hey guys welcome to our weekly news
show here at backstage with millionaires i'm caleb your host and it's been a
pretty challenging week for india's startup ecosystem i don't say that very often
normally i'm pretty enthusiastic i say it was an exciting week or an interesting
week but it's been a week of bad news so strap yourselves in we're in for a
bumpy ride here coming up right after this all right so first up in the news ashnil grover's
wife madhuri jain has been fired from bharatpeh allegedly over the misappropriation of funds
according to media reports madhuri jain allegedly used company funds to pay for holiday travels
and buying expensive electronic products now of course this is a lot for these two to handle
but at the same time ashnil grover has filed an arbitration plea with the singapore international
arbitration center against the buttock bay board he's continued to be vocal that he wasn't a part
of any financial fraud despite the fact that bharate is conducting an investigation against him
and according to media reports through this plea ashneer is claiming that the investigation against
him is invalid as it violates the terms of his shareholder agreement in his plea he also added
that despite numerous objections buddhape has kept the review and assessment process opaque they're
not giving him any opportunities to present his case or defend himself all right next up in the
news we actually have some exciting internal news for you guys this week from us here at backstage
with millionaires and i say us i know you mainly see me on the camera and so you might think
that i am bwm but actually we're a team of eight people and we've been brainstorming for
a while now about how we can give back more to india's startup ecosystem and one of the ideas
that we came up with actually came from you guys because for the last year or two we've been seeing
a lot of comments from people asking how they can invest in some of the indian startups that we talk
about on this channel and these comments made us realize something there aren't really a lot of
great options at the moment for retail investors people like you and me to invest small amounts
of money i'm talking as little as 5 000 rupees into indian startups and when i say startups i'm
talking about startups anywhere between the seed stage to the pre-ipo stage and so you see a lot of
investors who are angel investors or hnis or vcs making investments into these startups but what
about us and what about small amounts of money why isn't that something that people are doing and so
we were wondering if maybe we could be the ones to do it but of course we need your feedback to know
whether that's actually a good idea or not and so in the description and pin comment down below
you can find a google form so we've designed this form to be really quick to fill out
because we know that many of you guys have busy schedules and you come here to watch the
startup news and find out what's happening in the ecosystem and then you're back to work you're
building your startup or you're planning out your startup and so on average we tested the form out
it takes about 30 seconds to fill out it's really not a huge time commitment but if you needed
a further source of incentive here beyond just helping us out which we would really
appreciate we're going to be handpicking five people who fill out this google form
to have a video conference call with us to share their ideas and brainstorm with us
so i think it goes without saying that we are very excited about this next chapter of backstage
with millionaires and we're so happy to have you guys along for the journey all right next up in
the news lido learning an edtech startup that used to offer online group classes has shut down
due to lack of funds now so far there hasn't been any official public statement from the startup but
according to media reports and employee accounts lido learning's founder sahil seth announced
that the startup was shutting down on the 4th of february as they didn't have enough funds
to even credit the salaries of their employees and these salaries might not even be paid until
they can sell their assets in the coming months now this is not a small fledgling ed tech startup
lido learning has between 900 and 1200 employees and so in a supportive move other startups
in the ecosystem have opened their doors to former lido learning employees encouraging them
to apply if they haven't already found jobs now many people were surprised by this news because
lido learning seemed to be on a strong growth trajectory just six months back they raised 10
million dollars for their international expansion and they were bringing in 20 million dollars in
arr and we're on track to do a hundred million dollars so the obvious question is of course what
happened why did lydle learning fail and we don't really know at this point it's too early to say
we just don't have enough information but it could have something to do with their international
expansion maybe they just expanded too quickly and they didn't really test the market in these
international markets as well as they should have and they burnt through a bunch of capital
rather quickly and they weren't able to secure more capital again it's too early to say but 9
out of 10 startups fail and this is a reminder of that fact all right next up in the news these
startup employee layoffs don't stop with lido learning because ok credit a digital bookkeeping
solutions provider for small and medium sized businesses has laid off between 30 and 35 percent
of their workforce now according to media sources okay credit had around 140 employees before the
layoff and now that number is 80.
