3 rising startups in India – Feb 21, 2017

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A well-known Indian furniture etailer bags funding even as trouble brews within the startup, while a utility app secures moolah from one of the biggest investors in the world. Another indie app for the fashion-forward rounds up today’s list of some big-ticket funding rounds.

Urban Ladder

Amidst reports of top executives quitting Urban Ladder, the Bangalore-based furniture and home decor etailer bagged US$15 million in a fresh round of funding from existing investors.

Kalaari Capital, Urban Ladder’s investor since August 2012, invested an additional US$4.6 million. Another long-time investor SAIF Partners invested a similar amount. The rest was pooled in by Steadview Capital and Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia Capital came in as investor for Urban Ladder in 2015, when it invested US$50 million in series C funding, along with TR Capital and the existing investors – Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, and Kalaari Capital.

Urban Ladder was founded in July 2012 by two friends from IIM Bangalore – Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa.

See: Silicon Valley tech veterans to help India’s Urban Ladder ramp up innovations in furniture ecommerce

True Balance

SoftBank Ventures Korea, part of the Japanese Softbank Group has followed up its investment last year in True Balance with a US$15 million top-up in a series B funding round. Balance Hero, founded in 2014 by Korean expat Cheol won Lee, operates the utility app True Balance.

The Gurgaon-based startup tracks the credit and data balance of a prepaid user, lets them top up, and purchase new connections – all without an internet connection. It also provides suggestions on the best plans and offers available from the telecom operators.

New investors IMM Investment Group and other South Korean investors such as Mega Investment, Korea Development Bank, and Capston Partners also participated in this round.

See: SoftBank Korea’s ‘most impressive investment’ last year was not in Korea but in India

Wooplr

The app that lets users find what’s trending around them through pictures and then recommend those to their friends has secured US$8 million in a series B round of funding.

The funding in Wooplr was led by Sistema Asia Fund. Amereus Group and existing investor Helion Ventures also participated in the round. The startup had raised US$5 million in series A funding from Helion Venture Partners in 2015.

This Bangalore-based startup was founded in 2011 by four former employees of security software maker McAfee – Arjun Zacharia, Praveen Rajaretnam, Soumen Sarkar, and Ankit Sabharwal.