Clear raises $75 million Series C from Kora, Stripe and others

Clear raises $75 million Series C from Kora, Stripe and others

Mumbai, October 27, 2021: Clear (ClearTax), India’s leading fintech SaaS company, today announced a $75 million Series C fund raise led by Kora Capital, alongside global fintech Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments and existing investors. The funds will be used to accelerate Clear’s expansion into B2B credit and payments plus expansion into international markets.

Clear’s SaaS platform has witnessed a phenomenal 5x growth in the last 18 months adding 3000+ large enterprise customers. It also saw a surge in usage with over 1 million small businesses on the platform. The Clear platform now processes over 10% of India’s business invoices with a GMV of $400 billion.

Clear is widely known in India as the maker of ClearTax (digital tax platform for consumers). Indian businesses are rapidly digitizing with a strong tailwind from the Indian government’s push. Accelerated by a fully digital rollout of Goods and Service Taxes and mandatory e-invoicing, Clear is India’s dominant SaaS provider in this space. Clear recently acquired yBANQ, marking its expansion into B2B payments. The latest funding will help propel the company’s expansion in payments and credit and take its product suite to international markets where similar shifts are taking place.

The company aims to serve over 10,000 large enterprises and 10 million small businesses over the next couple of years.

Archit Gupta, Clear’s Founder and CEO, said, “We welcome Kora, Stripe and our other incoming investors. Kora has strong experience in technology players in emerging markets and Stripe is a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet – we are excited to learn from both of them. India is on a massive digitisation journey and we are fortunate to be in the perfect storm of electronic invoicing, GST, UPI, cheap mobile internet and rapid adoption of technology due to Covid-19. We are doubling down on our SaaS platform to help businesses with collateral free debt and payments. This funding also gives us fuel for our international expansion.”

Nitin Saigal, Kora’s Founder and CIO said: “We are excited to partner with Clear as they innovate at scale in the Indian SaaS ecosystem, enabling Enterprises and SMEs to automate their workflows around taxation, invoicing and several other adjacencies. We look forward to Clear’s journey in the Indian and global markets.”

U GRO Capital launches ‘UGRO Cares 2.0’ towards employee engagement and wellness, ahead of Diwali

U GRO Capital, a listed MSME lending fintech platform, today announced the launch of UGRO Cares 2.0, inclusive of various initiatives towards employee engagement and wellness, ahead of festive season. These range from extended holidays, hampers, competitions and other recreational activities. The company has been placing the values of empathy and growth at the core since its inception, which were further deepened since the pandemic.

Spread across 55 branches in 9 states, the company currently has an employee base of 700 plus, which grew from around 400 in August 2021. It further plans to scale up the count to over 1000 by FY2022. As a part of multiple initiatives, U GRO Capital has announced a five day holiday period during Diwali 2021 from October 4 to October 8. This is in addition to the festive hampers for all employees. The company has also planned recreational activities which include best branch decor competition and celebrations (lunch and snacks) in all the 55 branches. These extend for the families of employees as well, with activities like painting competitions for kids in multiple categories.

Earlier this year the company had announced the first version of UGRO Cares program, to support employees’ mental and physical wellness. The program included varied relief measures including vaccination and covering Covid patients’ homecare cover, insurance benefits, and support with consultation, diagnostics and medicines. The company has continued to extend Covid support in the form of advance leaves, hospitalisation coverage and domiciliary expense reimbursement up to Rs. 30,000 for employees and their dependents.

Pia Shome, Chief People Officer, said, ”The values of collaboration and empathy are deeply ingrained in U GRO Capital’s culture and the two versions of UGRO Cares are a reflection of the same. We are mindful about the importance of quality family time during the festive season and hence we have offered the holiday period to five days. Other recreational activities as well as the relief measures have been designed keeping in view employees’ physical and mental wellness. U GRO family is rapidly expanding, as we plan to more than double our employee base to over 1000 by FY2022. Multiple employee focused initiatives announced are in greater alignment with our aspirational growth, as we work towards our mission of solving the unsolved credit gap of MSMEs and acquire 1 % market share of the outstanding MSME credit, while enabling employees’ progress and ensuring their wellbeing”.

As of September 2021, U GRO Capital’s AUM stood at INR 1,932 Cr, up 47 % since March 2021 and 97% since September 2020. In the next five years, U GRO Capital aspires to build an AUM of INR 20,000 crore and operationalize around 270 branches.

IUKL silver medal winners Dr Payal Kanodia, Anshu Taranath receive grand welcome at Delhi Airport

New Delhi, 27th October 2021: After making India proud by winning silver medals at IUKL World Championship at Budapest in Hungary, Dr Payal Kanodia and Anshu Taravath of Haryana received a grand welcome at Delhi Airport from supporters and well wishers. The duo represented the country in this championship held from 22-24 October 2021. Trained under the aegis of M3M Foundation, both the athletes competed with 450 athletes from 32 countries who participated in the tournament.

