with a versatile AI voice generator. Murf also offers products like google slides add on, voice cloning to help a variety of users. Their solution has surely empowered many individuals and enterprise teams to produce content faster. What we liked about Murf was the amazing team and their ability to scale up quickly in the synthetic audio space. Listen to Sneha as she talks about her story, early days at Murf, and how she went about building a team.

Rahul Raj, Founder and CEO of FloBiz.  Flobiz has emerged as a growing global economic startup network to drive technology inclusion in Small and Medium Businesses. Based in Bengaluru, the venture established a neobank for SMBs backed by renowned investors like Sequoia Capital, Elevation Capital,Greenoaks Capital, Beenext and Think Investments. Its primary objective is to introduce a completely new way of doing business for small & medium enterprises with creative use of technology. Its marquee offering, called myBillBook helps SMBs digitise their invoicing,streamline businesses accounting and automate workflows of their enterprises. Rahul Raj, an IITian is the founder and CEO of Flobiz and has competence for entrepreneurship, international trade and business, event organization, startups, etc. He has also been a delegate at Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) Conference 2014 at Tokyo, Japan. He was also an Associate Manager at the Corporate & Media Relations, Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur. He has about 14 years of experience in the business development and entrepreneurship domain. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About The Builders Club : The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle. Know more: ⁠https://www.thebuildersclub.me

In this episode, Akarsh Shrivastava (Principal, Elevation Capital) speaks to Sarthak Jain (Founder, Nanonets) on his journey of building a world-class AI-driven data automation platform from India. Nanonets is a No Code AI-driven automation platform giving businesses smarter ways to run document-based operations such as capturing data, storing and routing documents associated with spend management, procurement processes, loyalty reward programs, and more. Nanonets provides businesses with both user-interface components and APIs that can be connected to business data sources and can be used to update ERP, SAP, and accounting software (among others) to streamline document workflow processes. Their solution has truly democratized document automation by making it accessible to SMB and mid-market customers. What excited us about Nanonets was how the product was cutting-edge but still easy to use and how Sarthak and Prathamesh had figured out a scalable PMF with very little capital. Listen to Sarthak as he talks about the early days of Nanonets, his approach to building his A-team, and more.

Fashinza is an AI-driven B2B marketplace for global fashion supply chains. They make it exceptionally easy for international brands to access design to delivery in as fast as 4 weeks with very low minimums. Fashinza offers access to a transparent production process that can be monitored 24/7 with 100% control enabled by their revolutionary FactoryOS. Their goal is to create a sustainable (i.e. net positive) supply chain by 2030 and empower SMB manufacturers with Industry 4.0 solutions. Fashinza has a roster of over 250 factories that currently serves 200+ brands across 6 countries, including the United States, Canada, UAE and India. The company was co-founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Pawan Gupta, Abhishek Sharma, and Jamil Ahmad. In May of 2022, they announced Series B funding round totaling $100M USD, after 12 months of 10x business-growth crossing $150 million in annualized GMV run rate. --- https://fashinza.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/fashinza/ Pawan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fashinza, building the future of fashion manufacturing industry using data and cloud that is more sustainable, ethical, inclusive, fast, and efficient. Fashinza is funded by leading VCs, Accel Partners (Facebook, Slack, Flipkart), and SAIF Partners (PayTM, Swiggy). Previously Pawan co-founded Curofy, which is today India's largest network of Doctors in India with over 50% of Indian doctors discussing patient cases with their peers to provide extremely quick and better diagnoses to their patients. Curofy was VC funded and got acquired by a large US corporate, Edifecs in an all-cash deal in 2017. Pawan is a mission-driven entrepreneur who believes in using technology and entrepreneurship to bring meaningful change in the lives of the most needy. He was part of Forbes India's 30 under 30 in 2018, Rising Stars by Bloomberg TV, and Young Turks by CNBC. He has also written guest columns in leading publications and has spoken at global events. Pawan Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder at Fashinza --- https://www.linkedin.com/in/pawaniitd/ Abhishek is the Co-Founder and COO of Fashinza, a global tech-enabled manufacturing company helping Fashion brands source apparel using data and cloud that is more sustainable, ethical, inclusive, fast, and efficient. Fashinza is funded by leading VCs, Accel Partners, Elevation Capital, Prosus Ventures (Naspers), Westbridge, and ADQ UAE. He hasextensive experience in product & technology, building start-ups like Flipkart (India's leading eCommerce platform acquired by Walmart), LimeRoad, Curofy (acquired by RoundGlass USA) & BharatPe. He is also a writer and guest author for ProductSchool, Hackernoon, Prototypr, and Noteworthy Abhishek Sharma, Co-Founder & COO at Fashinza -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishekksharma/ In Episode 52 Richard talks with Pawan Gupta and Abhishek Sharma, Co-Founders of Fashinza, about: 00:01:05 : Meet Pawan Gupta and Abhishek Sharma 00:03:40 : Pawan and Abhishek's beginnings in manufacturing. 00:09:13 : What it's like to be a startup person in India today. 00:14:21 : How India's entrepreneurial spirit is changing over time. 00:19:49 : Building manufacturing out of India. 00:26:16 : What does Fashions do and how does it work? 00:30:43 : What are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing in the manufacturing industry? 00:36:18 : What are the three P's that you're focused on with supply chain? 00:40:25 : What's some of the things that shocked people that you're already seeing that has the opportunity to be fixed? 00:44:05 : How to build a supply chain that adds value to your customers. 00:49:04 : The importance of integrating with other supply chain solutions. 00:52:31 : The importance of being a part of a larger tapestry. 00:57:28 : What are some of the things you can do in terms of circularity? 01:02:08 : What's coming in India? 01:05:23 : What's coming up for the company.

In this episode we meet Alok Goel, co-founder and CEO of Drivetrain which is helping companies stay on a growth track. Before starting Drivetrain, Alok was a partner at VC firm Elevation Capital, a $670mn global VC fund. During the 6 years there, he set up the SaaS investment practice, evaluated hundreds of SaaS companies and served on the boards of many. During that period he became fascinated on how companies plan to grow asking himself “why do some companies grow faster while others get stuck?” Fundamentally, a data driven approach and planning are key to unlocking a successful growth trajectory. So, he set out to make the Google Maps for business growth, that helps create plans, tells whether we're on track and helps course-correct when we veer off. That's the idea that led to the birth of Drivetrain.

Gaurav Hinduja is the Co-founder and Managing Director of axio (previously known as Capital Float), an online platform that provides working capital finance to SMEs in India. It offers flexible, short-term loans that can be used to purchase inventory, service new orders or optimize cash cycles. The company has raised over $200M till date from Sequoia India, Elevation Capital, Amazon, Ribbit Capital and PE firm Lightrock among other investors.Gaurav brings deep operating experience in India with detailed knowledge of complex supply chains. Prior to axio, he ran operations for Gokaldas Exports, India's largest apparel manufacturer employing 40,000 people with $250 million in revenues. As COO, he had complete P&L responsibility for a major business line and led the implementation of lean manufacturing across company units. In today's episode, we talk about the journey of the unknown, something many founders go through especially when they start business in domain they've had little or no prior experience in.Episode notes: 1. What inspired Gaurav to pursue entrepreneurship? (3:35)2. Do founders really plan ahead when they build businesses? (6:37)3. Why Gaurav and his co-founder, Sashank Rishyasringa decide to start axio? (8:18)4. What inspired Gaurav to pursue an idea in a field in which they had no prior experience? (11:08)5. Impact of Silicon Valley exposure in Gaurav's entrepreneurial journey (15:52)6. Early days of company formation and customer interactions (18:43)7. When did Gaurav transition from a doer to an enabler in the company-building process? (26:44)8. The significance and impact of early-stage investors (30:37)9. Creating moats as the company expands (33:30)10. How do you gain customers in a competitive market? (37:35)11. How does Gaurav make decisions, and what is his decision-making framework? (44:30)12. What has Gaurav learned about himself during all his years of being in business (50:33). . . Social links:axio on Twitter: https://twitter.com/add_axioGaurav Hinduja on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gdhindujaPodcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vcAkash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakashPodcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivcAkash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash

In this Episode, I (@Jivraj Singh Sachar) speak with Pawan Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO of Fashinza. Fashinza is a managed B2B marketplace in the fashion vertical, aggregating Indian SMEs on the supply side and selling to large international retailers on the demand side. It is disrupting the global fashion supply chain landscape and has soon emerged as the leader in the space. The company is valued at approximately $300 Million Dollars and is backed by some of the most prolific investors in the country such as Accel, Elevation Capital, WestBridge Capital and others. Pawan has previously built Curofy, which exited a couple of years back and this is his 2nd journey as a Founder. What Fashinza is building is extremely fascinating and more so because of how far it has come in a brief time span. I speak with Pawan through the next 50 minutes and uncover how they make it happen. We discuss the core aspects of what makes a marketplace successful and how teams can approach the same. We understand what A+ Talent Means, what growth stands for and how sustainable growth is a more adequate measure, alongside decoding the serial entrepreneur persona, and the operational processes that go behind building Fashinza. This is a special one as it reinforces multiple core principles as well as instills great global ambition as a listener. I am sure you will enjoy it a lot, but before we get started here is a quick word about our sponsor: Stride Ventures, which is one of India's leading Venture Debt Funds, becoming synonymous with innovative startup financing in India. Stride provides comprehensive solutions, going beyond venture debt, to cater to distinctive challenges faced by high-growth and inherently strong businesses, backed by leading institutions. The fund has a portfolio of over 60+ diversified companies, having deployed more than Rupees 1500 Crore to date. In just over two years, Stride Ventures has emerged as the preferred venture debt lender in the Indian Ecosystem. To know more about this phenomenal fund, visit - https://strideventures.in/ Hope you liked the 118th Episode on the Indian Silicon Valley Podcast - Indian Fashion Manufacturing To The World! That was it from this Episode, thanks again for tuning in! :) If you liked the episode, do share with your friends or drop us a quick review! Also, do follow us on social media to stay updated with all new episodes: Twitter: https://twitter.com/isv_podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indian-silicon-valley-podcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indiansiliconvalleypodcast/ Gallery of all Episodes: https://airtable.com/shrTOFf1z5UT0q9p8 You can also subscribe to the YouTube Channel of the Podcast : https://www.youtube.com/c/IndianSiliconValley/ "If you never try, you never know" Stay Tuned, Keep Building.

