Vedantu 🤝🏻 Deeksha; Shiprocket + Shadowfax🚚; Startup funding hits two-year low📉

Vedantu takes majority stake in Deeksha, Shiprocket partners Shadowfax for same-day deliveries, Indian startup funding hits two-year low, Funding Deals and more.

Oct 14, 2022

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Vedantu takes majority stake in test prep platform Deeksha for $40M🧑🏻‍🏫

Live online learning platform Vedantu has bought a majority stake in test preparation platform Deeksha for $40 million. Deeksha is a K-12 test preparation player in Karnataka and according to Vedantu, this strategic partnership will further its hybrid education strategy.

"With this acquisition, our mission is to empower and scale Deeksha's current learning model by deploying our disruptive in-house hybrid technology to reach the masses in remote areas and create impact at scale," said Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu.

This partnership will leverage Vedantu's technology and integrate it into offline centers to create a scalable hybrid model which provides access to quality teaching, even in remote tier 3 and 4 towns at affordable cost, a statement said.

Shiprocket partners Shadowfax for same-day and next-day deliveries🚚

E-commerce logistics aggregator Shiprocket has partnered with a crowdsourced third-party logistics platform Shadowfax Technologies to facilitate same-day and next-day deliveries for D2C brands like boAT, Mamaearth and MyGlamm.

The service will be rolled out in the top 20 cities in India by the end of this year post and it will be scaled to other parts of the country, the companies said in a joint statement.

The partnership intends to leverage Shadowfax's significant hyperlocal fleet presence across the top cities of India to provide speed and reliability giving it a competitive edge compared to traditional logistic solutions.

Cryptocurrency investment platform Pillow has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Accel, Quona Capital and Jump Capital.
Isthara, a premium co-living brand and smart food court firm, has raised $10 million or Rs 81 crore in its new round led by Dubai-based Eagle Investments.
Online medical diagnostics platform 5C Network has recently raised $ 4.6 million in Series A financing led by deep tech venture capital firm, Celesta Capital.
Nona Lifestyle, a global textile supplier brand has raised $1.4 million in a Pre-Series A funding round from LC Nueva and other HNIs.
Live quizzes and interactive gamified platform Supernova has raised $1.1 million in a pre-seed round led by Lumikai and interactive media VC.

Funding Deals - Explained

Indian startup funding hits two-year low in July-September period: PwC India report📉

Startup funding in India in July to September period of the calendar year 2022 hit a two-year low at $2.7 billion across 205 deals. As per a PwC India report, early-state deals were better placed amid an overall decline in funding across all stages of investment.

Early-stage deals contributed around 21% of the total funding by value in Q3 CY22 compared to approximately 12% in the previous three months, showing that venture capital (VC) firms continue to back the Indian startup ecosystem.

Growth and late-stage funding deals accounted for 79% of the funding activity in Q3 CY22 (value terms). Average ticket size in growth-stage deals continued to decline and was $32 million during Q3 CY22.

Only two startups in India attained unicorn status in Q2 CY22. Globally, Q3 CY22 produced 20 unicorns and 45% of them are from the SaaS segment. No new decacorns were added in this quarter.