Meesho rebrands Farmiso🍅, Josh parent at $5 Bn🤳🏻, Gupshup acquires Active.ai🏦
Meesho to integrate grocery business, Dailyhunt & Josh parent raises $805 Mn, Gupshup acquires VC-backed Active.ai, Funding Deals & more.
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Meesho to integrate grocery business in the core app🍅
Softbank-backed e-commerce firm Meesho on Tuesday it is rebranding Farmiso, its grocery business, and will be integrated with its core application. The move is in line with its vision to become a single shopping destination for the next billion users in India, the company said.
Farmiso will be rebranded to Meesho Superstore and the integration of the grocery business is expected to be completed by the first week of May.
Meesho Superstore currently provides 500 products across categories like fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, groceries, home care and packaged food among others. Meesho plans to make Superstore available in 12 states by the end of 2022.
The integration, Meesho said, will now provide the company's over 100 million users access to over 87 million active product listings across more than 36 categories on a single platform.
Dailyhunt & Josh parent raises $805 Mn at a valuation of $5 Bn💸
VerSe Innovation Pvt. Ltd, the operator of news aggregator Dailyhunt and short video app Josh, on Tuesday said it raised $805 million as part of a Series J funding round.
The amount was raised at a valuation of around $5 billion, a 1.5 times increase in less than three months, co-founders Umang Bedi and Virendra Gupta said in an interview. VerSe Innovation was valued at $3.1 billion in January, according to regulatory filings, when it raised $28 million as part of its Series I funding round.
VerSe Innovation will use the fresh capital to deepen and broaden its artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data science capabilities, the company said in a statement.
The company is making forays into Web3 by providing experiences across its local language creator base of over 50 million creators and its local language content ecosystem. The company claims over 80 billion video plays per month.
VerSe Innovation operates three major digital platforms—Dailyhunt, Josh and PublicVibe.
Hot Shorts⚡
Software-as-a-service startup Rattle has raised $26 million in its Series A round, led by New York-based venture capital firm Insight Partners.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) home fragrance and wellness brand Phool.co has raised $8 million in a funding round from consumer-focused venture fund, Sixth Sense Ventures. The round also saw participation from existing investor, Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt.
Nazara Pvt. Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nazara Technologies on Tuesday said that it has invested $2.5 million in US-based Bitkraft Ventures, an investment platform for gaming and Web3.
Fintech startup Tortoise has raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round led by Vertex Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.
Gupshup acquires VC-backed Active.ai; eyes $100-200 mn in pre-IPO round🏦
Conversational messaging platform Gupshup, operated by Webaroo Inc., has acquired a conversational AI platform for banks and fintech companies Active.Ai and is in talks with potential investors for pre-IPO funding of $100 million to $200 million.
Headquartered in Singapore, Active.Ai serves banking, and financial BFSI customers across 43 countries with a Conversational Banking as a Service (CBaaS) platform that helps clients engage with millions of consumers.
This is Gupshup’s second acquisition in 2022. Earlier in February, it acquired cloud telephony company Knowlarity Communications, which is backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital and Mayfield.
Gupshup is in talks with potential investors to raise a pre-IPO funding round ahead of its US listing plans, which it has been vocal about for some time now. The company expects to raise $100 million to $200 million in primary funding as part of its pre-IPO round.
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