Edtech startup NxtWave raises $33M in Series A round led by Greater Pacific Capital 

Hyderabad-based upskilling platform NxtWave has raised $33 million in a Series A round led by Greater Pacific Capital, an international private equity firm. NxtWave’s existing investor Orios Venture Partners also participated in the latest funding round. This is the second round of funding raised by the company, taking the total amount of funding raised to $35.8 million. 

Earlier in December 2021, the edtech startup had raised $2.8 million in its pre-Series A funding led by Orios Venture Partners and Better Capital. 

NxtWave said it plans to utilise the funds to further enhance the learning experience of users by investing in its product and content. It also plans to undertake acquisitions in the next couple of years and expand to multiple geographies within the country.

Founded by IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, and IIIT Hyderabad alumni—Sashank Reddy Gujjula, Anupam Pedarla, and Rahul Attuluri—NxtWave is building an online employability platform for new-age technology careers. 

Mintoak raises $20M Series A funding round led by PayPal Ventures 

Embedded finance startup Mintoak Innovation raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by PayPal Ventures, with participation from British International Investment and existing investors HDFC Bank and Pravega Ventures.  

Other institutional investors, including White Whale Venture Fund, also invested in this round. The startup will use the capital raised to ramp up its tech stack and double down on the existing product portfolio, besides expanding into new markets like Southeast Asia. 

Founded in 2017, Mintoak offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for merchant services, which allows merchants and their banking partners to deploy and rapidly scale value-added services (payments, lending, engagement) to their SME customers. 

Scrut Automation raises $7.5M from MassMutual Ventures, others 

Scrut Automation, a risk compliance automation platform, has raised $7.5 million from MassMutual Ventures. Existing investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partnersand Endiya Partners, also participated in the round and increased their stakes. 

The firm will use the fresh capital to further develop its product and expand its presence across existing territories, among mid-market enterprises. Scrut Automation works with firms in India, Singapore, and the United States.

Started in 2021 by Aayush Ghosh Choudhury, Kush Kaushik, and Jayesh Gadewar, the company focuses on helping small and medium cloud-native enterprises develop and maintain a robust security posture, and comply with various infosec standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and others. 

The startup claims that companies have been able to reduce 70% of manual tasks in security and compliance.

Digital twin startup Intangles raises $10M in Series A round 

Digital Twin solutions provider Intangles has raised $10 million in a Series A round from Baring Equity Partners India. The startup will use the proceeds to serve a new customer pipeline, expand its global presence, and accelerate hiring to strengthen its product engineering, sales, and delivery teams, it said in a press release. 

Founded in 2016 by Anup Patil (CEO), Neil Unadkat (CTO), Aman Singh (Head of Analytics), and Jayshri Patil (Head of Embedded Systems), Intangles says it has developed substantial in-house IP by leveraging its proprietary digital twin and machine learning paradigms to provide predictive vehicle health monitoring solutions to OEMs and fleet operators.

“We are focused on growing our presence across the entire commercial vehicle segment across the globe. In the coming years, we are aiming to vigorously revamp the electric vehicle segment using our extensive Ambient Cognitive AI technology,” said Anup Patil, Co-founder and CEO of Intangles.

Logistics startup COGOS raises $1.2M debt funding from Vivriti Capital

Tech logistics startup Cogos Technologies on Tuesday raised $1.2 million in debt financing from fintech NBFC Vivriti Capital to fuel its expansion plans.

The B2B city logistics platform said it is witnessing an uptick in demand, and would use the funds to expand its national footprint and for hiring purposes. Founded in 2016 by Prasad Sreeram and Rama Mohan Katta, COGOS is an artificial intelligence-led logistics platform.

Backed by New York-based deeptech fund WorldQuant Ventures, UAE-based Logistics major Transworld, Indian Angel Network (IAN), EV2 Ventures and Lets Venture, the startup had previously raised a total of $3 million in seed and pre-series funding rounds.

It also acquired the FMCG modern trade business of Porter.

“City logistics is growing steadily, and we are set to witness some high rise in demand, specifically from non-Tier I cities. Immediate capital investment will help us combat this demand with complete efficiency. We are determined to utilise it in our aggressive expansion plan, specifically in Tier II and III cities,” said Prasad Sreeram, CEO and Co-founder of COGOS.

SAAS platform Nimble S2P raises Rs 4Cr to expand operations

SaaS platform Nimble S2P has raised Rs 4 crore in a pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures besides other micro-venture catalysts and angel investors. It will use the funds for sales, marketing, partner relations, and product development. 

Founded by Chandresh Sharma and Arun Krishnamoorthy in 2016, the Mumbai-based startup enables companies to streamline and automate their workflows related to finance, accounting, procurement, and manual activities for buyers, thus reducing their processing time by 50–70%. 

It primarily serves manufacturing and infrastructure companies and has over 15 customers, including DLF, Jindal Steel and Power, and Oberoi Realty.  

“Our vision is to revolutionise supplier-buyer interaction through a fully-automated platform. In the next two to three years, we aim to establish a strong foundation and attract over 200,000 users, expanding our growth story from India to the Middle East and South Asia,” said CEO Chandresh Sharma.

The current global supply chain market size is estimated to be worth over $6 billion, and it is growing at a consistent rate of 7% CAGR, which means that by 2032, it is projected to reach an estimated $13 billion. The direct potential for this market is significant, particularly in India, where it is estimated to be worth over $750 million.

“MSMEs are the backbone of the economy as they contribute nearly 30% to the GDP. However, critical sectors like manufacturing, power, and infra have remained largely untouched by digital transformation owing to a lack of tailor-made platforms for them. This market is huge (both in India and internationally) with visible benefits (both cost and time) to the clients at an early stage that should support stickiness and adoption,” said Ankur Mittal, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures.