Deal Roundup: Fisdom, Mobikwik, LambdaTest lead funding week

Early-stage deals accounted for all but two startup funding transactions in the first week of December. In all, nineteen startups raised a total of $117 million, with 10 deals remaining undisclosed. Last week, startups raised a total of $309 million across 20 deals. 

Salesforce’s acquisition of workplace messaging platform Slack was the biggest technology deal in the larger global technology ecosystem this week. The $27.7 billion deal is expected to help San Francisco, California-based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions provider Salesforce emerge as a competitor to Microsoft, whose Teams solution is a Slack rival. 

Flipkart-owned digital payments platform PhonePe is in the process of raising a $700 million equity round at a post-money valuation of $5.5 billion. PhonePe has been partially hived off as a separate entity from its parent.  The round will be led by Flipkart Group’s parent, Bentonville-headquartered retail giant Walmart. 

Funding

Fisdom: Fintech platform Fisdom raised $7 million in a funding round led by PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus, with participation from returning investors Quona Capital and Saama Capital. 

MobiKwik: Gurugram headquartered digital payments platform MobiKwik secured an additional $1.5 million from Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office, Pratithi. The round values Mobikwik at $380 million and is being touted as a pre-IPO round.

LambdaTest: San Francisco-based LambdaTest, which operates a cloud-based testing platform for developers, bagged $6 million in a fresh funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme. 

Infinite Uptime: Industrial internet of things (IoT) startup Infinite Uptime landed $5.15 million in a Series B funding round, led by Bengaluru-based private equity firm VenturEast. 

M&A

Reliance-Zivame: Reliance Industries (RIL), in a stock exchange filing, listed online lingerie retailer Zivame as an associate company. It now owns more than 15% of the shares in the Bangalore-based company. In July, media reports suggested that RIL-owned Reliance Brands had bought a 15% stake in Zivame from Ronnie Screwvala-backed Unilazer Ventures. 

TVS-Intellicar: TVS Motor Company has acquired Bengaluru-based vehicle telematics and internet of things (IoT) startup Intellicar Telematics for Rs 15 crore. The acquisition is expected to help TVS accelerate its ongoing digital initiatives.

PSL- Wendell Rodricks: Mumbai-based fashion platform Purple Style Labs (PSL) has acquired original resort wear label Wendell Rodricks for an undisclosed sum. PSL is building an omni-channel fashion platform by acquiring equity stakes in fashion brands. 

Deloitte- HashedIn: Deloitte Consulting is set to acquire cloud native software engineering and product development boutique HashedIn Technologies for an undisclosed sum to expand its cloud and AI capabilities.