Conversation with Redekar CEO & Cofounder Sprinto HQ. Hey everyone welcome back to another episode on founder storiez. I am very excited about this conversation. This was such an amazing honest conversation with Grish, co-Founder & CEO of Sprinto_HQ - If I had to bet on a company that I think is going to become HUGE this one is top 5. The founder's mindset and how they approach building and problems is the caliber of top founders. Sprinto has raised $ 12 million from our good friends at Blume, ACCEL, and elevation Capital. This is Grish's second startup, which he's building together with his cofounder Raghu. His first startup RecruiterBox they bootstrapped it & sold. In this conversation with speak about the difference between building a bootstrapped vs venture-funded company. How he handles setbacks, and how he needed to change his mindset. Have a great listen, and if you do benefit please suggest it to a friend who can benefit from it too.

In this Episode, I (@Jivraj Singh Sachar) speak with Mridul Arora, Partner at Elevation Capital. Mridul has been a venture investor for the better part of the last 12 years, since joining Elevation in 2011 when it was called SAIF Partners. Over the years, Mridul has developed expertise in Financial Services and FinTech, investing deeply across the sector. Some of his phenomenal investments include the likes of Urban Company, Acko Insurance, Clear, FloBiz and Uni Cards. His investing acumen and expertise in the sector is unparalleled and I sit with for an immersive conversation decoding his thought process and learnings across a stellar investing portfolio. We primarily discuss the art of venture investing, including how the funding winter is looking on ground, how he looks at Indian FinTech, how pattern matching works, what his investor persona is like and what are his primary learnings observing the journeys of some generation defining companies. This episode is absolutely fantastic as Mridul shares some of his learnings in the most granular way possible. I am sure all of you listening shall have a great time but before we get started here is a quick word about our sponsor: Stride Ventures, which is one of India's leading Venture Debt Funds, becoming synonymous with innovative startup financing in India. Stride provides comprehensive solutions, going beyond venture debt, to cater to distinctive challenges faced by high-growth and inherently strong businesses, backed by leading institutions. The fund has a portfolio of over 60+ diversified companies, having deployed more than Rupees 1500 Crore to date. In just over two years, Stride Ventures has emerged as the preferred venture debt lender in the Indian Ecosystem. To know more about this phenomenal fund, visit - https://strideventures.in/ Hope you liked the 112th Episode on the Indian Silicon Valley Podcast - Pioneering Indian Food Tech Innovation! That was it from this Episode, thanks again for tuning in! :) If you liked the episode, do share with your friends or drop us a quick review! Also, do follow us on social media to stay updated with all new episodes: Twitter: https://twitter.com/isv_podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indian-silicon-valley-podcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indiansiliconvalleypodcast/ Gallery of all Episodes: https://airtable.com/shrTOFf1z5UT0q9p8 You can also subscribe to the YouTube Channel of the Podcast : https://www.youtube.com/c/IndianSiliconValley/ "If you never try, you never know" Stay Tuned, Keep Building.

Sign up for my Daily Fintech or Daily Digital Banking Newsletters here. Check out my latest podcast episode below: This podcast episode is sponsored by MoneyLion. MoneyLion provides an all-in-one mobile banking experience. You choose the tools you need when you need them — and they complement the financial accounts you already have. They'll help you decide what's right for you, but the choice is always yours. Welcome to your daily FinTech news! NEWS HIGHLIGHT ANNA Money has severed its ties with two Russian billionaires, who had indirectly become major shareholders in the fintech. Both billionaires (Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven) are reportedly close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and have been named among the Russian oligarchs covered by US and EU sanctions. Link here FINTECH NEWS #donedeal Jack Henry & Associates is to acquire Payrailz, adding the company's next-generation digital payment capabilities, including real-time P2P payments, to Jack Henry's payments ecosystem. Link here Founderpath recently secured $145 million in debt and equity financing to help B2B SaaS founders grow their businesses without diluting ownership. Link here. The BNPL fintech Kontempo has raised over $30M in a seed round led by Portage. The funding comprised $6.5M in equity and $25M in debt. Other participants in this round were Scor P&C Ventures, Upper90, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Tectonic Ventures, and Ignia. Link here Jodo raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Tiger Global and joined by existing investors Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners India. Link here Unstoppable Finance secured a €12.5 million round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to launch a non-custodial crypto wallet. Link here

Sign up for my Daily Fintech or Daily Digital Banking Newsletters here. Check out my latest podcast episode below: This podcast episode is sponsored by YieldX. YieldX is transforming income investing to bring its benefits to all investors. With YieldX, the outcome is income. NEWS HIGHLIGHT Nuri filed for insolvency today, two months after the Berlin-based digital bank announced layoffs as it struggled with the rout in cryptocurrency prices, economic uncertainty, and difficult funding environment FINTECH NEWS #apple Apple Pay is now available in Malaysia with three supporting banks namely Maybank, AmBank Group and Standard Chartered Bank. #moversandshakers ComplyAdvantage named Andrew Davies as Global Head of Regulatory Affairs. Luno has announced the hiring of Thomas Tudehope who come in as Luno's Global Head of Policy #donedeal A new £1 billion fintech fund to accelerate the growth of promising UK scale-ups is to be backed by a group of senior industry figures Capify launched a £40m fund for UK SMEs, to help manage operations through difficult trading conditions. Link here. CreatorDAO raises $20 million, in an ambitious bet on the creator economy. Backers include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paris Hilton among others. Link here. Appital secured an additional £1.7 million investment from Frontline Ventures and various angel investors to bring technological innovation and automation to equity markets. Link here. Dezerv has bagged $21 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel Partners. Also participating in the round were existing investors Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital. Link here.

In this episode, Kshitij Jayakrishnan (AVP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Shaaran Lakshminarayanan (Founder, Brine Finance) on his journey of building the most seamless and accessible crypto trading platform for the globe. Shaaran's foray into the crypto world started at a very young age of thirteen with his keen interest in security and cryptography. Over time, he conceptualized and built Krypto, which was a centralized exchange and was the first avatar of Brine. During the journey, Shaaran was quick to realize that it was essential to build the platform in a decentralized manner in order to ensure a top-notch secure experience. The team has now been working on Brine for the last few months, which provides users the seamlessness of a centralized exchange experience while actually remaining decentralized. While building Brine, the team has ensured that the users don't have to pay any gas fees, making it a super accessible platform with $1 Bn+ traded volume on testnet across 45k+ users already. Listen to Shaaran as he talks about his early journey in the Crypto world, the pivot to Brine, its differentiated approach, the tech behind it, building a strong community, and the vision for Brine going forward.

MFine, a mobile health app and digital healthcare platform provider facing a money crunch in the slowdown, is merging with the diagnostics business of LifeCell International, a stem cell bank and reproductive genetic testing services company, to form a new entity called LifeWell. Vegrow, a fruits marketplace, has raised more money. And Apple slipped in Q2CY22 worldwide PC shipment rankings, IDC says. Notes: MFine, a mobile health app and digital healthcare platform provider that was facing a money crunch in the ongoing slowdown, is merging with the diagnostics business of LifeCell International, a stem cell bank and reproductive genetic testing services company, to form a new entity called LifeWell. LifeWell has also secured $80 million in investment from OrbiMed, a healthcare investment firm with approximately $18 billion in assets under management. MFine was founded in December 2017 by Ashutosh Lawania and Prasad Kompalli in Bengaluru. The company didn't provide any details about the terms of the deal with LifeCell. However, MFine will continue to offer its app platform and consumer brand, delivering digital healthcare services and tools, according to its press release. Tele-consultations, care plans, diagnostic tests, IP concierge, e-pharmacy and corporate subscriptions will continue to be offered on the MFine app. The money raised will also be used for strategic investments in MFine's fast-growing corporate and insurance channels. Vegrow, a B2B marketplace provider for fruits, has raised $25 million in series B funding, led by Prosus Ventures, the company said in a press release. Matrix Partners India, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India and Ankur Capital also participated in the round. Vegrow was founded in 2020 by Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik and Shobhit Jain. The company has built a network of local advisors to digitally engage with farmers in more than 400 production pockets – processing more than 200 tonnes of fruits daily. The fresh funds will be used for expansion into more demand centres, going deep into supply micro pockets and building a strong talent pool in product, engineering, and other support function domains. Aerem, a solar financing platform provider for MSMEs, has raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures, the company said in a press release. The money will be used for growing the loan book, building out its tech platform and hiring teams including leadership in technology, product, finance, and operations. Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs declined 15.3 percent year over year to 71.3 million units in the second quarter of the calendar year 2022, according to preliminary results from International Data Corporation's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, the company said in a press release. Despite the recent decline and weakening demand, the total PC volume is still comparable to the beginning of the pandemic when volumes reached 74.3 million in the second quarter of 2020. And the market is still well above pre-pandemic levels as volumes in the second quarter of 2018 and 2019 were 62.1 million and 65.1 million units, respectively. While rankings among the top three companies did not change, Apple slipped into the fifth position, tying the company with Asus, as production dipped during the quarter, according to IDC. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

