India Funding Roundup: A Student Micro-Lending Startup, Rentals Marketplace, and More

Buddy
Bengaluru-based student micro-lending startup, Buddy, announced that it has raised a Pre Series-A funding round of $500,000 (roughly Rs. 3.4 crores) from Blume Ventures, TracxnLabs and other angels. Buddy enables college students to buy e-commerce products via short and long-term payment plans, and has partnerships with India's largest e-commerce players including Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. The startup started operations in January and is seeing over 2,000 students signing up on a weekly basis, and has 5,000 active students on its platform, the company said in an emailed statement.

Snapbizz
Bengaluru-based retail technology startup SnapBizz has raised an undisclosed round of funding from veteran industrialist Ratan Tata, marking his eighth investment in startups in 2016. In January 2016, SnapBizz had announced a Series A funding of $7.2 million (roughly Rs. 48 crores) led by Jungle Ventures, Taurus Value creation, Konly Venture and Blume Ventures. Founded in 2013 by Prem Kumar and Yashwanth Prakash, the startup provides hardware and software solutions for retail stores to set up a Web store, manage stock, and engage customers.

AasaanJobs
Mumbai-based online recruitment marketplace Aasaanjobs said on Monday that it has raised $5 (roughly Rs. 34 crores) million in series A round of funding led by Aspada Advisors with participation from existing investors. The fresh inflow of capital will help the company realise its mission of taking its HR services on the cloud, a company release saidm adding this technological edge will pave way for the company to expand to newer geographies.

Snapdeal
Snapdeal announced on Sunday its $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,362 crores) fund raise from Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), with participation from Iron Pillar and other investors. Snapdeal stated it has 275,000 sellers, over 30 million products on its marketplace, and that it aims to build the country's most reliable and frictionless commerce ecosystem.

RentSher
Online P2P rentals platform RentSher has reportedly bagged more than $300,000 (roughly Rs. 2 crores) in seed funding from a group of angel investors. Founded by Abhijit Shaha, Harsh Dhand and Karandeep S Vohra in 2014, the startup is currently operational in Bengaluru and Delhi, and handles pick up and returns to the owner, and also supports cash on delivery payments.

With inputs from PTI