Indian startups made a big push last week (June 15-19) by raising a total of $426 million across 19 deals. The biggest deal of the week was the $234 million investment by artificial intelligence company Sarvam. With Sarvam’s huge move, the AI sector became the sector that attracted the most investments this week. While the cleantech sector came in second with $58.9 million, there was a sharp decline in ‘seed-stage funding’ for early-stage startups.
As part of its IPO preparations, leading digital company Jio Platforms has filed its draft offering papers (DRHP) with SEBI. The company plans to use Rs 27,500 crore of the proceeds from the new share sale to pay down Reliance Jio Infocomm's debt. Along with this, e-commerce unicorn BRND.ME is also set to become a public limited company and aims to enter the stock market in the next 18 months. Healthquad also said that it has raised Rs 550 crore as the first tranche of its new fund.
In other major developments, global beauty brand L'Oreal has signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Indian personal care startup Innovist. In addition, Meta is in talks to acquire or invest in fintech unicorn CRED at a valuation of $4 billion. IFC, a division of the World Bank, also announced $371 million in financial assistance to build two new AI data centers under Sify Technologies.
