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Kenko Health Shuts Down Amid Funding Crunch, Leaving Employees Unpaid and Investors in Deadlock

By
Garima Bansal
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kenko

Established in 2019, Kenko Health has been accused of not paying its employees for several months, let alone that last year, it dismissed its workers, accounting for 20% of its total staff. Information was not shared with the employees about their company’s financial situation which caused anxiety and disappointment among them. Sen attributed this silence to the expectation of some sort of resolution of the issue which did not happen.

The insurtech Kenko Health, created in Sao Paulo by Aniruddha Sen has shut down and is no longer operating due to a lack of funds. Founded by Peak XV Partners and Orios Venture Partners, a company could not find the equity capital on time and was on the verge of financial troubles; as a result, the business shut down. The startup has also faced legal actions from a debt fund that had provided a loan to the company where it has been taken to the National Company Law Tribunal.

This led to the shareholder dispute over an investment by Hero Group that further compounded the company’s demise. Investors however rejected the deal despite the initial agreement, citing consequences of massive dilution of their stakes which lead to deadlock. This situation made Kenko’s investors start writing off their investments to the extent that they created crisis.

Kenko Health, which offered a subscription service for healthcare expenditures, had elicited $13. undefined But even more problems arose – the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India has raised its requirements, and the startup has a net loss of $ 8 million. 5 million on the sales revenue of $10. 9 million in the fiscal year ending in 2023. Co-founders, Sen and Dhiraj Goel, own a 36% stake in the company while Peak XV, Beenext, and Orios have substantial stakes in Meru.

Cred Becomes BBPS-Certified, Pioneers Fast and Guaranteed Credit Card Bill Payments

By
Garima Bansal
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Bengaluru-based fintech firm Cred has received certification from NPCI Bharat Billpay, enabling it to function as a customer operating unit (COU) on the Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS). This certification allows Cred to expand its partnerships with major billers and banks, enhancing the speed and efficiency of credit card bill payments made through its platform. Users will now have the ability to process bill payments across all billers available on the BBPS network.

BBPS, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is a unified platform designed to streamline bill payments across India. Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mandated that all credit card bill payments made through third-party applications must be processed via BBPS.

In July, Cred processed over Rs 15,000 crore in bill payments through compliant banks, making it the largest agent institution on BBPS for the month. The company contributed approximately 40% to the growth in the value of payments processed on BBPS from June to July.

Cred also introduced the ‘Cred Guarantee,’ a feature ensuring that bills are settled on time, with the company committing to cover any late fees if there is a rare instance of a late settlement. This guarantee applies as long as users have paid their bills in full on or before the due date through Cred.

Additionally, Cred is exploring secured credit disbursals, including two-wheeler, four-wheeler, and home loans, following a market study and discussions with lending partners. The company has also received in-principle approval from the RBI to operate in the payment aggregation (PA) business.

Legends League Cricket Raises Rs 39 Crore at Rs 350 Crore Valuation to Power Expansion and Global Reach

By
Garima Bansal
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LLC

Legends League Cricket (LLC), a cricket league featuring senior cricketers, has secured Rs 39 crore in funding from Brickwork, valuing the league at Rs 350 crore. The funds are set to fuel LLC’s expansion plans.

Founded in 2021 by Raman Raheja and Vivek Khushalani, LLC comprises six franchises, including India Capitals, Gujarat Giants, Bhilwara Kings, Manipal Tigers, Urban Risers Hyderabad, and Southern Superstars. The league is supported by prominent investors like Vikram Singhania, Jayant Davar, Sanjay Gupta, and Arvind Singhania.

The upcoming season, scheduled from September 11 to October 5, 2024, will feature a franchise format with six teams composed of renowned cricket legends such as Ross Taylor, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Aaron Finch, and Chris Gayle. Matches will be held in both India and Qatar.

LLC has already garnered a global viewership of 1.56 billion in the previous year and aims to attract even more fans with its expanded lineup of 34 matches. The league aspires to create a landmark season, further enhancing cricket’s festive spirit in the region.

