Published: 12/15/2020
Good morning, it's Tuesday and I've got a fun column tomorrow on the crab mentality of the Indian startup ecosystem & building in public. Might even get some quotes from founders in the space but if any subscriber would like to send me thoughts, I'd love to try to include them as well. As for today, we're got another Indian SaaS unicorn & Agritech x Fintech co raising some money.
➡️ I think this is going to be a great decade for the Indian startup ecosystem and we're off to a great start (despite the pandemic)- Reliance Jio has raised billions of dollars from investors across the globe and we've seen multiple companies in various sectors (Enterprise SaaS, EdTech & more) cross the billion dollar valuation.
➡️ And Zenoti is the newest kid on the block (though its not the youngest, since the company was founded in 2010). The SaaS company has raised $160M in their Series D round led by PE firm Advent International with existing investors Tiger Global and Steadview Partners participating in the round as well.
➡️ The company helps spa and salon brands across 50 countries manage their business including- scheduling appointments, POS operations, managing payments & reconciliation through its cloud-based software products. It also has an integrated CRM with built-in marketing solutions which help offline businesses digitize their operations.
➡️ The company plans to use the capital to expand in the European and South American markets and plans to roughly double its employee size from 550 to 900 in the next 2 years. The company has great gross margins and also plans to be profitable by the Q2 of 2022 and it would be cool to see if the company plans to go public in the next two years or after turning profitable.
2. http://tcrn.ch/34dMr88: Arya raises $21M in a Series B
➡️ "Only about a third of the yields Indian farmers produce reaches the big markets. Those whose produce makes it there today are able to leverage post-harvest services. Everyone else is missing out."
➡️ I read the opening of this funding announcement and was mind-blown by that statistic, and this is where Arya plans to come in and help. The company announced their $21M Series B led by Quona Capital with existing investors LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore also participating.
➡️ Currently most post-harvesting services are focussed largely towards the major agricultural centers i.e Kota & Delhi. And this uneven concentration of financial services has deprived a large number of Indian farmers who are unable to efficiently store their produce and access financing options to manage their cash flow.
➡️ Arya is solving problems for these famers through a couple of different means- it has a network of 1500 warehouses in 20 states where it can store over $1B worth of commodities, where farmers can store their produce at a location closer to their farms; the company has also disbursed $36.5M to farmers and its banking partners have disbursed an additional $95M.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1338669688532967424
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