In Episode 11 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Gaurav Hinduja and Sashank Rishyasringa, co-founders of axio (formerly, Capital Float) on their journey of building India's leading consumer finance company offering BNPL, credit, and personal finance management under one seamless brand experience. On a mission to make credit worthy for all, axio leverages technology to deliver innovative financial products to millions of individuals across the country, including vast sections of traditionally under-served consumers. axio started in 2014 as a digital lender for SMEs in India. The team understood that technology could be leveraged to solve multiple problems that traditional lenders faced: the high cost of small-ticket lending, difficulty in acquiring customers and underwriting them, and managing cashflows. While the original thesis focused on SMEs, the team started to see a stronger opportunity in the consumer segment and started working on some initiatives to validate the same in 2018. Witnessing faster and more efficient growth, the company decided to focus completely on the consumer segment thereafter. Listen to Gaurav & Sashank as they talk about the initial thesis, the switch to consumer lending, nuances of BNPL in India, organizational & operational strengths built, axio's approach to consumer credit, and the vision for the company going forward.

In Episode 10 of Summit Series, Deepak Gaur (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Chakradhar Gade (Co-founder, Country Delight) on the journey of building India's largest fresh daily essentials brand. Country Delight started in 2013 as a direct-to-customer dairy brand. While larger cooperatives such as Amul are solving for milk availability for everyone, Country Delight focuses on attributes such as freshness, quality, and minimal processing for the discerning consumer. Their secret sauce is a structurally better supply chain built on 2 main pillars; First, leveraging tech to build an app-based subscription platform making it hassle-free for consumers to order essentials daily to create predictability. Second, procuring directly from thousands of farmers to deliver products in

Sign up for my Daily Fintech or Daily Digital Banking Newsletters here. Check out my latest podcast episode below: Welcome to another episode of our Daily Fintech Podcast. This podcast episode is sponsored by Privacy Lock. Privacy Lock sets the standard for financial service providers in data privacy compliance. Protect your business and your customers today. Visit www.pentaprivacylock.com WHAT ARE THE LATEST FUNDING ROUNDS AND INVESTMENTS? Sanlo fintech startup has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Konvoy Ventures. Incognia has just announced a $15.5 million Series A round led by Point72 Ventures to boost the company's global expansion at a time when identity fraud losses are running into the billions Trade Republic has topped up its Series C funding round with an extra €250 million at a €5 billion valuation. Swiss fintech startup numarics has successfully closed a CHF 2.1 million pre-seed financing round led by Wingman Ventures. Liminal, a wallet operations infrastructure that secures digital assets in a simple and efficient way, has raised $4.7 million in its seed funding round led by Elevation Capital. THE NEWS HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY IS Square announced that it is working with Apple to enable Tap to Pay on iPhone, Apple's contactless payment acceptance capability, within the Square Point of Sale app. The new offering enables sellers of all sizes to seamlessly and securely accept in-person contactless payments with only an iPhone and Square's industry leading POS app. JUST IN: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued Gemini Trust accusing the crypto exchange of false statements relating to the self-certification of a bitcoin futures product. ALSO: Gemini Trust Co., the crypto business run by billionaire twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, on Thursday told staff of plans to slash the company's workforce by 10% as trading across the industry slumps.

In this episode, Chirag Chadha (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Minu Margeret (Founder and CEO, Bliss Club) on Bliss Club's journey of transforming women's active lifestyle wear in India. Founded in 2020, amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, Bliss Club started out as a community for women who move. The community helped Minu uncover deep insights into the gaps in the space and led to the realization that women in India are extremely underserved by incumbent activewear brands, which she then set out to solve with the brand. In a short period of time, the brand has scaled rapidly while maintaining best-in-class NPS and retention metrics. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor at the Seed stage by leading the $2.5 Mn round and deepened its commitment to the company by investing super pro-rata in the recently announced $15 Mn Series A. Listen to Minu as she walks us through her early days, the importance of and learnings from community & team-building in the company's journey, Bliss Club's framework for evaluating opportunities, dealing with self-doubt as a solo founder, and the opportunity that lies ahead for the brand.

This week in Indian Startup News, Crypto Industry worried amid uncertainty in rules, Indian SaaS industry to reach $100 bn in revenues by 2026, Zepto launches 10-minute food delivery service 'Cafe', Govt To Bring EV Battery Quality Norms. In funding news, CoinDCX Bags $135 Mn, Rario raises $120 mn, Loop Health Raises $25 Million, Urbanpiper raised $24 Million. Crypto Industry worried amid uncertainty in rules: New Indian taxation laws regarding trade in cryptocurrency along with banks reluctance in buy and sell of crypto has resulted in trading volumes across various Crypto Exchanges down as much as 60%. Many founders are worried over uncertainty regarding rules subjecting to Cryptocurrency and are looking for option outside india to continue their businesses. Indian SaaS industry to reach $100 bn in revenues by 2026: According to a report by VC fund Chiratae Ventures and Zinnov, Indian Saas Industry is set to cross $100 Bn in revenue by the year 2026. The report said, that if current growth sustains, India could surpass China to become second largest Saas Market by 2026. Zepto launches 10-minute food delivery service 'Cafe': After disrupting quick grocery delivery space, Zepto has decided to make its first move into delivering food items through its new service 'Cafe' which is currently available in few parts of Mumbai. Through this service, Zepto is delivering products like tea, croissants, samosa and coffee in 10 Minutes. Company has tied up with restaurants such as Blue Tokai Coffee, Chaayos, Gurukripa snacks and Sassy Teaspoon. Govt To Bring EV Battery Quality Norms: After witnessing a series of events of fire involving electric scooters, Indian Govt has now decided to come up with a Battery policy, which will ensure key characteristics like performance testing and manufacturing standards of these batteries, along with their heat resistance capacity. CoinDCX Bags $135 Mn: Crypto Trading Exchange CoinDCX, has raised $135 Mn in a round led by Pantera Capital and Steadview Capital – raising their valuation to $2.15 billion. Company will use the funds to increase its headcount to over 1,000 by the end of next year from 400 now and hire across functions like engineering, product and compliance. Rario raises $120 mn: Cricket NFT platform Rario has raised $120 mn in a round led by Dream Capital. The investment will provide Rario access to 140 million users of Dream Sports. Loop Health Raises $25 Million: Health insurance distribution startup Loop Health has raised $25 Million in a round led by Elevation Capital and General Catalyst, which values them at $120-150 million. Company will use funds for expansion and raising their customer base from 80,000 currently to five million members in next five years. Urbanpiper raised $24 Million: SaaS/restaurant management platform Urbanpiper has raised $24 Million in a round led by Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Swiggy, Zomato. Company will use funds to bolster the platform's capabilities by scaling its product and engineering teams and expand its offering to over 200,000 restaurant locations across the globe.

Mindtree and LTI, Mumbai-listed IT services companies that are part of the Larsen & Toubro group, are in advanced merger talks, according to Bloomberg and Economic Times. A merger plan may be announced as early as next week, Bloomberg reported on April 18. The companies have already been teaming up on larger contracts, Economic Times reported yesterday, citing Mindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee. A merger would narrow the gap between the combined entity and Tech Mahindra, India's fifth-biggest IT services company, by revenue. By market value, the combined entity would surpass Tech Mahindra, at current share prices. Meanwhile, Makers Lab, the research and development arm of Tech Mahindra, has set up a Quantum Center of Excellence, called QNxt, in Helsinki, the company said in a press release. The centre will accelerate the adoption and commercialisation of quantum technologies globally. The European Union is a step closer to mandating USB Type-C chargers across electronic devices, which will be a blow to Apple, which continues to require its proprietary lightning charger for its iPhones and iPads. On Wednesday, the EU's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee adopted its position on the revised Radio Equipment Directive with 43 votes in favour and two against, according to a press release from the European Parliament. The EU wants to have a strategy by the end of 2026 that allows for minimum interoperability of any new charging solutions. Brave Software has released a new feature on the Brave browser, called Discussions, which will surface results from forums like Reddit, the company said in a blogpost yesterday. To find discussions, just search for what you want using Brave Search. Ashwin Damera, Founder and CEO of Eruditus and Emeritus has invested Rs. 240 crore ($32 Million) in venture debt finance company, InnoVen Capital India Fund. The investment was made through Ashwin's family office which is co-managed by Ashwin and his wife Bhagyashree Damera. Loop, a Pune-based healthcare and insurance startup has raised $25 million in a Series B round co-led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital, the company said in a press release. Lightspeed has elevated three executives to the role of partner, on its early-stage investment advisory team, the VC firm said in a blog post on April 19. The three are Shuvi Shrivastava, who joined the firm as an associate in 2015, Pinn Lawjindakul, and Rahul Taneja, who both joined in 2020. Shuvi was responsible for Lightspeed's investments in startups such as Darwinbox, Uni, Pixxel, Rattle, Bhanzu, and xFlow. Pinn helped expand Lightspeed's operations in southeast Asia and Rahul Taneja was chief business officer before being named partner, according to the post. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

