Start-up Week Wrap: From India Getting its Second Unicorn to Ola's Impose and Revoke of Ban It is time to find out how this week turned out to be for the India start-up community
By Bhavya Kaushal •
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The week has come to an end but not without some good news and drama in the Indian start-up community.
BigBasket Official FacebookSecond Unicorn of the Year
The week turned out to be interesting as it saw different parameters of the start-up ecosystem coming into play. India got its second unicorn of the year. Online Grocery platform BigBasket becomes the second unicorn of the year after raising about $150 million from South Korea's Mirae Asset Management, U.K.'s CDC Group and existing partner Alibaba.
ShutterstockFunding Bonanza
Indian start-ups are being taken seriously by investors and there is no doubt about it. This year saw as many as 10 start-ups getting funded by investors. This included start-ups in the seed funding, Pre-Series A, B and C bagging funding. There were also several start-ups that announced funding but the amount remained undisclosed. The newest start-up category which caught the fancy of the investors are the student rental start-ups. Stanza Living and Oxfordcaps received a funding of $4.4. million and $8 million respectively. Apart from these, online lingerie retailer, Zivame raised INR 10 crore, social network platform Healofy raised $8 million, rental furniture market place start-up Furlenco raised $5.84 million, Bengaluru-based design Bonito start-up raised $6.3 million.
Ola Official FacebookControversies
The week started on a note that caused a stir in the Indian start-up community. Karnataka Government suspended the license of the ride-hailing platform, Ola. Thousands of people faced insecurity in the wake of this ban. However, just three days later, the ban was revoked but a fine of INR 15 lakhs was imposed on the company.
Milkbasket.com Facebook, Veggie India FacebookPartnerships
A fine trend among start-ups is that of acquiring, acqui-hiring and partnering. Gurgaon-based MilkBasket, which was incepted four years ago acquired online grocery platform Veggie India. Another start-up to join the club is online Pharmacy start-up Nedmeds which announced that it has acquired health-tech startup KiViHealth in a cash and stock deal. Google Pay announced that it is partnering with Pine Labs to expand its offline offering.
