Zeta & Moglix becomes unicorn, LambdaTest raised $16M & more

Indian startups raised $800M in May 2021, Zeta & Moglix became a unicorn

The Indian startup ecosystem raised a total funding amount of $800M in May 2021. The month also witnessed two Indian startups entering the unicorn club.

Fintech startup Zeta raised $250M in a Series C round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Sodexo, crossing the $1B mark. Additionally, Moglix raised $120M, becoming the first industrial B2B commerce platform in the manufacturing space to enter the unicorn club.

Other top funding deals include $95M raised by Lenskart, FarEye raising $100M and Twitter rival Koo raising $30M.

Bengaluru-based Convin raises Rs 2.5 Cr in a pre-seed round led by Titan Capital & 9Unicorns

The conversation intelligence platform Convin raised Rs 2.5 Cr in a pre-seed round led by Titan Capital and 9Unicorns. The company plans on using the fresh capital for product development and achieving product-market fit by building a core team.

"We are delighted to support a high-potential venture such as Convin, which is leveraging advanced analytics and intelligence to enhance the efficiency of the sales teams. The brand's value proposition allows for the seamless gleaning and sharing of valuable insights mined from the analyses of recorded conversations", says Anuj Golecha, Co-founder, 9Unicorns.

LambdaTest Startup raises $16M in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India

Browser testing startup raised $16M in a Series B funding round from Sequoia Capital India with participation from Telstra Ventures and Wamda Capital. The 2017 founded company allows its users to live test their websites and web applications across 2000+ different browsers and operating systems.

The company will use the fresh capital to scale the testing environment and build next-generation cloud infrastructure for users along with launching a new line of products for developers.

Zeta reaches $1.45B valuation after raising $250M in Series C

Dubai-based banking tech startup Zeta raised $250M in a Series C startup led by SoftBank Vision 2 and becomes Fintech’s latest unicorn valued at $1.45B. This fundraising is one of the largest single investments in a banking tech startup globally.

“Most banks are using decades-old software built when Mainframes and Cobol were in vogue. They have been slow to innovate and provide poor user experiences. With Zeta, FIs can leverage a modern, cloud-native platform and improve speed to market, agility, cost to income ratio, and user experience”, says Bhavin Turakhla, CEO & Co-founder, Zeta.

San Francisco-based Iterative raises $20M in a Series A led by 468 Capital

Popular Open Source provider MLOps company Iterative raised $20M in a Series A round led by 468 Capital and Florian Leibert, ex-founder of Mesosphere. With participation from previous investors True Ventures and Afore Capital, the total funding reached $25M. 

The fresh capital will be used for company growth and development. Working in 14 countries across Europe, Asia and the US, Iterative introduced its first commercial product DVC Studio that simplifies ML model development and enhances collaboration. 

Software-defined telecom SignalWire raises $30M

Founded in 2017, software-defined telecom SignalWire raised $30M to scale its distributed communications network that runs in cloud. The company announced that it will be using the newly raised capital to expand its workforce and supporting product Research & Development.

“SignalWire was born in open-source, our core founding team developed the most widely deployed open-source communications platform in the world, the de-facto standard for software-defined communications products and services, FreeSWITCH,” says Sean Heiney, COO, SignalWire.

Project44 reaches $1.2B valuation as it closes $202M in Series E

Project44 raised $202M in a Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Emergence Capital reaching a valuation of $1.2B. The Chicago-based company provides crucial real-time information like estimated time of arrivals using predictive analytics.

The raise is probably the largest investment in the supply chain visibility space. The company plans to use the fresh capital to continue its global expansion to Asia-Pacific, Australia/New Zealand and Latin America markets after its recent expansion in China. The company is also targeting to increase its AI and data science potential.

Jeeves finally emerges with $131M in total funding with a16z as the leading investor

Jeeves finally emerged to reveal its total funding of $131M including $31M in equity and $100M in debt financing. The equity fund includes $26M raised in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

“We’re building an all-in-one expense management platform for startups in LatAm and global markets — cash, corporate cards, cross-border — all run on our own infrastructure. We’re really building two things — an infrastructure layer that sits across banking institutions in different countries. And then on top of that, we’re building the customer-, or end user-facing app”, says Dileep Thazhmon, co-founder, Jeeves.