The Word on Investing Summit: Money, Faith & Mindset is happening April 22-23, 2022. Are you coming? Reserve your FREE ticket here while supplies last. Jamie & Ryan Smith will be giving a powerful talk on Day 1 on “The Value of a Dollar”. You won't want to miss it! Get Your Free Ticket Now (While Supplies Last)  www.tradeway.com/summit Today on the podcast, we're talking about the power of the family business with Ryan and Jamie Smith of Elevation Capital Group.  For the Smiths, real estate is a multi-generational family business.  “As long as I can remember I had an appetite for [the real estate business]...Originally we would build the houses and sell them. And so when I say build them, you know, we did it, literally. My mom can wire a house. My dad would install the drywall. We'd paint it. I could run the wet saw when I was six, seven years old, running the tile back and forth and mixing the mud…as a child I just had a blast and I thought it was fun working altogether. And I thought, ‘I'd love to continue doing that.' …So I had fun as a child and I was excited to be able to partner with my husband as an adult.” Jamie Smith Jamie & Ryan talk to their kids regularly about their business. They share with them what problems come up and how they're solving them. And they try to instill in them that no matter what you do, the most important thing is to let your faith and the wisdom of the Bible guide your choices in business and in life.  “I think this world and culture can be very disorienting. So we always want our children to know what is home base. Who am I? What is my character? What should my character be?...So I think those foundational principles are very important to Ryan and me to instill in the children. Because if they know that, they will go down a solid path. And their curiosity will lead them, but they'll always have that foundation and that home base. We spend a lot of time working through that and talking through that.” Jamie Smith  In addition to their family real estate business, they also run a Bible study community called Fellowship of Believers, which is made up of over 40 couples. When COVID hit, they put up large signs in their community that said “Need help, Give help” and raised over $50,000 for local families and businesses struggling because of the pandemic.  In this podcast episode Jamie, Ryan and I talk about… The surprising strategy they chose to build their wildly successful family business How they pivoted when their business didn't do what they thought it would (and why that kind of flexibility is key for business owners).  What brings Jamie joy in her business (hint: it has to do with building relationships) Listen to the episode “Experiencing the Power of Faith-Based Family Business w/ Ryan & Jamie Smith of Elevation Capital Group” now to hear from this inspiring family. 

Peter Kalmus, a NASA scientist who studies biological systems and climate change, and three others were arrested in Los Angeles on Wednesday after chaining themselves to the doors of a Chase Bank office building, Business Insider reports. JPMorgan Chase has invested more money in fossil fuels than any other bank, according to a 2020 report from the Sierra Club and other climate advocacy organisations. In addition to calling for immediate action to address the climate crisis, the protestors were calling for the bank to divest from coal, oil, and gas, according to Insider. The actions of Kalmus and his companions were part of more than a dozen protests staged in cities across the globe this week. This week's protests followed the release of the United Nations' latest climate report. Amazon is planning to object to the results of the election where workers at a New York warehouse voted to organise with the Amazon Labor Union, according to a deadline extension request the company filed with the National Labor Relations Board, according to The Verge. Infosys and Rolls-Royce yesterday inaugurated their joint ‘Aerospace Engineering and Digital Innovation Centre' in Bengaluru. This centre has been established to provide high-end research and development services integrated with advanced digital capabilities to Rolls-Royce's engineering and group business services from India. Infosys and Rolls-Royce have agreements on strategic collaborations over the next seven years, India's second-biggest software services company said in a press release. Elevation Capital, the early-stage investor that has backed startups such as Swiggy, Paytm, Urban Company and Meesho, has closed its eighth, and largest, India-dedicated fund at $670 million, Economic Times reports. Elevation will look to deploy the money over the next three years. Unacademy, an ed-tech unicorn that was valued at $3.4 billion last year, has laid off around 1,000 employees in the past few weeks, Economic Times reports. These include on-roll staff and teachers on contract. Around 600 people were fired last week as Unacademy, backed by investors including Softbank Group and Temasek, looks to cut costs amid an impending slowdown in venture funding. Instoried, a user-friendly, intuitive web platform designed to help people craft empathetic and more effective written content, has signed an agreement with GEM Global Yield, an alternative investment group for a share subscription facility of up to $200 million, to be drawn at the option of the company, for a 36-month term following a public listing. Omega Seiki Mobility and Log9 Materials have teamed up to deploy 10,000 3-Wheeler Rage+ Rapid EVs in Tier II and III markets of India over the next two years. Supporting these 3W EV Cargo Loaders will be Log9's InstaCharging stations that charge a 3W completely within 35 minutes, Log9 said in a press release. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Girish founded Sprinto to ensure software companies meet information security compliance requirements like GDPR, HIPPA, SOC2 without having to hire a consultant. Sprinto's software does most of the work. On the show we hear about Sprinto raising from Accel, Blume Ventures, and Elevation Capital as well valuable tips for startups like going from months to days to get something done or enhance a product. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In Episode 8 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Amit Kumar Agarwal (Co-founder, NoBroker) on the journey of building India's first prop-tech unicorn. NoBroker was founded in 2014 and since then, the company has served over 16 million customers across India and has over 7.5 Mn properties listed on its platform. Over the years, NoBroker has also expanded its offerings to financial services (home loans, rent payments & deposit loans, insurance etc.), home services (cleaning, furniture, packers & movers, etc.), and also new platforms such as NoBrokerHood in the community management space, thereby becoming the one-stop solution for everything real-estate. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor by leading the $3 Mn seed round in February 2015.

In this episode of Summit Series - Day One, Vasudha Wadhera (VP, Elevation Capital) speaks to Anup Agarwal (Co-founder, Mintifi) on the journey of transforming B2B BNPL and business payments in India. Mintifi partners with leading brands such as Tata Motors, Jockey, Berger Paints, etc. through its plug & play platform and enables inventory financing for their distributors and retailers. Traditional lending products do not meet the immediate, short-term needs of SMEs, which constitute ~80% of their total financing needs. With proprietary credit underwriting technology and real-time digital processing, Mintifi provides credit on tap to these SMEs. This creates a win-win proposition for brands, distributors, and retailers, fuelling revenue growth across the supply chain.

In Episode 6 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Varun Dua (Co-founder, Acko) on the journey of building a tech-first insurance platform. Acko was founded in 2016 and in a short period of time, the company has launched insurance products across a number of verticals such as auto, health, appliance protection, and travel, and served 70 Mn+ customers. This approach has been well accepted by customers as Acko commands industry-leading NPS scores and has been growing close to 3X YoY, with current premiums run-rate over $150 Mn. Elevation partnered with the company as the first investor in its record (back then) $30 Mn seed round that Acko raised in November 2015. Listen to Varun talk about the difference between a tech-first & digital-first approach, Acko's brand-building journey, what's next for the insure-tech giant, and more.

This week in Indian startup news, BharatPe vs Ashneer Grover controversy, Navi Technologies planning an IPO, Ather Energy planning to launch a new electric scooter, and Razorpay's first international acquisition. In funding news, ElasticRun raises $300 million to become a unicorn, Livspace raises $180 million to become a unicorn, Xpressbees raises $300 million to become a unicorn, Airmeet raises $35 million, Mintifi raises $40 million, Xto10X raises $25 million, Bugworks Research raises $18 million, Karbon Card raises $15 million, and Sprinto raises $10 million. BharatPe vs Ashneer Grover controversy: BharatPe has hired PwC to audit their books and there are already reports of financial fraud. Ashneer Grover on the other hand has denied all the allegations from the leaked audio clip to financial fraud. He now is asking the board to either pay him ₹4,000 crore for his 9.5% stake in the company if they want him gone or let him run the company. Navi Technologies planning an IPO: Sachin Bansal's latest fintech and insurtech venture Navi Technologies is gearing up for an IPO within four years of its launch. Navi Technologies provides loans and insurance to their customers and they've also launched their own mutual fund to offer more investment opportunities to their customers. Ather Energy planning to launch new electric scooter: While Ola continues to face production delays, their rival Ather Energy is gearing up to up the ante as they plan to launch a new variant of their electric scooter with a bigger battery with a longer range within the next six months. Ather's new electric scooter is expected to have a 110-115 km range – which could give Ola a run for their money. Razorpay's first international acquisition: Indian fintech giant Razorpay has acquired a majority stake in Curlec, a Malaysian recurring payments solution for businesses - marking their first international acquisition. ElasticRun raises $300 million to become a unicorn: Pune-based B2B e-commerce startup ElasticRun has raised $300 million in a round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 at a $1.5 billion valuation – making them a unicorn. Livspace raises $180 million to become a unicorn: Home decor and renovation platform Livspace has raised $180 million in a round led by KKR at a $1.2 billion valuation – making them a unicorn. Xpressbees raises $300 million to become a unicorn: Pune-based logistics service provider Xpressbees has raised $300 million in a round led by Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth, ChrysCapital at a $1.2 billion valuation – making them India's 8th unicorn of 2022. Airmeet raises $35 million: Virtual events platform Airmeet has raised $35 million in a round led by Prosus Ventures and Sistema Asia Fund to add new experiences on their virtual events platform by investing in R&D and to expand their international business. Mintifi raises $40 million: B2B lending startup Mintifi has raised $40 million in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners and Elevation Capital to expand their lending product portfolio by adding products like BNPL solutions for SMEs. Xto10X raises $25 million: Binny Bansal's scaling platform for startups Xto10X has raised $25 million to help develop learning programmes, software tools and operating capabilities - that will enable startups to scale their operations. Bugworks Research raises $18 million: A clinical-stage biopharmaceutical startup Bugworks Research has raised $18 million in a round led by Lightrock India to support the development of its broad-spectrum antibacterial agent. Karbon Card raises $15 million: Karbon Card, which offers corporate cards to businesses and startups, has raised $15 million to offer complete neobanking services to businesses. Sprinto raises $10 million: SaaS-based compliance automation startup Sprinto has raised $10 million in a round led by Elevation Capital to open their first office in the US.