So it's likely that they fired between 35 and 40 employees and
this development has been confirmed by ok credit and according to one of their spokespeople
an organization that is in the growing phase ok credit has decided to put in effect a change
in the company's priorities going ahead we will be focusing on fintech initiatives and
on strengthening our growth channels alongside digital this change in priorities also
necessitated an assessment of our employee roles and some restructuring has been deemed necessary
affecting some of our employees now this news doesn't really come as a surprise ok credit has
raised 84.2 million dollars so far but despite all of this funding the startup barely managed to rake
in 3.79 lakh rupees in revenue in the financial year of 2021 while spending 114.6 rupees in
that same time period so basically it looks like they've decided to change directions and focus on
fintech because they just can't continue to burn through money and try to compete with heavily
funded startups like for example cut the book all right next up in the news and this is a little
bit of good news here it looks like swiggy and first cry are planning on going public despite the
fact that market conditions don't seem to be ideal right now but they're planning ahead and hoping
for brighter days in the future so swiggy in particular is looking to raise 800 million dollars
through their ipo next year in 2023 and first cry which is an e-commerce platform for baby products
is busy looking for investment banks to help them with their ipo which could be launched in 2022.
now like i said earlier market conditions really aren't great right now and so some of the other
startups that were planning on going public in the near future are delaying their plans it looks
like delivery oyo and pharmese aren't planning on going public as soon as they had initially
planned and other startups are even cutting down their valuations to play it safe all right
moving on to some funding news now we actually should have talked about this last week but we
didn't get a chance to because it happened on the same day that we were filming the news video
last week on thursday so we're gonna talk about it today because india has its ninth startup unicorn
of 2022 conversational ai and automation startup unifor and they've raised 400 million dollars in
a funding round led by new enterprise associates at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation so unifor began
its journey at iit madras back in 2008 and the founders ravi sarogi and um actually bootstrapped
their venture until 2014.
Today unifor's conversational ai platform offers ai-powered
chatbots and voice bots enabling conversations across more than 100 languages for their customers
around the world they're going to be using this 400 million dollars to improve their voice
platform through the use of ai computer vision and tonal emotion and to expand their international
business across north america europe and asia pacific all right next up in the funding news
and we have another unicorn to talk about here a software platform that builds api development
tools for developers hasura has raised a hundred million dollars in a funding rounded by green oaks
capital at a 1 billion valuation making them the 10th indian startup unicorn of 2022.
So hasura was
started by rajoshi ghosh and tanmai gopal in 2017 to make the life of web developers easier by
providing them with tools to make data access simple today hasura's products are being used by
a mix of legacy companies and startups including the likes of airbus swiggy atlassian and walmart
they're going to be using these funds to invest in r d to increase their open source user base and
contributor community and to expand their go to market activities globally for their flagship
product graphql alright next up in the funding news healthtech startup medibuddy has raised 125
million dollars in a funding round led by quadria capital and light rock india so medibuddy provides
an all-in-one health care platform offering 24 7 consultation with doctors online medical delivery
and at-home lab tests so far the startup has offered its services to more than 30 million
people across the country through its network of 90 000 doctors 7 000 hospitals 3 000 diagnostic
centers and 2 500 pharmacies they're going to be using these funds to invest in customer awareness
and to strengthen their technology platform all right next up in the funding news we're going
to move into our quick funding news items segment now because i have 10 funding news items to share
with you guys real quick so first of all property operations management startup facilio has raised
35 million dollars to expand their team and to roll out new product categories then we have
education focused fintech startup propelled and they too have raised 35 million dollars to grow
their loan book and to offer new products next we have loyalty solutions provider for employees
xoxo day and they've raised 30 million dollars after this we have d2c healthy snacking brand
papillion and they've raised 25 million dollars to expand their healthy snacking product range to
acquire more brands to expand their capacity and to strengthen distribution infrastructure next
we have sas based logistics management platform shipsy and they've raised 25 million dollars
to expand their presence across the middle east india and southeast asia then we have sales
engagement platform for financial institutions vimo and they've raised 22 million dollars up next
we have defense startup new space research and technologies who have focused on drone technology
and they've raised 21 million dollars following this we have fleet management platform fleet x
dot io and they've raised 19.4 million dollars to improve their product and scale their business
after that we have d2c men's clothing brand dement and they've raised 16.4 million dollars and then
finally we have sas based inventory optimization platform for retail in craf and they raised 12
million dollars to expand their product offerings and to set up offices in the united states and
europe all right that is all the startup news that i have for you guys this week i really
hope you enjoyed the video and i hope that you learned something from it big thanks now to
all of our backstage with millionaires members our unicorns our decacorns and our hecticorns
and big thanks to you for watching this video through to the end alright that's it from my
side i will see you guys in the next one you
