OneCard - 104th unicorn🦄, Ola invests $100 Mn🔋, Agnikul opens India's first pvt rocket engine factory🚀

OneCard becomes unicorn, Ola Electric invests in battery cell R&D, Agnikul Cosmos opens first private rocket engine factory, Funding Deals and more.

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Jul 14, 2022

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OneCard becomes unicorn with over $100 Mn Series D round🦄

Credit-card-based fintech firm FPL Technologies, which operates the credit score platform OneScore and issues credit cards under the OneCard brand has entered the unicorn club with over $100 million in the Series D round.

OneCard has become the 104th unicorn of India and 19th in the ongoing calendar year (2022). The company also turned out to be the second unicorn in the credit card challenger space after Slice.

OneCard offers first-time credit card users a virtual, cellphone-based card to build a credit score. It also enables an equated monthly installment (EMI) facility for purchases of Rs 3,000 and above.

Unlike several other ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) card issuers such as Uni, Slice and LazyPay, FPL Technologies works directly with banks to issue these cards and disburse co-branded credit cards, instead of working with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).

Ola Electric invests $100 million in battery cell R&D🔋

Ola Electric has invested $100 million in research and development (R&D) for its own lithium-ion battery cells, according to reports from brokerage firms ICICI Securities and Edelweiss.

The reports said Ola Electric has employed over 200 researchers for R&D. The firm aims to start making its own batteries by 2026.

Ola Electric currently sources battery cells for its electric scooters from South Korea’s LG Chem. As batteries are the most expensive part of any EV, manufacturing them in-house could cut Ola Electric’s costs by around 30%.

Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal took to Twitter to reveal the firm’s first indigenously made lithium-ion cell.

Bhavish's Tweet

Hot Shorts⚡

Housing finance provider Sewa Grih Rin Ltd has raised $20 million, led by Norway-based Nordic Microfinance Initiative (NMI) and Women's World Bank Asset Management.
Property technology startup Homexchange has raised $4 million from HDFC Capital, Oberoi Realty, and Anarock Group.
Swadesh, a cross-border fintech firm for Indian expats has secured $2.25 million in a Pre-Seed funding round led by Khosla Ventures, 8VC, Y Combinator, and Section32.
WonderLend Hubs, a NoCode PaaS solution provider, has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures, Indian Angel Network, and others.
Fieldproxy, a no-code SaaS platform has raised Rs 6 Crores as part of its Pre-Series A round led by Y-Combinator.

➡️ Check out our LinkedIn space to read more on the funding deals.

Agnikul Cosmos opens India's first private rocket engine factory🚀

Anand Mahindra-backed Agnikul Cosmos has announced the opening of its new facility to manufacture 3D printed rocket engines at scale.

Situated at IIT Madras Research Park, Rocket Factory-1 houses a metal 3D printer from the German-based company — EOS. The facility has been designed to produce two rocket engines per week. The 3D-printed Agnilet rocket engine was successfully test-fired in early 2021.

Founded in 2017 by Srinath Ravichandran, Moin SPM & Prof. SR Chakravarthy (IIT Madras), Agnikul has raised a total funding of $15 million from Mayfield India, pi Ventures, Speciale Invest, and angel investors such as Anand Mahindra and Naval Ravikant since 2019.

In 2020, the IIT Madras-incubated Agnikul became the first Indian company to sign an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to gain access to expertise and facilities to build Agnibaan.