This week in Indian web3 news, WazirX's co-founder Nishchal Shetty to launch Shardeum blockchain, India's first metaverse wedding NFTs, and India's first blockchain wedding. In funding news, Polygon raises $450 million, Colexion raises $5 million, Pillow raises $3 million, and Oneto11 raises $2.5 million. WazirX's co-founder Nishchal Shetty to launch Shardeum blockchain: WazirX's co-founder Nishcal Shetty, along with US-based blockchain architect Omar Syed, are planning to launch a Layer 1 blockchain called Shardeum to solve the problem of scalability and cost facing blockchain networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Shardeum will be using the concept of sharding, where the network is broken up into shards. So you don't have all of the nodes in the network handling all of the transactions, you just have some shards handling some transactions, while other shards handle other transactions. India's first metaverse wedding NFTs: Days before this Tamil Nadu-based couple hosted India's first metaverse wedding - they decided to drop their 12 NFTs including the invitation and bride and groom's virtual avatars on an NFT marketplace called BeyondLife.club. While these wedding reception invites were sold out within seconds of dropping for $10 each - one of these invites was being traded at $4,450. India's first blockchain wedding: After India's first metaverse wedding reception, a couple from Pune (Shruti Nair and Anil Narasipuram) have made their wedding official on the blockchain. The couple got married on 15th November 2021 but had to opt for a court marriage due to Covid restrictions but they thought that it wasn't enough - so, the couple decided to get a digital priest and made their marriage ‘blockchain official' by executing an Ethereum contract - which consecrated their commitment in the form of an NFT. TDS on cryptocurrencies could impact crypto trades: According to Zerodha's co-founder Nithin Kamath, the 1% TDS on cryptocurrencies could mean that a trader doing 50% trades in a day would end up having 50% of his account value being blocked by the trading platform for TDS. This could severely impact crypto trades as a lot of the money could just end up being blocked leading to a downturn in the crypto trading activity overall. Polygon raises $450 million: Polygon, the Ethereum-based scaling solution, has raised $450 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital. The interesting thing here is that this wasn't Polygon selling equity to raise these funds - instead, they sold MATIC tokens to these investors. Polygon has 2.67 million monthly active users, who generate roughly 3 million transactions per day, more than double the volume of Ethereum. Polygon will be using these funds to help make mass adoption of Web3 a reality. the Colexion raises $5 million: Colexion, a celebrity NFT platform, has raised $5 million from the likes of Polygon, HyperEdge Capital, Titan Ventures, Maven Capital to launch their native token $CLXN and to build their own metaverse infrastructure. Pillow raises $3 million: DeFi investment platform Pillow has raised $3 million in a round led by Elevation Capital to add high-return generating DeFi strategies for more crypto-assets and to expand globally. Oneto11 raises $2.5 million: Blockchain-based fantasy gaming platform Oneto11 has raised $2.5 million from the likes of Oracles Investment Group, Maximus Capital, NFT Technologies, Magnus Capital, Dutch Crypto Investors to enter new markets like the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Indian IT-BPM sector has concerns about exemptions in the Data bill India's IT services and business process management companies will petition the government over concerns that the broad exemptions sought by lawmakers in the proposed Data Protection Bill will adversely impact the $190 billion sector in the European Union, Economic Times reports. In addition to opposing wide-ranging access to personal data being sought by the government, the industry representation will also highlight the inclusion of non-personal data in the bill, absence of timelines by when government agencies need to be compliant with the provisions as well as lack of applicability to personal data in the physical format, according to ET. Apple posts record revenues, says supply chain is improving Apple posted an all-time revenue record of $123.9 billion, up 11 percent year over year, for its fiscal first quarter that ended Dec. 31, the iPhone maker said yesterday in a press release. That compared with analysts expectations of $118.66 billion according to Refinitiv, CNBC reported. CEO Tim Cook said on an earnings call that supply chains, which had been disrupted by the Covid pandemic, were improving. The latest earnings numbers come within days of news about additional features Apple is introducing on its devices — such as universal control, now available in beta — and the ability to use iPhones as point-of-sale terminals for payments. AMD's deal to buy Xilinx gets go-ahead from China's regulators AMD, the US chipmaker that is buying Xilinx, which makes field programmable logic array devices, has got approval for the $35 billion deal from Chinese authorities, Wall Street Journal reports. The go-ahead clears the last major regulatory hurdle for one of the biggest deals in recent years in the semiconductor industry, according to the Journal. Atlassian buys Percept.AI Atlassian, a Nasdaq-listed Australian company that makes collaboration software, has acquired Percept.AI, a startup that offers an AI chatbot for natural language understanding, TechCrunch reports. Atlassian plans to integrate this virtual agent technology into Jira Service Management, its tool for helping IT teams provide better service to employees and customers. SuperOps.ai raises $14 million in funding led by Fixel's Addition SuperOps.ai, a Silicon Valley and Chennai startup that provides a SaaS platform for unified professional services automation and remote monitoring and management, has raised $14 million in Series A funding. The money will help SuperOps expand the reach for its modern, AI-powered platform that is aimed at managed services providers. The investment was led by Lee Fixel's Addition and Tanglin Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital, and several angel investors. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Ryan Smith, CEO of Elevation Capital Group shares his knowledge of investing in Self Storage facilities and Mobile/Manufactured Housing Communities. If you want to invest and don't know how to get started, please visit Elevation Capital Group - Elevation Fund 8: https://elevationfund.comIt takes less than you may think to invest in multi million dollar deals with Ryan and his team.Ryan went from investing in single family homes in his early twenties, to managing more than $800M in assets.In this episode, Ryan shares his strategies for investing in mobile home parks and storage facilities. He is the industry leader when it comes to Manufactured/Mobile home communities and storage facilities.We spoke about personal growth, his decision to not play professional baseball, and his unique ideas about thinking of others to succeed in business.Ryan is a humble, servant leader and I enjoyed our conversation.I first met Ryan when he spoke on stage at Life Surge along with Tim Tebow.If you want to learn about ways you can invest and don't know how to get started, please visit Elevation Capital Group - Elevation Fund 8: https://elevationfund.comIf you're looking for ideas on how to raise capital, you may enjoy the episode, How to Win High Networth Friends and Influence People where we interviewed Ben Starling III, founder of Southern Philanthropy.[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-win-hight-net-worth-friends-and-influence/id1511399901?i=1000488281772]Be sure to connect with us in our Lead Sell Grow – The Human Experience Tribe Facebook group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/leadsellgrowDownload the FREE ebook that will help you connect with, and understand your buyers faster!Learn more about our services:www.TheGoalGuide.comImprove your sales and stay connected – Free Gifts Here https://shor.by/TheGoalGuide

In this episode, get Prateek's insights on Future of SaaS(Software as a Service) Key Milestones in his career journey? SaaS definition, examples (Salesforce.com has revolutionized it) How SaaS is different from On-Prem and installable software Popular SaaS companies – SFDC, Ramco, Concur, Zoho, Zendesk, ServiceNow etc. Domains & Sectors where SaaS is booming? SaaS helps small businesses in making profits Prateek's Witty answers to rapid-fire questions 1 piece of advice to those aspiring to make BIG in their careers and LIVES Trivia about Largest Hard Drive in the world! ABOUT Prateek Singhania: He is currently part of an early-stage investment team at a VC firm (Elevation Capital). His areas of focus are SaaS and B2B enterprise technology. His functional experience includes cost optimization, growth strategy, organizational re-design, process optimization, and advanced analytics among others. He holds a Dual Degree (B. Tech+M. Tech) in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Connect with PRATEEK on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateeksinghania Here is a chance to broadcast yourself

Other topics: How to set up your business early on in order to actually scale and find financial freedom Why entrepreneurship might be the best answer for working momsHow to crush it as a parent while building your companyAdvice for investors looking to grow their real estate portfolioand so much more!!!Guest Links: Elevationfund.com Kingdom Real Estate Investors! Did you know we have a mastermind full of ambitious, Kingdom minded investors with over two billion dollars of assets under management! Learn more at www.thekingdomrei.comGuest Bio:Jamie Smith is an avid real estate investor with over thirteen years of experience investing in mobile home parks, single family residential and self storage units. Mrs. Smith is the co-manager of multiple investment funds, which specialize in investing in mobile home parks and self storage assets. Mrs. Smith has experience overseeing the management of various types of real estate properties, focusing on investor relations, capital raising, and acquisitions. Mrs. Smith has managed a rent collection company, and is the manager of the Ryan and Jamie Smith Foundation. Mrs. Smith's hands-on and in-depth manufactured housing expertise and knowledge resulted in her authorship of the highly reviewed 2011 publication of “Trailer CashTM”, a guidebook on finding, fixing and managing mobile home parks. Mrs. Smith has spoken at numerous conferences on the topic of investing and managing mobile home parks and self storage. Mrs. Smith graduated from the University of Central Florida with a double major in Business and Psychology. She currently serves on the Advisory Board for the National Christian Foundation. She lives in Orlando with her husband and her four children.

