[Weekly funding roundup] The week that Binny Bansal quit also saw funding activity almost grind to a halt

The second full week of November will probably go down in startup history as the week that Flipkart was left without a founder at the helm. It was a shocking development, to say the least. In contrast, this week saw just close to $15 million raised across ten deals. This was a substantial drop from last week’s already paltry $65 million across four deals. Further, this week predominantly saw early-stage funding with seven of the nine rounds going into Pre-Series and Series A deals.

Perpule raises Series A funding from Prime Venture Partners

This week, Bengaluru-based self-checkout technology provider Perpule, raised $4.7 million from Prime Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital and Venture Highway. Perpule allows users to self-checkout and self-order at offline stores, food outlets, malls and cafeterias, in turn improving customer experience by saving them the hassle of standing in long queues.

HealthifyMe raises $6 million from Innoven Capital and existing investors

HealthifyMe also announced that it had raised $6 million as an extension to its $12mn Series B round earlier this year from existing investors and InnoVen Capital (a Temasek backed entity) to fund its newly launched curated online foods marketplace, EatBetter.

MilkBasket reportedly raised $1.37 million from Mayfield Fund

Gurugram-based hyperlocal startup MilkBasket reportedly raised $1.37 million from US-based venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, according to a report in VC Circle. The startup had raised close to $7 million in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital, earlier in May this year.

On-demand driver service provider DriveU raises funds from Stevens Creek Ventures

Bengaluru-based transportation startup DriveU closed another $1 million in funding from California-based Stevens Creek Ventures. It had raised a pre-Series A round of $3 million earlier in Match this year. The startup provides an on-demand service providing technology-enabled and verified drivers for a consumer’s personal vehicle.

Also read: India startup funding slows in October in the absence of big rounds 

Other funding raised

Gurugram-based Hoi Foods raised $500,000 (Rs 3.6 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by crowdfunding platform 1Crowd. The startup provides food to budget hotels in the national capital. The round also saw participation from early-stage investment firms Gemba Capital and Prime Holdings.

Mumbai-based home security app Biizlo also raised $500,000 in angel funding from security professionals Joge Bharadwaj and Ritesh Sharma, directors at Mumbai-based security services firm Eagle Group. Started in 2017, the startup provides security surveillance systems to residential communities through a mobile app.

Indore-based sanitation startup Fresh Rooms raised funding of $415,000 from undisclosed investors. According to VC Circle, the company operates pay-and-use washrooms based on an Internet of Things (IoT) model, where cleaning takes place automatically after every use and requires minimal human intervention.

Car-wash service provider CleanseCar announced $500,000 in angel funding from incubation platform Venture Catalysts. Early-stage investment firm Omphalos Venture India LLP and other angel investors including Rishabh Mahimtura, Anil Patel, Vishal Brambhatt, also participated. The company was founded in March this year.

In M&A, integrated marketing company GOZOOP announced the acquisition of Mumbai-based real-time marketing agency HAT Media. The company and its founder Sunchika Pandey are well known in the industry for their management of the Mumbai Police’s Twitter handle along with work done for other government initiatives and organisations.

Legal tech startup Lawyered announced its acquisition of legal news app InCourt News, which selects relevant news from multiple sources and judgments from different courts of India and summarises news and judgements in under 60 words. The acquisition involved an equity swap between the two entities.

Indian-origin founders raising big rounds

This week also saw Indian-origin founders also raising big rounds.

After raising $250 million in one of the largest Series A rounds across the venture funding circuit, this week saw Silicon Valley-based Automation Anywhere raising another mega round of $300 million from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund.

Founded in 2003 by four Indian-origin entrepreneurs - Ankur Kothari, Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta Shukla and Rushabh Parmani - the startup provides robotic process automation, which uses software robots to automate entire business operations.

With this current round, Automation Anywhere, which has offices Bengaluru, Vadodara and Mumbai, is now valued at $2.6 billion.

Another company that made headlines this week was cybersecurity startup Netskope, which raised $169 million in a new round of funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Geodesic Capital, Iconiq Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Social Capital as well as Base Partners participated in the round that valued the startup at more than $1 billion. The six-year-old company, started by Sanjay Beri, recently shifted their headquarters to Santa Clara in California from Los Altos, and has close to 610 employees.

The article has been updated with the details of the funding raised by HealthifyMe.