YourNest Venture Capital and Artha Venture Fund co-led a US$ 1 mn Pre-Series A round in Aliste Technologies, a smart home automation startup. There was also participation from investors including Dholakia Ventures, KRS Jamwal and Anikarth Ventures. Aliste’s existing institutional investors include 100X Venture Capital Fund.
The company is already present in Delhi-NCR covering over 2,500 residential, commercial and hospitality projects, and is penetrating the Bengaluru market. With the freshly infused capital, the intention is to spread its footprint pan-India.
Founded in 2021, Aliste is addressing the home automation market to make existing homes tech-enabled. It offers retrofit automation products allowing users to control their existing appliances via an app or voice assistants with a subscription model starting at Re 1 per appliance per day.
DeeptTech IoT (Internet of Things) startup Datoms has secured a Pre-Series A funding of US$ 1.2 mn led by YourNest Venture Capital.
With this infusion, the company plans to strengthen its product offerings to build various use cases in the construction warehousing industry and provide an opportunity for enterprises and equipment manufacturers in the distributed asset industry to ride the digitisation wave. It will focus on enhancing its in-house AI/ML capabilities and market expansion across India and the Middle East.
We believe that Datoms has demonstrated deep insights in IoT operations with a thorough understanding of the stakeholders' business challenges. Strong traction backed by its growing clientele, involving the likes of Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors, strongly validates the potential of its solution.
Launched in 2021, Datoms is a DeepTech firm for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that enables human-capital heavy sectors such as construction, warehousing, agriculture, mining and ports, to achieve efficiency and to automate various processes around asset maintenance and activity planning.
A news report in The Economic Times is available here.
Exponent: Series-B Funding
Exponent Energy in which we had invested through Funds II & III has raised US$ 26.4 mn in a Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures. The round witnessed investment from TDK Ventures and other existing investors including an additional investment by us, Lightspeed, 3one4 Capital, AdvantEdge VC and Dr Pawan Munjal's family office.
Exponent plans to leverage the new funds to expand its presence into five additional cities by FY24. It aims to diversify its offerings in the e3W domain and break into the intercity e-bus segment by 2024. The company’s ambitious target involves deploying 1,000 e^pumps (charging stations) and facilitating 25,000 Exponent-powered EVs by 2025.
Miko spread the holiday cheers on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the US as Guillermo introduced Miko 3, Miko Mini and Miko Chess (Squaroff) as innovative Christmas gifts.
Indian PE/VC Funds Delivering Higher Returns than the Sensex
CRISIL and Oister Global recently reported that, as of March 2023, PE/VC performance in India beat the benchmark Sensex by 13.5% in the past decade. Notably, the outperformance was not driven by just a handful of funds as AIFs have gained traction over the last five years, with cumulative LP commitments clocking CAGR of ~38%. Total AIF commitments have seen an astronomical rise of 580x from INR 14.3 bn in March 2013 to INR 8,338 bn in March 2023. Interestingly, the DeepTech ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past decade: from 14 deals in 2013 to 164 deals in 2022, and investments of INR 2 bn to INR 158 bn, the sector is seeing sustained interest and growth.
The report concludes that Indian private markets are now mature, proven and are only going to grow further from here. The full report can be read here.
Ashoka University: Valuations Workshop
Sunil K Goyal, the founder and Managing Partner at YourNest Venture Capital was invited to Ashoka University by the Venture Capital Vertical of the Ashoka Entrepreneurship Club for a Valuations Workshop, along with Pranav Bafna, an Investment Analyst at the firm.
It turned out to be an extremely interactive and stimulating session with close to 50 students attending. A range of topics around Valuations – from the basic principles to terms associated with fundraising, the mechanics of a cap table and the application of different valuation methodologies used over a company's lifecycle – were covered. With growing interest in the VC ecosystem and startups, it was encouraging to see a leading academic institution such as Ashoka University organising such sessions.
