BENGALURU: With the second wave of Covid-19 slowly ebbing, investors seem to have started focusing on sectors beyond ed-tech, food delivery and life sciences that have been predominantly attracting big cheques since last year.
On Friday, start-ups raised more than $450 million from a pool of investors, signalling strong tailwinds for the ecosystem which so far this year saw the birth of 14 unicorns.
Insurtech start-up Digit Insurance said that it plans to raise $200 million led by some new investors like Sequoia Capital, IIFL Alternate in which existing investor Faering Capital also participated.
The deal will value the unicorn at $3.5 billion with total funds infusion now at $442 million. This is an almost three-fold jump in its valuation from the level of valuation during a fund-raise round earlier this year.
Digit Insurance’s rival Acko is also likely to enter the unicorn club with a fresh capital of $200 million.Kamesh Goyal, Chairman and Founder, Digit Insurance, said that the company will continue to focus on increasing insurance penetration and simplifying processes through technology.
“Pandemic and repeated natural calamities have drawn people’s attention towards the importance of insurance. We have covered more than 36 lakh lives over 32,000+ corporations under corporate health insurance alone,” he added.
Direct to Consumers (D2C) fresh meat and seafood brand Licious also announced raising $192 million in a Series F funding round, led by Singapore-headquartered investment company Temasek, in which Multiples Private Equity, Brunei Investment Agency also participated.
At a time when the conventional retail channels remained impacted due to Covid restrictions, online D2C brands like Licious have witnessed a massive growth in revenues.
The company said that it will utilize the fresh capital for building supply chain transformation, quality improvement and customer experience elevation along with expanding presence Gaming platform WinZo has raised $65 million in a Series C funding round, led by California-based Griffin Gaming Partners, taking the total tally of capital raised by the company to $90 million.
