5 rising startups in India

Photo credit: JD Hancock

Holy acquisitions, Batman! Monday is usually a slow news day, but four out of our five picks today for rising startups have announced acquisitions. The other secured a not-too-shabby round of funding. Check out the five startups that put the rest of us Monday strugglers to shame.

Aspiring Minds

Aspiring Minds announced that it has acquired Lets Intern, India’s largest online and mobile internship site. It connects students with tens of thousands of organizations for internships.

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds is a global startup that deals in job skills credentialing and marketing. Its multi-million dollar investment plan with Lets Intern will allow the internship site to continue running while Aspiring Minds helps to grow the site to reach every student in India, with the ultimate goal of engaging with university students worldwide. Lets Intern will lead the growth efforts.

“Lets Intern gives us a very reliable presence in the internship space and in continuing our efforts to add more value to students, colleges, and corporations,” CEO Himanshu said in a statement. “We expect to combine the reach of both [the Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test] and Lets Intern platforms and achieve significant synergies.”

This is Aspiring Minds’ second acquisition. Earlier this year, the startup acquired mobile technology startup Mizcoin.

PepperTap

Mobile grocery delivery startup PepperTap has closed its series B round of funding today, raising US$4 million from Innoven Capital. The amount joins the previously raised US$36 million from Beenext, Snapdeal, Jafco Ventures, and Sequoia India. The round now stands at about US$40 million.

Founded by Navneet Singh and Milind Sharma, PepperTap allows customers to order groceries and have them delivered within two hours. It announced today it had taken over Bangalore-based Jiffstore, a local grocery delivery startup.

“We have been reaching out to companies who can help us better our product offerings and boost the customer experience,” said Navneet, CEO of PepperTap, in a statement. “In this respect, Jiffstore seemed like an apt choice – they are an established name in Bangalore with local customers and an ever-increasing dealer base.”

The company plans to use its funding in continuing expansion into customer engagement, improving the customer grocery shopping experience, and its partners app, which will help retail chains and standalone vendors see activity on PepperTap and strategize accordingly.

Truck Mandi

Delhi-based TruckMandi has raised nearly US$2 million in pre-series A funding.

The round brought a plethora of founders to the yard, as JustEat India founder Ritesh Dwivedy and Livespace founder Ramakant Sharma joined in the round. Singapore-based Mount Nathan Advisors also participated.

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