| Hey Insiders, Today's newsletter covers: - 🌍 Flutterwave's expansion to India
- 🇬🇧 U.K. neobank Zopa's $93M funding round
- 🤝 Compound's merger with Alternativ Wealth
We have also rounded up the top early-stage funding rounds this week. If you find this newsletter useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Karan
p/karan-chafekar | |
| 1 | | Africa's largest payments startup, Flutterwave, is expanding to India. The fintech startup has partnered with local bank IndusInd Bank to help with the expansion. Flutterwave has also roped in Capgemini to strengthen its infrastructure. More: - Co-founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola said, "The Indian expansion for Flutterwave will be the first African company to do this at scale where remittances from India to Africa become seamless and quick."
- Flutterwave, which has an estimated valuation of $3B, has a presence across 30 African nations and caters to approximately 35M customers.
- The startup has raised $509.5M in total funding to date, the last of which came through a $250M Series D funding round led by B Capital Group.
- Other notable backers of the firm include Tiger Global Management, Greycroft, and Y Combinator.
Q: What key challenges should startups be mindful of when expanding into new regions? Join the conversation here. |     | |
| 2 | | VCs deployed $820M in early-stage North American startups between Sept. 2 and Sept. 8, per Crunchbase data. Artificial intelligence startups raked in 42% of the funding this week. Biotech, software, and enterprise software startups nabbed 22%, 6%, and 5.5% of the financing, respectively. 
Here are the top five largest rounds announced this week: - San Francisco, Calif.-based AI startup Imbue cemented its unicorn valuation with a $200M Series B funding round from Astera Institute, Nvidia, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, and Notion co-founder Simon Last.
- Santa Clara, Calif.-based AI chip startup d-Matrix closed its Series B funding round at $110M. Singapore-based investment firm Temasek led the funding round.
- Biotech AI startup Inceptive bagged $100M in funding from Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Obvious Ventures.
- Vendor management software maker Certa closed its Series B funding round at $35M. The round was led by Fin Capital and Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with additional support from Tru Arrow Partners, Point72 Ventures, BDMI, Aglae Ventures, Mantis VC, and GOAT Capital.
- Tentarix Biotherapeutics, a biotech startup developing multi-functional conditional protein therapeutics, raised $35M in Series B funding. Amplitude Ventures led the round, with Gilead Sciences, Versant Ventures, and Samsara BioCapital participating.
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| 3 | | Zopa, a U.K.-based FinTech, raised a $93M round led by led by IAG SilverStripe. The company reached unicorn status following a $300M round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 in Oct. 2021. More: - Zopa plans to use the funds on acquisitions and building up its products, including savings, deposits, and BNPL.
- "There is so much opportunity in the U.K. today that we don't need to go international in the near term," said Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana.
- The startup claims over one million customers and says it is on track to generate $312M in ARR this year.
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| 4 | | The founders of cricket NFT startup Rario, CEO Ankit Wadhwa and CTO Sunny Bhanot, are reportedly leaving the startup. The company raised a $120M round led by Dream11 in 2022. More: - The founders reportedly sold part of their stakes in the startup following the last round's $250M valuation.
- The news comes as its largest investor, Dream11's parent company, Dream Sports, is discussing cost-cutting measures.
- Rario's partnerships include Cricket Australia, Abu Dhabi T10, Hero Caribbean League, Lanka Premier League, and IPL teams Gujarat Titan and Punjab Kings. It also has an agreement with cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, who also invested in Rario.
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| 5 | | Two digital wealth management startups, Compound and Alternativ Wealth, merged to form Compound Planning. The combined entity will now manage assets worth $1.2B. More: - Compound had raised $37M in total funding to date, the last of which came in the form of a $25M Series B funding round last November.
- Alternativ raised a $10M funding round earlier this June.
- Alternativ's CEO, Christian Haigh, will take up the CEO role of the merged entity.
- Haigh said, "This merger allows us to provide more support for our financial advisors and most importantly better serve our clients. We are now positioned better than ever to deliver a client-centric financial, tax, and investment planning experience."
- Meanwhile, Compound's CEO and founder, Jordan Gonen, will transition into a strategic role to support Haigh with the merger and help shape the future strategy of the new entity.
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| 6 | | Text messaging startup MessageDesk raised a $1.6M Seed round led by the Reno Seed Fund and AZ-VC, former PayPal executive Jack Selby's VC firm. The company is seeking to surpass $1M in ARR in 2023. More: - MessageDesk estimates it will reach 1,000 SMB customers by the end of Q1 2024.
- The startup plans to use the funds to scale its marketing, sales, and customer success operations.
- MessageDesk is delving into AI with the development of voice-to-text, sentiment analysis, and team chatbots.
- Other participants in the round include Desert Angels, Arizona Tech Investors, and Acadian Capital Ventures.
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- Decentralized crypto exchange Brine FI raised $16.5M in Series A funding at a $100M post-money valuation. Pantera Capital led the funding round, with Elevation Capital, Starkware, Spartan Capital, Upsparks Ventures, and others participating.
- Six senior Flexport employees resigned after Dave Clark stepped down from the CEO role yesterday.
- Chinese biotech startup Grit Biotechnology raked in $60M in Series B funding led by CICC.
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INSIDE STARTUPS LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | Analyst | | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot.
Nicolas is a Sr. Analyst at Inside, covering startups and transportation trends. He is an avid map maker and data nerd. Nicolas has worked in the shared-scooter space, as well as advised e-bike and moped start-ups. | | This newsletter was edited by Vibha Chapparike | |
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