4 Indian startups that stole the limelight

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It was a day of investments as food tech firm Eatfresh and logistics firm Rivigo snapped up funding. Acquisitions also made news, with a retail chain gobbling up an online grocer. Here are the four startups that made it to our list today:

Eatfresh

Ubiquitous Foods, which runs the food startup Eatfresh, today announced a fresh round of funding from Kalaari Capital. The amount was not disclosed.

The startup is an online platform for chef-made meals with a menu that changes daily and includes Indian, European, Mediterranean, and Oriental cuisine.

Eatfresh was launched in August this year and delivers in 15 areas around Bangalore. The funds from this round will be used for expansion of the Eatfresh delivery network to Bangalore and Chennai, with more cities to be added in 2016.

Rivigo

Logistics platform Rivigo has secured US$30 million in a series B round led by SAIF Partners, the company said today. The funds were raised through equity and debt financing.

The fresh funds will be used to scale up 10 times in the next 12 months. “We’ll also be focusing on expanding the technology team to add IoT, automation and data sciences,” Deepak Garg, the company’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Rivigo operates across major industry verticals like ecommerce, auto, pharma, and the cold chain space.

Rivigo was founded in 2014 as TrucksFirst. It aims to provide a 50 percent reduction in delivery time to clients, while improving upon the quality of life of truck drivers.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk, a cloud-based customer support platform, has made its third acquisition in five months by picking up chat facilitator Konotor for an undisclosed amount, the company said in a statement.

Five-year-old Freshdesk has 50,000 customers globally. It believes customer support is becoming increasingly important for today’s businesses and this acquisition is significant as the importance of mobile first companies grows. Businesses can talk to their mobile app users through Konotor’s chat inbox.

“Mobile ­first companies face a unique set of challenges in customer support and user engagement, creating the need for a different solution,” said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk.

Spencer’s

Omnipresent Retail India, the parent company of popular Kolkata-based retail chain Spencer’s, has acquired online grocery store MeraGrocer for an undisclosed amount, Livemint reported today.