🚀 Medial Secures Investment on Shark Tank India - Fueling the Future of Professional Social Networking. 🔥
Login

News on Medial

Related News

India set to be a big semicon player in 10 years: union minister Amit Shah

Economic TimesEconomic Times · 11m ago
India set to be a big semicon player in 10 years: union minister Amit Shah
Medial

India's home minister, Amit Shah, predicts that India will emerge as a significant player in the semiconductor market within the next decade. He highlighted the upcoming semiconductor chip manufacturing plant in Sanand, Gujarat, being built by US chip maker Micron. The plant is part of India's Semiconductor Mission, aiming to develop a domestic chip industry. The government has also approved the establishment of a unit by Kaynes Semiconductor. Shah also mentioned India's Digital India initiatives and the steps taken to support startups and innovation, including the abolition of the angel tax. Additionally, he highlighted the country's efforts in the space sector and plans to train cyber commandos.

Google-backed ShareChat raises $49 Mn debt

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Google-backed ShareChat raises $49 Mn debt
Medial

Mohalla Tech, the parent entity of the vernacular social media platform ShareChat and short video entertainment app Moj, has raised around $49 million in debt from existing investors. The company has passed a board resolution to issue 4,895 Series I debentures at an issue price of $10000 each to raise $49 million, regulatory filing with RoC shows. Existing investors including Temasek, Lightspeed, HarbourVest, Moore Strategic, Rimco and Alkeon invested in the debt round. Inc42 reported the development first. The fresh funding comes at a time when ShareChat was looking to raise $50 million in a down round to the tune of $1.5 billion. The firm was valued at $5 billion during its last fundraise in June 2022. According to startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, ShareChat has raised around $1.8 billion from investors including Twitter (now X), Alkeon Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Tencent, among others. ShareChat has been eyeing a large equity round but the company is finding it difficult to rope in new and existing backers. It also put several cost-cutting measures and laid off 700 employees across two phases in 2023. The company’s struggle is largely driven by its inability to monetise from the user base which has low-purchasing power. Even after nine-year of its operations, ShareChat had to spend nearly Rs 4,000 crore in FY23 to earn Rs 533 crore in revenue. On a unit level, it spent Rs 7.16 to earn a rupee of operating revenue in the last fiscal. This is one of the highest expense-to-revenue ratios for a unicorn in FY23. The surge in losses was primarily due to the write-off undertaken by the company for the acquisition of Moj’s competitor MxTakaTak. The company spent heavily ($700 million via cash and stock) to acquire the Times Internet-backed company. While ShareChat has almost no competition after the blanket ban on China-origin apps like Bytedance-owned Helo, its short video app Moj competes with Dailyhunt’s Josh, YouTube Shorts and Instagram.

Bhavik Koladiya-led OTPless raises $3.5 Mn led by SIDBI

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Bhavik Koladiya-led OTPless raises $3.5 Mn led by SIDBI
Medial

Authentication and access management platform OTPless has raised $3.5 million in its pre-Series A funding round led by SIDBI, said its co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavik Koladiya. Venture Highway, FJ Labs, and Piper Serica also joined the firm’s maiden institutional round. With this, OTPless raised $6.5 million to date. The Surat-based startup raised $2.7 million in seed round in February last year from Neeraj Arora, Kunal Shah, Amrish Rau, Jitendra Gupta, Utsav Somani, Amit Jain, Fabrice Grinda, and Luke Skertich. With a team of 50 members, OTPless plans to use the new funds to expand its global presence and service beyond authentication and into authorization, said Kodaliya. Its global peers include Auth0, Clerk, Stytch, Descope and Transmit Security and a few others. Founded by Koladiya, Satyam Nathani and Tanmay Sagar, former executives of fintech unicorn BharatPe, OTPless enables users to sign up and sign in on websites and apps via WhatsApp and other methods. This approach simplifies the process for users and weeds out the need for OTPs. The startup supports various social sign-in methods, including Google, iMessage, Microsoft, Github, Slack, UPI and modern protocols like Passkeys, Network Auth, Protected SMS and Device fingerprinting. As per the company, developers can easily integrate OTPless’s SDKs and APIs, going live within minutes using pre-built UIs. OTPless claims that more than 5,000 companies and 20,000 developers worldwide use the platform to authenticate over 30 million users. OTPless is a recent startup from BharatPe’s group which managed to raise significant funding. For record, CrickPe, led by Ashneer Grover, raised seed money led by ZNL Growth Fund. Last year, Genwise and Vegapay also announced their maiden fundraise after launch. The list of startups and venture funds launched by former BharatPe executives includes Jivi.ai, CubeAPM, GrowthCap Venture, Eternal Capital and OTP Ventures. While Growth Cap Venture and Eternal Capital already announced their maiden fund, Suhail Sameer-led OTP Venture is aiming to secure Rs 400 crore for its debut fund.

