4 rising startups in India – Oct. 17, 2016

Photo credit: junpinzon / 123RF.

Skills courses for professionals, last mile trade, and an app for sports fans make our list of funded startups today. Meanwhile, an acquisition in baby ecommerce goes through for a pretty penny.

UpGrad

UpGrad announced an upgrade today – the site that provides working professionals with skill courses has acqui-hired Pyoopil Education Technologies.

Founded nearly three years ago, Pyoopil offers a mobile-based SaaS product that corporates can use to send employees online training programs. UpGrad intends to use that product to extend beyond individual professionals and delve into India’s corporate training market.

Founded in early 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, and Ravijot Chugh, UpGrad aids those already working in developing new career-related skills like digital marketing, product management, and entrepreneurship.

Beatroute

Photo credit: BeatRoute.

Gurgaon-based SaaS mobile app BeatRoute, which helps facilitate last mile trade, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from accelerator fund Quarizon.

Founded in June 2016 by Vinay Singh and Vivek Gaur, BeatRoute is a cloud-based platform that helps out packaged goods companies, distributors, and neighborhood stores with analytics and field activity planning.

Quarizon launched its startup funding October last year. It has invested in six startups over the past year and launched its second fund last month.

Rooter

An example of one of Rooter’s chatrooms. Photo credit: Rooter.

Sports fan engagement platform Rooter has secured a part of its angel investment round. Enabled by Kwan Entertainment, the round was led by Bollywood star Boman Irani. Kwan Entertainment partner Dhruv Chitgopekar and Prantik Dasgupta, another angel investor, also participated.

Founded by sports enthusiasts Piyush and Soham Singha, Rooter lets fans engage with each other during live games. Users can also complete pre-match quizzes, talk on chat forums, and fangirl over all aspects of sports.

The app will initially focus on the Indian market, targeting fans of European club football seasons and the Indian Super League. F1 and the NBA will also be covered.

FirstCry

Another consolidation has happened in India’s tech space, this time involving merchandise for babies. Online baby store FirstCry has acquired Mahindra Retail, which owns online babycare business BabyOye, in a US$54.2 million cash and stock deal.

In addition, FirstCry has raised US$34 million in funding from Mahindra Group, Zurich-headquartered private equity fund Adveq, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, as well as existing investors IDG Ventures India, New Enterprise Associates, SAIF Partners, Temasek Holdings, Valiant Capital Partners, and Vertex Ventures.

Mahindra Group acquired BabyOye in February 2015.

Founded by Supam Maheshwari in 2010, FirstCry sells maternity wear, nursery accessories, diapers, and children’s clothing. It also runs BabyHug, a private children’s apparel brand. The business also operates 180 brick and mortar stores and has a logistics business.

The new company will be called FirstCry.com – A FirstCry Mahindra Venture and will have 300 physical stores across 125 cities.

Converted from Indian rupees. US$1 = INR 66.79

We’ve been bringing you cool Indian startups lately. Check them out here.

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