Acadru Secures $0.5M Pre-Series A Funding to Fuel Market Expansion and Innovative Learning Paths

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Garima Bansal
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Acadru Secures $0.5M Pre-Series A Funding to Fuel Market Expansion and Innovative Learning Paths

The SaaS startup Acadru has raised around $5 million in a pre-Series A round with AIG Direct LLC as its lead investor and the backing of other participants.

Acadru intends to use this new cash to expand to new markets and to build new paths of content. Launched in the year 2016 by Abhishek Singhal and Kamini Vidisha, Acadru is a unique system of education through online learning tailored for college and senior school students. The platform is aimed at enhancing the successful concentration by students of fundamental academic competencies and self-learning based on extracurricular multicultural activities. These involve project-based activities, mini-modules, and generating learners’ profiles with the help of an artificial intelligence system; all of this is done with the purpose of helping the students to identify the fields they are interested in, gain necessary vocational experience, and demonstrate their accomplishments.

Started in Gurugram, India Acadru emphasises contextual discovery providing learners with an opportunity to take their learning to the next level by solving context based problems. This platform also provides detailed background information, sample project topics, content sequence and source connections suggestions. These are intended as materials for solving individual and team assignments; for grounding research, analysis, and evaluation skills for depth study.

Acadru currently boasts of having over 5000 projects within over 500 topics, and content is updated every week. The system is flexible and can be further customized to fit the needs of schools therefore can be applied in almost any educational situation.

Fabrication Bazar Secures $3 Million in Pre-Series A Funding Led by Physis Capital and ICMG

By
Garima Bansal
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Steel Tech Startup Fabrication Bazar Raises $3M to Expand Global Reach and Transform MSMEs

A recently founded manufacturing technology startup company called Fabrication Bazar, which is owned by Ben & Gaws Private Limited, negotiated a Pre-Series A round of funding worth $3m with Physis Capital. It also saw participation from ICMG, a Japan based venture capital fund and Inflection Point Ventures, an existing backer.

The newly mobilized fund, which is part debt, will be applied to the development of Fabrication Bazar’s tech platform; extension of its territorial presence beyond India, with focused attention paid to GCC and Southeast Asia; and reinforcement of the company’s top management.

Launched by Dwaipayan Dutta, Fabrication Bazar is an asset-light digital manufacturing company focused on industrial steel products. It operates in over 400 clients in various industries by engaging over 330 fabrication vendors all over India. This manufacturing technology allows the firm to integrate the production of products that are usually associated with a long cycle in that the company breaks the product into smaller components that are worked on concurrently, thus cutting on time.

Fabrication Bazar also has their conveyor as a digital supply chain management system that enables procurement, quality check, and supply. This optimisation draws on more over 1. 50 lac MSME fabrication vendors of India. The company continuously increases its vendor base in India and already expands in other countries – for example, in Vietnam it controls production facilities while keeping global quality norms and reducing costs and lead times compared to traditional suppliers.


Physis Capital‘s partner Ankur Mittal dwelled on the key role of the steel fabricators in India in its pursuit of a $5 trillion economy. He said that Fabrication Bazar is positioning itself to revolutionize the industry with an innovative technology that partners with a dependable pool of fabricators from all over the world. Its growth of 6 times since FY21’ shows that the company is fresh, innovative and captures the market demand correctly.

India being the second-largest steel producer and consumer has a structural steel market which is expected to be more than $20 billion by 2030, Fabrication Bazar stands in the middle to connect the underbanked MSME fabricators with large corporate end-users. The company’s digital platform competes with conventional manufacturers through technology which lowers down the lead time and price.

AI-Driven Code Breakthrough: $1B in Funding Fuels the Future of Software Engineering

By
Garima Bansal
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AI Coders Take Center Stage: $1B Funding Signals Software Engineering's AI Revolution

Automated coding assistants using generative AI have been growing fast, raising nearly $1bn in funding since the beginning of the last year; the software engineering domain has thus emerged as one of the biggest application fields of generative AI. The new cohort of startups, including Replit, Anysphere, Magic, Augment, Supermaven, and Poolside AI, has closed 79 investments this year, for $433m; the total funding since January 2023 is $906m.

