Weekly funding wrap: Jio invests in Glance, Elastic Run turns unicorn and more

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The funding boom in Indian startups continue as this week some major deals were announced and a new unicorn. So far, there are already eight unicorns in 2022. 

The two biggest deals of this week were Glance, which raised $200 million from Reliance Jio and Elastic Run joined the unicorn club with a $330 million fundraise.

Here’s a roundup of the key deals in the week gone by.

Glance

Jio has infused $200 million in Glance, a lock-screen platform, to accelerate the platform’s growth internationally.

Glance will use the funds raised to double down on growth in Asia and launch in key global markets including the US, Brazil, Mexico and Russia. This will also give a boost to Glance’s live commerce and short video platform Roposo. 

The competition in the short-form video space has intensified with domestic players such as ShareChat’s Moj, VerSe Innovation’s Josh stepping up their play, triggering consolidation in the market.

Founded in 2019, Glance’s lock screen platform is present on more than 400 million devices across markets in Asia.

Glance is also backed by Google and Silicon Valley-based venture fund Mithril Capital. 

Elastic Run

The business-to-business e-commerce company closed a funding round of $330 million, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs Asset Management at a valuation of $1.5 billion. With this fundraise, it became the seventh unicorn of 2022. The company has raised about $460 million till date.

ElasticRun estimates that sales in kirana stores across rural markets would grow to $600 billion over the next five years. The company plans to grow its presence into 30+ states and bring a million stores to its network and grow the network to two million stores in the next 18-24 months.

DealShare

Newly-turned unicorn DealShare has raised $45 million as part of its series E funding round from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) at a valuation of $1.7 billion. Last month, DealShare raised $165 million in the first close of its Series E fundraise from Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital, Unilever Ventures, and existing investors, Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global (Falcon Edge).

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Sourjyendu Medda, Founder and Chief Business Officer, said that The company currently has monthly active users (MAUs) of about 60 lakhs and transacting customers of 20 lakhs.

Also, the company is in touching distance of hitting $1 billion of gross revenue run rate and plans to hit $3 billion of gross revenue run rate in the next 12 months.

Kenkohealth

Mumbai-based insurtech startup Kenko Health has raised $12 million, led by Sequoia Capital India. The company previously raised $1.7 million from Beenext and Orios.

Founded in 2019 by Aniruddha Sen and Dhiraj Goel, Kenko covers healthcare expenses across OPD and hospitalisation through its subscription service model. The company also covers costs of doctor visits, medicine expenses, diagnostic tests, and more.

RapiPay

Fintech startup RapiPay raised $15 million to build digital banking and financial ecosystem and scale up existing payment services.

Founded in 2019 by Yogendra Kashyap, the Delhi-based startup claims to be the only digital banking player with a phygital infrastructure of half a million hybrid direct business outlets (DBOs). These hybrid DBOs will provide 24X7 banking services to customers.

Overall, it aims to become the digital banking super app, which has the potential to get the entire retail network on board using the app for salary and current accounts, payment solutions, retail, and business loans, buy now pay later (BNPL) investments, insurance among other services.

This super app is expected to launch in June this year. The company said it is clocking one million daily transactions and has served more than 100 million customers. It has witnessed a 25% month-on-month in basic banking services.