In Episode 5 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Siddharth Jain (CEO and Co-founder, Playsimple Games) on the journey of building a global gaming giant from India. Founded in 2014 by former Zynga executives Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy, and Suraj Nalin along with former WalmartLabs engineer Siddhanth Jain, PlaySimple operates multiple mobile games in the word gaming genre. Today, it is a leading company globally in the free-to-play gaming space, with over 75 million installs and 2 million daily active users. In July 2021, Playsimple was acquired by the Swedish gaming giant, MTG, in what was one of the biggest gaming exits in the Indian startup ecosystem. Elevation partnered with PlaySimple in November 2016 when we invested $3.2 Mn as part of a $4 Mn Series A round in the company. The company did not raise any subsequent capital until the acquisition. The journey with PlaySimple has been one of many firsts for Elevation, and is quite contrary to the way venture-funded businesses are usually imagined and built in India. In this episode, Sid uncovers the nuances behind his unconventional journey, how his time at Zynga helped him scale Playsimple, his frameworks for innovation, how he was able to build a culture of analytics and metrics orientation in the business, and more.

Swapnil Shinde and his twin brother are now on their third startup venture. Their first two companies were both successfully acquired. Including one by AMEX. Their venture, Zeni has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Elevation Capital, Sierra Ventures, Amit Singhal, and Neeraj Arora.

Swapnil Shinde and his twin brother are now on their third startup venture. Their first two companies were both successfully acquired. Including one by AMEX. Their venture, Zeni has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Elevation Capital, Sierra Ventures, Amit Singhal, and Neeraj Arora.

Did you used to get pocket money before the age of 18 to manage your expenses? I personally used to get a fixed & tiny pocket money after 10th, thanks to my parents.When I was in college, I stayed away from my hometown, in a PG with a roommate, unlike me, he didn't had a fixed or tiny pocket money, he used to get an X amount from his father whenever the previous X amount got over. I was always a bit envious, as to why he has a free flowing pocket money, whereas I have to manage everything (Travel, Accommodation & Misc expenses) in a fixed amount. Fast forward 7 years, I'm a lot thankful to my parents for both -# giving me pocket money, and # keeping it fixed (mostly) on a monthly basis.This helped me in learning how to manage my finances better, which definitely helped, once I got into a job. Btw this is exactly what Sambhav Jain, guest of our today's episode is trying to do with his company Fampay. Fampay, being a virtual card prepaid card for teenagers, enables them to do online transactions and manage their finances, eventually educating them to be more financially aware down the line as grown-ups. Recently after adding 2 million+ registered users on platform Fampay raised USD 38 million in funding from Elevation Capital and others.During the podcast, Sambhav shares with us how he came across the idea behind Fampay, what were the initial challenges when they approached several banks with this concept and more. Notes - 02:02 - Graduating from IIT Roorkee and working in Product roles06:28 - Concept of pocket money in western countries09:14 - Problem statement of financial literacy among kids in India16:25 - Initial discussion with Elevation Capital & achieving PMF 20:05 - Driving hyper-growth with campus ambassadors 28:14 - Building the product like a community rather than a transactional app30:02 - Initial response from traditional banks32:53 - Working of a Fampay wallet34:48 - Adoption of technology among teenagers

Abhiroop Medhekar is a 2X founder and CEO of India's largest revenue based financing platform - Velocity. Velocity is building the future of business financing for D2C brands and eCommerce businesses. Abhiroop started his career as a management consultant with McKinsey where he extensively worked across Financial Services and Technology sectors. Post McKinsey, he co-founded Taskbob (a consumer internet startup) where he led multiple business and growth functions. Most recently, he worked as a VC investor with Elevation Capital, leading investments in Fintech and Healthtech sectors. Abhiroop majored in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay (2008), before going for his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad (2010).

In Episode 4 of Summit Series, Mukul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Vidit Aatrey (Co-founder and CEO, Meesho) on the zero-to-one journey of building India's largest social commerce platform. In the six years since its inception in 2015, the scale at which Meesho operates is spectacular. Today, Meesho has over 13 million registered entrepreneurs on its platform, a majority of whom are women, and over one lakh registered suppliers, most of whom are SMEs and new to the internet. The company has helped generate over INR 500 crore in income for entrepreneurs so far and was valued at USD 2.1 Bn in the most recent round of financing led by Softbank. In this episode, Vidit speaks about how he and his co-founder (Sanjeev Barnwal) zeroed in on ‘Meesho 1.0', the insights which led them to pivot the platform towards women, why he believes that less capital is a blessing in disguise for startups, the culture of customer obsession at Meesho and more.

vEstonia's Outvio, a provider of white-label SaaS fulfillment solutions to online shops, has raised $3 million in an early-stage funding round led by Change Ventures, ending its bootstrap spree since its inception in 2018, a TechCrunch report said.GoCoach, a B2B SaaS talent development platform, has received $120,000 in investment from Panoramic Ventures after being declared the winner of a monthly-pitch competition Startup Showdown, a press release from Panoramic Ventures said.Murf.ai, an AI-enabled SaaS-based voiceover company, received a $1.5 million seed round from Elevation Capital. Murf.ai is a text-based voiceover company that plans to use the cash to grow its market, improve its product, and add more staff.OneDay, a SaaS company, has announced that it has raised $19 million in a Series B funding round led by Volition Capital. OneDay is a SaaS startup located in Texas that uses video storytelling technology to help businesses increase revenue and consumer engagement. 

Detect Technologies, a company specializing in industrial AI, has raised $12 million in a round led by Accel Partners and Elevation Capital. According to the company's statement, the money will be used to enhance worldwide industrial efficiency and extend the company's position as a leader in industrial digitalization. The firm provides a wide range of AI and IoT solutions for the industrial sector.BMW i Ventures announce their second sustainability-focused fund for early to mid-stage startups in the industries of transportation, manufacturing, supply chain and others. Previously, investments of the VC firm's first fund, BMW i Ventures Fund 1, had helped companies in their journey to public.ServiceTitan, a software company built to accelerate the home and commercial service industries, has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Aspire Software, a landscaping business management software provider. Alongside the acquisition, the company announced its $200 million Series G funding from Thoma Bravo at a valuation of $9.5 billion. This acquisition marks ServiceTitan's second investment in the last twelve months (previously ServicePro) and its largest to date.Slack launches Huddles, a feature to encourage casual conversations that get missed out due to remote working, and new video sharing and recording capabilities to help users share their thoughts ahead of a scheduled meeting, as per their convenience. These features would be rolled out for paid teams.Device42 has developed a new solution that analyses your infrastructure and provides recommendations for cost-effective cloud migration. The program uses machine learning to assist in the discovery of the optimum configuration. Device42 is a software business founded in 2012 that specializes in hybrid IT discovery and application dependency mapping.Ably, a synchronized digital experience platform provider has announced that it has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital LLP. Other participants include Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, and MMC Ventures, Triple Point. The new funds will help Ably continue developing and innovating its platform, giving businesses a comprehensive solution for offloading the rising complexity of real-time data synchronization at scale for distributed applications, devices, and hybrid cloud environments.A pan-European venture capital firm, Nauta Capital, has announced ambitions to invest in pre-seed deeptech businesses across Europe. The specialized venture program will provide funding to pre-seed B2B deeptech businesses in order to help them develop and thrive. Nauta Funding's new initiative, motivated by a shortage of capital available for pre-seed and pre-revenue B2B deeptech enterprises, will support 12-16 startups for the next 12 months to close the gap and propel Europe's next generation of deeptech entrepreneurs.Shogun has raised $67.5 million in a $575 million Series C funding round led by Insight Partners. The cash will improve the company's two major products, Shogun Frontend and Page Builder. Frontend, Shogun's newest offering, is a “headless” solution aimed at web designers and others who want to create more personalized experiences. It caters to the midmarket to the corporate consumers and has hundreds of clients.   ARIADNEXT, French remote identity verification, and digital identity creation company, has been bought by IDnow, a German identity verification startup. As a result of the acquisition, IDNow is now on a level with OnFido, Europe's other major participant. IDnow will keep ARIADNEXT's offices in Rennes, Paris, Madrid, Bucharest, Iasi, Warsaw, and its approximately 125 employees. Mandolin, a concert live stream platform to help artists, venues, and fans connect through live music, has raised $12 million in its Series A fundraise in an oversubscribed round co-led by 645 Ventures and Foundry Group. Existing investors, High Alpha and TIME Ventures, participated in the round.Pietra, a platform providing Creators business-building tools, has announced its Series A fundraise of $15 million in a round led by Founders Fund with participation from its existing investor, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), TQ Ventures, Abstract Ventures and other strategic investors.Nodes & Links, a startup offering AI and cloud tools for engineering projects to be delivered on time and budget, has announced its Series A fundraise of €9.3 million ($11 million roughly). The round was led by urban sustainability-focused fund 2150, alongside Zigg Capital and Westerly Winds.FloLive, an IoT company, has raised an additional $15.5 million in a Series B investment round led by Intel Capital. The additional money will be used to improve the company's service and invest in and develop the company's technology stack and upgrade its network to 5G. Rather than creating new infrastructure, FloLive's approach is to stitch together networks from several places and run them as a single network.Gusto, a unicorn company developing web-based payroll solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, has announced the launch of its new product, Gusto Embedded Payroll (GEP), which facilitates software developers to embed and customize payroll directly into their software. Noname Security, an enterprise API security business, raised $60M in a Series B funding round headed by Insight Partners. The company offers a security platform that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist businesses in monitoring and securing both managed and uncontrolled APIs. Since its launch, the firm has recruited 40 technical, reseller, and channel partners in six months.Hyperexponential (hx), a mathematical software provider for the insurance sector, raised $18 million in a funding round headed by Highland Europe. According to the company, actuaries, data scientists, and underwriters may use Hx's Renew SaaS platform to create, deploy, and update insurance pricing models more quickly.