Exclusive: BharatPe set to raise $80-100 Mn pre-IPO round led by Coatue

EntrackrEntrackr · 10d ago
Exclusive: BharatPe set to raise $80-100 Mn pre-IPO round led by Coatue
Medial

Exclusive: BharatPe set to raise $80-100 Mn pre-IPO round led by Coatue BharatPe is in advanced talks to raise $80-$100 million in a pre-IPO round led by Coatue Management, according to two people aware of the matter. This equity funding marks the first such raise in four years for the Delhi-based fintech unicorn. “The round will also see participation from some new and existing investors. This is aimed at strengthening the company’s financial position and setting the stage for an eventual public listing,” said one of the sources, requesting anonymity as the talks are private. As per sources, the investment is being spearheaded by Coatue’s new partner Amit Mukherjee, who has been actively working with BharatPe’s management and board on IPO preparations. Last week, BharatPe’s CEO Nalin Negi also said that the firm will go for a pre-IPO round but ruled out a listing this fiscal (FY26). According to another source, the company wants to ensure consistent profitability before filing draft papers. BharatPe declined to comment on the story while queries sent to Coatue did not elicit an immediate response. BharatPe raised its last equity round in August 2021 when it also entered the unicorn club. It has raised over $650 million in equity and debt from the likes of Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group, Steadfast Capital, Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital and others. BharatPe recently claimed that it turned profitable in FY25 with a profit before tax of Rs 6 crore (excluding ESOP costs) on revenues of Rs 1,800 crore. This marks a turnaround for the firm which had been loss-making for several years. The company already achieved a break-even at the EBITDA level (adjusting for employee stock options) during the first nine months of FY25 while its net losses declined to Rs 148.8 crore in the same period. In April, BharatPe’s subsidiary Resilient secured final approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an online payment aggregator. This makes BharatPe one of the few Indian fintech companies to hold an NBFC license (through Trillion Loans), a stake in a small finance bank (Unity SFB), and now a payment aggregator license. Disclaimer: Bareback Media has recently raised funding from a group of investors. Some of the investors may directly or indirectly be involved in a competing business or might be associated with other companies we might write about. This shall, however, not influence our reporting or coverage in any manner whatsoever. You may find a list of our investors here.

MakeMyTrip to acquire Happay from CRED

EntrackrEntrackr · 9m ago
MakeMyTrip to acquire Happay from CRED
Medial

Online travel company MakeMyTrip has signed a business transfer agreement to acquire Happay Expense Management Platform from CRED. Happay was acquired by CRED in late 2021 in a deal worth $180 million. Entrackr exclusively reported the acquisition at that time. Happay provides expense management for corporates to manage travel and tax benefits for their employees. The company offers specialized solutions for large businesses with multiple branches and surface logistics companies. Under the new agreement, the Happay brand, its expense management business, and its dedicated team will transition to MakeMyTrip. The transaction is expected to close within the next 90 days, subject to closing conditions. According to the press release, Happay’s team will continue to support the existing client base while working in close partnership with MakeMyTrip’s corporate travel services team. “The acquisition of Happay’s brand and expense management platform is a natural next step in our strategy to lead this space. By integrating Happay’s expertise, which spans over 900 corporate clients, MakeMyTrip is set to redefine the benchmarks once again in corporate travel and expense management in India,” said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and Group CEO, MakeMyTrip. Happay’s payments business and team, which has focused on developing an innovative technology stack and business payments products, will remain with CRED. Most recently, this vertical launched B2B payment solutions on Bharat Connect in partnership with NPCI. “Our focus at CRED is on developing products that enable financial progress. By enabling each vertical to play to its strengths, we’re positioning both teams - who’ve built market-leading products and capabilities - to scale in their domains. I’m excited about the payments team’s opportunity to transform the B2B payments experience into one that’s frictionless, reliable, and one that’s set for rapid growth,” said Kunal Shah, founder, CRED. MakeMyTrip claims to serve more than 59,000 corporate clients via MyBiz (a platform for small and medium-sized corporates) and more than 450 large corporates through Quest2Travel (a platform suited for large enterprises). MakeMyTrip, listed on the Nasdaq, reported a revenue of $211 million for the second quarter of this fiscal year, a 24.3% increase compared to the same quarter in the previous fiscal year. For the quarter ending September 30, 2024, the company posted a profit of $17.9 million, up from $2 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024. While details on the value of the deal are not available yet, the fact that CRED has retained the payments business indicates the strategic nature of the hive off. But it seems safe to say that CRED will be taking a write off on the deal, with only the quantum to be figured out. Nothing wrong in a change of plans, and with the frenetic pace CRED had set until recently, perhaps an expected outcome for some of its moves.

Download the medial app to read full posts, comements and news.