This increase in investment shows the actual opinion that computer programming is one of the first occupations to be impacted greatly by AI. Scholars in the industry disaggregate and expound that AI is disrupting software engineering saying that to code without AI is as good as writing without a word processing tool.

While the interest in AI-written code in Silicon Valley increases, there are doubts related to whether Big Tech gets enough revenues from its giant investments in AI tools. Those investors like Hannah Seal from Index Ventures believe that there is a great opportunity to make money on AI by integrating it into the existing processes, and it is clear that coding is one of the first areas where such an integration makes sense.

This is one sector that the big technology companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Google etc. are heavily competing on. They are creating AI tools that can write and edit codes meaning to program more is much easier and time saving. For example, Microsoft via its GitHub was one of the pioneers in this domain With launching GitHub Copilot in 2022. This particular AI helper has been driving nearly 2 million paying customers to GitHub and contributing to more than 40% of this year’s company revenues.

There is still controversy regarding the use of AI coding tools even in the present generation most especially so concerning the security challenges posed by use of AI codes in production. However, the companies that have adopted the tools note that productivity has improved between 20-35%. It is used to draft code, correct it and even to refactor it.

Orient Technologies IPO Oversubscribed 16.95x, Grey Market Premium Signals 34% Potential Gains

By
Garima Bansal
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Orient Technologies IPO Oversubscribed 16.95x, Commands 34% Grey Market Premium Ahead of Listing

Orient Technologies, a new generation telecommunications company has recently floated its IPO, and based on the response, the issue was many times over subscribed, to be precise the issue was 16 times subscribed. 95 as of the second day of what was called bidding. This is an announcement regarding subscription period which which is expected to close today, August 23, 2024 as follows; The ‘face value’ of each Orient Technologies IPO share is Rs 10 while the price range given for the IPO is Rs 195 to Rs 206 per share and includes a minimum bid of Rs 14,832 for one lot of 72 shares.

At present, Orient Technologies ‘shares are quoted on the grey market with a GMP of Rs 70 which is 34% higher than IPO upper band price. The positive GMP normally implies demand and investors’ appetite and this makes IPOs to list at a price higher than the issue price. If trends of market are as such, the listing gains of Orient Technologies can be estimated to be around 34 percent after its shares are listed in the exchange.

The Rs 215 crore public issue has had overall demand for as many as 12,62,82,744 shares as compared to the actual float of 74,49,846 shares, as per the information available from the NSE. The risk selling category for the retail investor has been oversubscribed by 24. four times so far, the category of Non-Institutional Investors (NII) has exhibited a subscription rate of 20 times. 97 times. QIB category which was at a much better position as compared to the other categories remained poorly subscribed at 0. 16 times.

The Orient Technologies IPO comprises a new issue of Equity SHAREs for up to Rs 120 crore comprising of 5,825,243 Fresh Issue SHAREs and an offer for sale of 4,600,000 Share and the funds will be utilized for financing working capital requirements, repayment of borrowings/ subscription to debt securities, acquisitions / investments and general corporate purposes. 76 crore. The OFS is in progressive stage and shares are being sold by important promoters of the company such as Ajay Baliram Sawant, Umesh Navnitlal Shah, Ujwal Arvind Mhatre and Jayesh Manharlal Shah etc. The company has already locked in Rs 64. 43 crore from anchor investors on Aug 19 2024 A day before the opening of the public issue.

The allotment of shares is scheduled for August 26, 2024, with the shares expected to be credited to investors’ Demat accounts by August 27, 2024. The shares are anticipated to be listed on the NSE and BSE on August 28, 2024. The IPO is being managed by Link Intime India as the registrar and Elara Capital (India) as the book-running lead manager.