Ouça nosso compilado semanal das principais notícias que aconteceram no cenário fintech no Brasil e no mundo! O Boletim conta com o patrocínio da Conductor, plataforma líder na América Latina em meios de pagamento e Banking as a Service. A Conductor atende as principais fintechs, bancos, varejistas e diferentes empresas, permitindo que ofereçam soluções de pagamento inovadoras a seus clientes. Acesse www.conductor.com.br e entenda melhor como transformar o seu negócio! Nesta edição: - A Toro Investimentos, do Grupo Santander, adquire as fintechs Mobills e Monetus; - A Senior Sistemas, através de sua fintech Wiipo, adquire a Convenix, que atua no setor de benefícios; - A Accountfy, fintech de soluções de gestão financeira corporativa na nuvem, levantou US$ 4,5M da Redpoint eventures e da HDI Seguros; - A Franq Openbank, fintech que conecta consumidores e bancários autônomos, anunciou o recebimento de um aporte de R$ 20M liderados pela Valor Capital Group; - O fundo de private equity Advent International investiu US$ 430M no Ebanx; - A ANBIMA enviou ao BC sua proposta para o escopo inicial do Open Investment; - Um levantamento realizado pelo site Poder360 apontou que os maiores bancos digitais do Brasil somam 82 milhões de contas em 2021; - A Credihome, fintech focada em financiamento imobiliário para pessoas físicas, irá expandir sua atuação e começará a oferecer financiamentos para as empresas construírem os empreendimentos; - A Kinvo, aplicativo consolidador de investimentos que foi recentemente adquirido pelo BTG Pactual, firmou uma parceria com o Mercado Bitcoin; - A insurtech chilena Betterfly recebeu um aporte de 60 milhões de dólares; - A Credijusto, fintech mexicana focada na oferta de crédito para PMEs, anunciou a aquisição do Banco Finterra; - A FamPay, fintech indiana de pagamentos voltada para adolescentes, levantou US$ 38M em sua rodada series A liderada pela Elevation Capital; - A 10x Future Technologies, fintech de infraestrutura baseada em Londres, levantou US$ 187M e rodada liderada pela Blackrock e a CPP Investments; - A American Express, que adquriu a fintech Kabbage voltada à empréstimos para PMES, entrará agora na disputa dos neobanks voltados para esse setor com o lançamento de sua conta digital; - A Wise, antiga Transferwise, anunciou que fará sua estreia na Bolsa de Londres através do processo de listagem direta. * Link para inscrição no CIAB 2021 noomis.com.br * Link para artigo do Estadão sobre a guerra das plataformas de investimento https://lnkd.in/dNczcge Acesse também nosso parceiro Finsiders e fique por dentro das últimas novidades do segmento fintech! https://finsiders.com.br/ Estamos também no Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn e Spotify! Siga-nos em: https://www.instagram.com/fintechtalksbr https://www.facebook.com/fintechtalksbr/ https://www.youtube.com/fintechtalks https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/fintech-talks/ https://open.spotify.com/show/2AVngeMgLIO7r8cqwGYBPY

This week in Indian Startup News, India's largest crypto trading platform WazirX gets tangled in a money-laundering probe, India's first official drone delivery trial begins, PhonePe's acquisition deal with Indus OS turns into a lawsuit, CultFit acquires Tread to foray into at-home fitness hardware and InMobi's Glance acquires Shop101 to launch live commerce. In funding news, Byju's raises $350 million to become India's most valuable startup, BrowserStack raises $200 million to become India's most valuable SaaS startup, Vianai Systems raises $140 million, Apna.co raises $70 million and FamPay raises $38 million. India's largest crypto trading platform WazirX gets tangled in a money-laundering probe: India's financial investigation agency Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued a notice to WazirX and its directors Nischal Shetty and Sameer Mhatre – seeking an explanation for crypto transactions worth $400 million. ED has accused them of not carrying out proper KYC which led to Chinese nationals operating illegal online betting apps to launder money through their platform by buying cryptocurrencies. India's first official drone delivery trial begins: A consortium led by Throttle Aerospace Systems became the first to officially start drone delivery trials to deliver medicines in partnership with Narayana Health. PhonePe's acquisition deal with Indus OS turns into a lawsuit: PhonePe was trying to acquire Indus OS for $60 million to strengthen their mini app store Switch but the deal soon turned into a lawsuit between PhonePe and Indus OS's investor Affle on the difference of valuations. PhonePe has also filed a complaint against another Indus OS investor Ventureast to Sebi for deceiving them and side dealing with Affle to scuttle the deal. CultFit acquires Tread to foray into at-home fitness hardware: Health and fitness startup CultFit has acquired at-home smart fitness bike maker Tread to give their customers a more comprehensive fitness and training experience at home. InMobi's Glance acquires Shop101 to launch live commerce: Glance has acquired social e-ecommerce startup Shop101. The startup will be leveraging its short video platform Roposo along with Shop101's e-commerce capabilities to launch celebrity and influencer-led live commerce on their platform. Byju's raises $350 million to become India's most valuable startup: Edtech giant Byju's has raised $350 million in fresh capital from UBS Group, Zoom founder Eric Yuan, Abu Dhabi's ADQ, Blackstone and Phoenix Rising at a $16.5 billion valuation – leaving behind Paytm to make it India's most valuable startup. BrowserStack raises $200 million - India's most valuable SaaS startup: App and website testing platform BrowserStack has raised $200 million led by BOND Capital at a $4 billion valuation to accelerate their growth via acquisitions. Vianai Systems raises $140 million: Infosys' former CEO Vishal Sikka's new venture Vianai Systems has raised $140 million in fresh capital in a round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. Apna.co raises $70 million: Professional networking and job search platform for blue-collar workers Apna has raised $70 million in a round led by Insight Partners and Tiger Global Management at a valuation of $570 million. FamPay raises $38 million: Fintech startup FamPay has raised $38 million in a round led by Elevation Capital to build India's first neobank for teenagers. They will use the capital to expand their user base and add more products to their suite.

In Episode 3 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Abhiraj Bhal (Co-founder and CEO, Urban Company) on the journey of building a global home-services company out of India. Urban Company was founded in November 2014. In less than seven years, the company has delivered 25 million+ home services and empowered 35,000+ service professionals to run their own businesses across varied categories, such as beauty, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, and appliance repair. In Part 2 of this episode, Abhiraj speaks about the evolution of his leadership style and the culture of data transparency at UC, how bar raisers positively influence the team, and why it is important for him to take UC public.

In Episode 3 of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Abhiraj Bhal (Co-founder and CEO, Urban Company) on the journey of building a global home-services company out of India. Urban Company was founded in November 2014. In less than seven years, the company has delivered 25 million+ home services and empowered 35,000+ service professionals to run their own businesses across varied categories, such as beauty, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, and appliance repair. In Part 1 of this episode, Abhiraj speaks about his journey of transitioning from consulting to the start-up world, his advice to founders on fundraising, Urban Company's value system, and global aspirations, and more. He also talks about how TAM for a category-defining company will always be an open question.

Treasury Prime, a banking-as-a-service startup that delivers its product via APIs, raises $20 million in  Series B. Deciens Capital, and QED Investors co-led the round. The firm plans to use the funds to invest, aggressively in its business.The capital comes in at around a year, since the startup announced its Series A. Treasury Prime was valued at just over $40 million at the time of its Series A, and current valuation has not been disclosed yet.Amazon Web Services, announces it's release of AWS SaaS Boost, as open source, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. The tool is designed to help companies transform their on-prem software, into cloud-based software as a service.The goal of AWS SaaS Boost, is to foster an open environment for developing, and sharing reusable code, that accelerates the ability to deliver and operate, multi-tenant SaaS solutions on AWS. This announcement comes just a couple of weeks, after the company open-sourced its Deep Racer device software, which runs its machine-learning fuelled, mini race cars.Healthcare SaaS provider, Dr. First, raises an additional $50 million equity investment from Sixth Street Growth, following the firm's $35 million investment from last year. The company provides a range of software solutions for stakeholders, across the healthcare spectrum.The investment from Six Street Growth, will go towards continuing its business growth. Dr. First's tools are used by nearly 300,000 healthcare professionals, today.Singapore-based fintech firm, Aleta Planet, announces a joint venture, called AP Studios , with SaaS solution startup, Fooyo. The joint venture will offer digital marketing, and ecommerce solutions for the Singaporean businesses, preparing to target Chinese tourists, once Covid-19 travel restrictions are lifted. AP Studios will develop digital tools to enable merchants in Singapore, to cater to Chinese tourists and business travelers who visit the city-state annually.The new business is looking to develop tools such as payment checkout webpages, chatbots, WeChat and Alipay mini programs, crowd-control monitoring solutions, and interactive tourism apps. SuperOps dot A.I., a professional services automation, and remote monitoring and management  platform, raises $3 million in seed funding. The funding round was  led by Elevation Capital, and Matrix Partners India. SuperOps dot A.I.'s platform, is tailored to cater to various segments of the MSP market, and intends to build a truly unified PSA, RMM solution powered by intelligent automation.VisibleRisk, a joint venture between Moody's Investors Service, and the VC firm Team8, raises $25 million for its cyber risk evaluation platform. VisibleRisk offers real-time monitoring, custom reporting, and analysis, as well as transparency into the variables that determine a cyber rating. VisibleRisk claims that its cyber ratings are based on cyber risk quantification, which allows companies to benchmark their risks, against those of peers. The funding will be used to expand the company's workforce.Big Time Studios, raises $21 million to bring non fungible tokens to the biggest game economies.The Los Angeles company, was started by CEO Ari Meilich, and game designer Thor Alexander. The funding comes in two parts.The first $10.3 million in a round led by FBG Capital, And Big Time Studios is in the process of closing an $11 million fund, that it will use to invest in game companies, that adopt its technology. Big Time Studios' team includes alumni of Epic Games, Riot Games, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Decentraland. 

