India Roundup: Nykaa makes blockbuster stock market debut, and more

Nykaa surges 96% in stock market debut

• Robust investor demand for shares of Nykaa’s parent firm, FSN E-commerce Ventures, helped push its valuation past US$13 billion. 
• Nykaa is India’s first women-led unicorn as well as one of the few profitable startups to hit the exchange. Founder Falguni Nayar, who owns almost half of the company’s shares, now has a net worth of US$7 billion, making her India’s richest self-made female billionaire. 
• Founded in 2012, the startup has emerged as one of the largest online marketplaces for beauty, personal care, and fashion brands in India. It operates 80 offline stores across 40 cities in the country. (Read: 8 shades of Nykaa’s pre-IPO presentation)

Sequoia-backed insurtech firm to be India’s next unicorn

• Insurtech platform Turtlemint is reportedly in talks with Tiger Global Management and other investors to raise about US$200 million, which could see the firm’s valuation go past US$1 billion, making it India’s latest unicorn.
• Launched in 2015 by former Quikr executives Dhirendra Mahyavanshi and Anand Prabhudesai, Turtlemint aims to make it easier for consumers to buy insurance for health and automobiles, among other things. It also offers a software platform for third-party insurers and banks. The company has rolled out this platform in the United Arab Emirates.
• Turtlemint, which competes with the likes of PolicyBazaar, Digit, and Acko, has raised more than US$75 million in funding to date. Some of its top investors are Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Trifecta Capital, GGV Capital, and Nexus Ventures. (Read: 7 insights into PolicyBazaar’s prospects for profitability from its IPO filings)

PharmEasy parent firm gears up for US$840 million IPO

• PharmEasy’s parent firm, API Holdings, has filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Indian markets regulator for its initial public offering (IPO).
• The company is reportedly planning to raise US$168 million in a pre-listing round. It recently raised US$350 million as part of a separate pre-IPO round, which valued the firm at US$5.6 billion.
• PharmEasy turned heads in July when it shelled out US$613 million to acquire a 66.1% stake in Thyrocare Technologies, one of the country’s largest diagnostics laboratory chains. (Read: A landmark deal: The $600m buyout by a Temasek-backed Indian e-pharmacy unicorn)

Zomato to announce investments in three firms

• Zomato will reportedly announce investments in business discovery and rewards platform Magicpin, healthtech startup Curefit, and logistics aggregator Shiprocket following the food delivery major’s next earnings release.
• Zomato will also likely announce the divestment of Fitso, a full-stack sports platform that the former acquired for US$13.7 million in January this year.
• Deepinder Goyal, Zomato’s co-founder and CEO, said the food delivery unicorn was planning to make investments in firms in a bid to expand its market cap to US$10 billion. (Read: 8 takeaways from Zomato’s investor deck for its $1.3b IPO)

Food startup bags US$7.4 million

• Troo Goods, a food startup that makes millet snacks, has raised US$7.4 million in its series A funding round led by Oaks Asset Management.
• Founded in 2018, the company claims to be India’s largest millet-based snacking company. It currently sells more than 15 million millet snacks a month across the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
• It plans to use the funds to expand into other states in India, which it estimates will have a snack market worth US$12 billion by the fiscal year 2021.

Smart crib maker raises US$7 million in seed money

• Cradlewise, a Bengaluru- and Silicon Valley-based tech company, has raised funds in its seed round led by venture capital firm Footwork.
• The round also saw participation from CRV and existing investors SOSV and Better Capital along with Stitch Fix founder Katrina Lake, Italic CEO Jeremy Cai, Molekule CTO Dilip Goswami, Infibeam co-founder Sachin Oswal, and ex-CEO of Misfit Wearables Sonny Vu.
• Founded in 2018 by engineers Radhika and Bharath Patil, Cradlewise makes smart cribs with a built-in baby monitor that leverages AI to learn a baby’s sleep patterns. The self-learning crib can also detect the first signs of the baby wakng up and can rock the crib automatically while playing music.

Currency converted from Indian rupee to US dollar: US$1 = 74.39 rupees