IndoSpace Commits Over Rs 580 Crore to Build Two Cutting-Edge Logistics Parks in Karnataka

By
Garima Bansal
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IndoSpace Commits Over Rs 580 Crore to Build Two Cutting-Edge Logistics Parks in Karnataka

IndoSpace which is one of the most successful developers and owners of Grade A industrial space having backing of Everstone Group planning to invest more than Rs 580 crore to develop two new logistic parks with a total land area of 76 acres in Karnataka. It forms part of investment plans that the company agreed to make according to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the state government.

IndoSpace signed the term sheet agreement in 2022 for the investment in the warehousing and logistics sector for Karnataka where the firm committed an investment of Rs 3,000 crore in seven years of the agreement. This huge investment may make a generation of 14,000 new jobs and this is the largest investment by an industrial developer in Karnataka.

The two logistic parks planned for operation in the near future will have the combined area of 1. It has the opportunity to develop 8 million sq.ft for automotive, engineering, electronic manufacturing and 3PL companies. The parks will be established progressively, construction of the parks is set to start this year and plans for the parks to be partially operational in the next 2–3 years.

Among those proposed include the IndoSpace Nelamangala II logistics park that will be established in 35 acres of land and will cost Rs 240 crore. Sited in the Bengaluru-Mumbai highway (NH48), this park stands to greatly boost the capacity of this region for industrial productivity. The second park IndoSpace Narasapura II will have a size of 40 acres, and the total investment is to be made of Rs 340 crore. It is located off Old Madras Road (NH 75) close to growing industrial centers of Vemgal, Malur and Hoskote.

IndoSpace already operates three logistics parks in Karnataka: Among the several warehouses IndoSpace Nelamangala I of 16 acres; IndoSpace Bommasandra of 5 acres. Narasapura II is a 4-acre development on the new Bengaluru-Chennai highway and Narasapura I is a sprawling 64-acre development.

IndoSpace currently boasts of a national portfolio of 52 logistics parks and 58 million square feet of delivered space established in 11 cities.

The industrial and logistics sectors continue to attract significant investment, driven by the growing demand for these assets. This trend is bolstered by the ongoing decentralization of manufacturing from China and government initiatives like ‘Make in India’ and the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. A supportive regulatory environment, coupled with government-backed policies and reforms, is expected to further boost infrastructure spending and increase demand for modern logistics facilities.

Efficient Capital Labs Secures $11M in Series A to Expand into Southeast Asia

By
Garima Bansal
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Efficient Capital Labs Secures $11M in Series A to Expand into Southeast Asia

Efficient Capital Labs (ECL), a B2B SaaS company specializing in revenue-based financing, has raised $11 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by QED Investors and 645 Ventures, with participation from existing investors Riverside and Generalist, as well as new investors FJ Labs and Eudemian Ventures.

The funding will support ECL’s expansion into Singapore and Southeast Asia, building on its success in the US and India, where it has already provided over $70 million in financing and tripled its customer base to over 100 companies within a year.

ECL offers financing in multiple currencies, including USD and INR, and plans to extend this to Singapore dollars, reducing reliance on foreign exchange and navigating strict international regulations.

Founded in 2022 by Kaustav Das and Manish Arora, ECL provides non-dilutive capital to B2B SaaS companies generating significant revenue from the US market while maintaining substantial operations in South Asia.

ECL differentiates itself by evaluating a company’s total global revenue across various geographies, allowing them to offer more accurate and comprehensive financing solutions that might be overlooked by traditional US-based financing providers.

Azim Premji and Ranjan Pai Lead $125 Million Flight into Akasa Air Investment

By
Garima Bansal
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Azim Premji and Ranjan Pai Lead $125 Million Flight into Akasa Air Investment

A consortium led by Premji Invest and Claypond Capital, the family offices of Wipro’s Azim Premji and Manipal Group’s Ranjan Pai, is in advanced discussions to invest approximately $125 million for a significant minority stake in Akasa Air, according to sources familiar with the matter. This investment would value Akasa Air at over $350 million, marking a substantial increase from its initial valuation of around $35 million, when the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala‘s family first invested. This move signifies a rare show of confidence in the Indian aviation sector, which has historically struggled to attract substantial investment.