Leading today's tech briefing is the news that Google Pay has started allowing its users to send money across borders in partnership with two international money transfer services. To begin with, Google Pay users in the US can send money to India and Singapore, thanks to a new integration with Western Union and Wise, Google said in a blogpost Tuesday. Also in the briefing, we talk to software entrepreneur Arvind Parthiban about his new startup, backed by Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital

In Episode 2 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital), speaks to Ankush Sachdeva (Co-Founder & CEO, Sharechat) about his incredible journey as CEO of India's first purely non-English social networking platform. He talks about the evolution of Sharechat over the last 6 years and the culture of rapid experimentation in the company. Ankush shares his vision for Mohalla Tech (which owns Sharechat and Moj) as going beyond being just a social media platform to being India's first AI-powered content ecosystem. He tells Mayank of the power of AI in bringing tailored content to the user, in preventing abuse, and in creating a much more engaging content ecosystem overall. He also speaks about what drives him to greater heights and how his vision for the company is limited only by his dreams and ambitions.

This week in Indian Startup News, Zomato and MobiKwik to file for IPO soon, New SPAC to take Indian startup public in the US, Paytm's NUE plans, Y Combinator features 43 Indian startups in W21 batch and Khatabook acquires Biz Analyst. In funding news, Dream11 raises $400 million, ClearTax in talks to raise $100 million, KreditBee closes $145 million round, Moglix in talks to raise $70-$100 million, Purplle raises $45 million, Public App raises $41 million, Velocity raises $10.3 million and FloBiz raises $10 million. Zomato and MobiKwik to file for IPO soon: After Nazara Technologies, Zomato is planning to file for IPO next month and is expected to raise around $650 million at a $7-10 billion valuation. Also, MobiKwik is looking to file for IPO in May at a billion-dollar valuation. New SPAC to take Indian startup public in the US: Elevation Capital and Think Investments have formed a new SPAC called Think Elevation Capital to take Indian startups public in the US. Paytm's NUE plans: Paytm has launched its New Umbrella Entity (NUE) named Foster Payment Network which is in the final stages of submitting their bid for the NUE license. While Paytm and its three entities will hold the majority stake – companies like PolicyBazaar, Induslnd Bank, Ola, Electronic Payments Services, Centrum Finance, Suryoday Small Finance Bank and Think360.ai will also be joining their consortium. Y Combinator features 43 Indian startups in the W21 batch: Out of 350 startups from 43 nations featured in Y Combinator's W21 batch – with 43 startups India is the second most represented country. Here are all the 43 Indian startups: QuestBook, Leap Club, CashBook, GimBooks, BusinessOnBot, ZOKO, Prescribe, Chatwoot, Weekday, Fountain9, Dyte, YourQuote, Fifthtry, Voosh, Kodo, Krab, Bueno Finance, Betterhalf, Pensil, AcadPal, Pragmatic Leaders, Splitsub, Zingbus, Tilt, FanPlay, GroMo, BimaPlan, BimaPe, Zealth, Codingal, Unschool, Flux Auto, SigNoz, Pitbit.ai, Invoid, Redcliffe Lifesciences, Veera Health, Snazzy, BeWell Digital, Jeevam Health, Triomics. Khatabook acquires Biz Analyst: Khatabook has acquired SaaS-based business management platform Biz Analyst in a $10 million deal to monetize their 40 million users. Dream11 raises $400 million: Dream11 has raised $400 million in their latest secondary funding led by TCV, D1 Capital Partners and Falcon Edge at a valuation of $5 billion. ClearTax in talks to raise $100 million: ClearTax is in talks to raise $100 million in a round led by Tiger Global Management at an expected valuation of $750-$850 million. KreditBee closes $145 million round: Digital lending startup KreditBee has closed its series C round at $145 million – raising $75 million in the latest tranche led by NewQuest Capital Partners and Motilal Oswal Private Equity. Moglix in talks to raise $70-$100 million: B2B industrial goods marketplace Moglix is in talks to raise $70-$100 million in a round led by Falcon Edge Capital and it could make them India's second B2B ecommerce unicorn. Purplle raises $45 million: Online beauty commerce startup Purplle has raised $45 million led by Sequoia Capital India and Verlinvest – while giving a 22X return to IvyCap Ventures that made a partial exit. Public App raises $41 million: Public App, owned by Inshorts, has raised $41 million led by A91 Partners – doubling their valuation from $125 million to $250 million in just six months. Velocity raises $10.3 million: Fintech startup Velocity that offers credit to online businesses based on their revenues has raised $10.3 million in seed funding led by Valar Ventures. FloBiz raises $10 million: FloBiz, a startup that helps offline businesses to digitize their billing and accounting has raised $10 million in series A round led by Elevation Capital.

In this episode, Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner @Antler India & Co-founder @Urban Ladder, joins our host Digjay, to talk about the Antler India program, building & scaling Urban Ladder, raising funds from Mr. Ratan Tata, difference in fundraising approach between 0-1 & 1-10 stage, managing stakeholders expectations & overcoming valleys of death as a founder. Prior to joining Antler India, Rajiv co-founded Urban Ladder (UL), one of India's top omni-channel furniture brand. Over ~8 years, UL raised over $100mm from top Indian VCs, like Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners (now Elevation Capital) & Steadview Capital. Prior to UL, he served as a Sr Product Manager with Yahoo. An IIT Madras/ IIM Bangalore alum, Rajiv has been featured multiple times on the Fortune 40 U/ 40 India list. You can connect with him here on Linkedin / Twitter ---- Show notes: 1. (01:35) Rajiv's background; Antler's mission & entry into India 2. (08:06) Unpacking the fundraising lifecycle of a startup 3. (12:06) Antler India operating model 4. (18:19) Building & scaling Urban ladder 5. (28:35) Raising funds from Mr. Ratan Tata; Difference in fundraising between 0-1 & 1-10 stage of a startup 6. (30:49) Managing expectations of different stakeholders of a company 7. (37:57) Overcoming valleys of death as a founder 8. (41:36) How being an entrepreneur has shaped Rajiv's personality over the years? 9. (44:46) Rapid fire and closing remarks ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts. We would really appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes. This will help others discover the podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin & Twitter

Ryan Smith of Elevation Capital discusses "non-core" real estate and the investment nuances of self storage! Learn about what to look for in the self storage space and what current drivers are affecting this asset class.

Trailer cash!? That's right! Tune in to learn about mobile home community investing with a real estate leader in Ryan Smith of Elevation Capital!

Ryan cofounded Elevation Capital with his wife and together they have purchased over $470 million in assets in over 30 states. Ryan is an all-around impressive individual; in high school he wrote a real estate software which even sold to Binnie other investors including Donald Trump. In college he met his wife and together they begin amassing a portfolio of single-family rental is in their early 20s. They quickly moved to the mobile home space and self-storage space after Ryan's in-depth analysis of the different asset classes and how they perform in different stages of the market cycles. Ryan then discovered the art of syndicating other people's money and his business took off exponentially. Ryan is such an incredibly intelligent individual and considered one of the countries for most experts in the mobile home investing space. Today he gives us an in-depth explanation of why mobile home parks and self-storage facilities are possibly the best asset classes to be investing in.   This podcast is edited and managed by Derrick Michaud Shelby Row Productions, LLC www.shelbyrowproductions.com

Behind every conversation that has occurred and that will in the future is one underlying theme, relationships. Besides having an amiable disposition, being at the right place at the right time can also lead to many relationships. Although, when neglected, your connections with others can begin to falter and eventually vanish. Taking specific actions on a regular basis can help these connections thrive, which in turn helps you professionally and personally. Our guests for today are Ryan and Jamie Smith who are two of the principals of Elevation Capital. They co-manage multiple investment funds, which specialize in investing in MHPs and participate in the ownership and/or management of over 20,000 MHP lots. Jamie is the author of a highly reviewed book on investing in MHPs and has also spoken at numerous conferences on the topic. Ryan's efficient communication skills have allowed him to be a featured commentator alongside many notable individuals such as Mayor Rudy Giuliani and General Colin Powell. Today we are going to discuss... How one of our guests was able to present to a crowd of more than 10,000 and how that experience led him to develop relationships with several noteworthy individuals How putting forth work towards being a thought leader in a niche can help create some opportunities for new relationships with influential people Actions that aren't scalable in order to maintain relationships with key individuals Learn more about our guest: Website: elevationcapitalgroup.com If you haven't yet, make sure to go to IntelligentInvestors2018.com to grab your tickets to the conference. The conference is November 10th-11th in Marina del Rey. Elevation Capital Group, Gelt Inc., Concordia, uDirect, LaTerra Development, and many more will be there. Will you? Don't forget to use the discount code CFC for $100 off the ticket price. Subscribe in iTunes. Click here to access our investment opportunities.