The funds raised through this investment are expected to support Akasa Air’s expansion plans and pre-delivery payments for aircraft, which will result in the dilution of the Jhunjhunwala family’s and CEO Vinay Dube’s shareholdings. Currently, the Jhunjhunwala family and Dube hold around 67% of the company, with the Jhunjhunwala family maintaining a 40% stake, making them the largest single shareholder even after the dilution.

Due diligence for this investment is being handled by a consultancy firm, and while the process is ongoing, finalizing the deal may take some time. Although CEO Vinay Dube did not comment directly on the investment, he emphasized the company’s commitment to remaining well-capitalized, ensuring that Akasa Air continues to build for the long term.

The potential investors, Premji Invest and Claypond Capital, are reportedly interested in well-managed, consumer-facing startups with significant market potential. Akasa Air’s prospects are bolstered by the current state of the Indian aviation industry, which is largely dominated by IndiGo and Air India, especially after the bankruptcy of Go First and financial struggles at SpiceJet. Investors believe that a well-funded airline like Akasa Air could emerge as a strong third player in the market, offering substantial returns.

An exclusive combination of Premji Invest and Claypond Capital, family offices of Wipro’s Azim Premji and Manipal Group’s Ranjan Pai is in talks to invest roughly $125m in Akasa Air a vital minority investment talks. This investment would give Akasa Air a post-money valuation of well over $ 350 million, a far cry from when the family of the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala invested for about $ 35 million. This single action can therefore be seen as a very positive signal for the Indian aviation market which has hitherto had very little get a hold of investors.

The money from this investment is supposed to go to Akasa Air’s expansion and aircraft pre-delivery payments whereby the shareholding by the Jhunjhunwala family and the airline’s CEO Vinay Dube will be diluted. Currently the Jhunjhunwala family and Dube own roughly 67% of the company although the Jhunjhunwala family will retain 40% after the new share issue and will hence be the largest single shareholder.

Selection of an appropriate investment is still underway with the due diligence process being handled by a consultancy firm and hence the closing of the deal may still be a while away. While CEO, Vinay Dube did not make a direct reference to the investment, he made it clear that Akasa Air would continue to hold sufficient cash to build for the future.

Premji Invest and Claypond Capital are the potential investors who are said to target only companies with high growth potential, and those in the consumer space that are run efficiently. The current structure of the Indian market is in the favor of Akasa Air as the current key player is IndiGo and Air India with Go First going bust and SpiceJet coming from a financial crisis. Prominent investors are of the view that Akasa Air which is highly-funded could create new dynamism and resulted in high returns. Entering the market in August 2021, Akasa Air rapidly grew its fleet as the pandemic lowered the cost of renting aircraft and hiring pilots and cabin crew. When the aircraft was first launched the airline placed an order for seventy six Boeing 737 Max, then placed an order for one hundred and fifty more in January. But it has been restricted because Boeing has slowed down production in recent years, a result of close regulatory monitoring of the company following a series of safety failures.

For the fiscal ended 2022, Akasa Air presented losses of Rs 744 crore; however, the FY24 predicted industry losses are over Rs 1,600 crore. To these losses, CEO Dube blames the incremental investments required to set the right platform especially in safety, training and technology though he affirms that the initial outlay remains inviolate.

For Ranjan Pai, who has a 30 per cent stake in Manipal Hospitals that accounts for $400-500 million, the new economy sector investment is one of the major new ventures. Its major clients are Bluestone, Pharmeasy, Purplle and it also has a 74% stake in Aakash institute. Premji Invest, family office managing India’s largest portfolio over $10bn, remains active across sectors; latest deals involve investments in AI companies in US and India as well as FirstCry, Lenskart, KreditBee.

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