“It is indeed a great moment of joy and pride for me to be at the receiving end of such love, affection and support. Representing country at any international level is a dream for any Indian and I am extremely proud that I got this opportunity and success. This is just a beginning and we will continue to keep making our country proud by promoting sports across the country with our collective efforts,” said Dr Payal Kanodia.

It is noteworthy that Dr Kanodia is also the Trustee of M3M Foundation, a philanthropic organisation, wherein she is proactively working to make lives better of the marginalised by supporting them and providing necessary resources for upliftment in areas like healthcare, environment and education.

Reflecting similar sentiments, Anshu Taravath said, “I am extremely proud of winning a silver medal for my country. The appreciation and support will definitely encourage me to do more in the field of sports. I also want to thank the M3M Foundation for supporting me in my journey. I believe that such noble gestures are a great help for people like me who want to achieve big in life.

I hope our achievements encourage many others, especially women, to choose sports as a career and make our country proud internationally,” she said.

Taravath is a resident of Gurugram and is a certified athlete and coach for kettlebell. She is also the ambassador of the Fit India program of the Government of India and the President of the Haryana Chapter of Sports and Entertainment wing of Women Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry(WICCI).

Best Agrolife Ltd. releases results for 1HYFY22; Revenue of Rs. 668.95 Cr & PAT Rs. 50.73Cr. Profit grow more than 5x

New Delhi: Best Agrolife Ltd. delivered positive results with a 1HY22 revenue of Rs. 668.95 crore for the period ending September 30 2021, registering a jump of 4.43% over PY of Rs. 640.60 crore with an EBITDA of INR 71.29 crore; Profit after tax was Rs. 50.73 crore. The company’s PBT for the first six months is INR 67.92 crore that grew drastically five times compared to previous year’s INR 12.57 crore.

In their Board of Directors meeting held on 26th October 2021, the company announced their financial results for the quarter and half-yearly results as of 30th September 2021. Best Agrolife Ltd in its second quarter generated revenue of Rs. 324.39 Cr with growth of 16.81% — an EBITDA of Rs. 35.23 Cr and PAT of Rs. 24.95 Cr.

The merged turnover of two subsidiaries — Best Crop Science Pvt Ltd and Seedlings India Pvt Ltd – will reflect from the third quarter onward. The company said that it expects a growth of 30-35% in revenue and PBT to change from 7% to 11%. “We are also planning to increase our investment by investing the amount for purchasing the agrochemical factory located in Sabha, Jammu (Jammu and Kashmir),” said the company.

As proposed in the September meeting, the company has acquired Best Crop Science Pvt Ltd. wholly-owned subsidiary in September 2021. The company was selling more formulated products in the past but is now concentrating on patent products. The patent product will increase the top line and improve the EBITDA of the company significantly.

“The continuous efforts to understand the needs of our biggest stakeholders and the farmers are showing us the path to create innovative products. With leading products in the upcoming quarters, we are creating a strong pipeline for the business,” said Mr Vimal Alawadhi, Managing Director, Best Agrolife Ltd. He further added, “We expect to create significant value for all our stakeholders and next quarter onwards, the results of our subsidiary Best Crop Science Pvt. Ltd. will reflect on our book value.”

Best Crop Science Pvt Ltd got Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee’s nod for indigenous manufacturing of Trifloxystrobin Technical u/s 9(3). Also, the company got a patent for the three-way insecticidal combination to control sucking pest complex in various crops in just one spray alone; the company has applied for a product trademark- RONFEN, and the product will be out in the market with the onset of the next Kharif season.

Statement by the company stated, “From having a major share in generics, there is a shift since the last three years to our own proprietary novel formulations development, which bring one shot solution to control a complex of pests and diseases. These innovations will not only generate high revenue along with substantial change in EBITDA margin but also create value for the entire farming community towards sustainable agriculture.”

The statement further said, “Domestic market in India is still led by insecticide share in comparison to major share of herbicide in global bifurcation. Emerging labor constraints and high resistance in weeds in different crops is going to bring this parity between the world and India. We already have been working on providing some selective herbicides which will be able to control broad leaf and narrow leaf weeds together along. With our research orientation and robust R&D team, we are bringing these proprietary formulations developing from the molecules which have just come out of patent will keep us ahead of the company in the coming five years.”

Best Agrolife Ltd. (BSEL539600) ranks among one of the top 15 agrochemical companies in India. It is one of the leading manufacturers and innovators in the country for Agrochemicals, Technicals, Intermediates, Formulations, PGRs, and Public Health Products. In their 7th Board of Directors meeting held on 26th October 2021, the company announced their financial results for the quarter and half-yearly results as of 30th September 2021.

Indians paid ₹263 Billion in foreign exchange fees in 2020: new study reveals

New Delhi, India, October 27, 2021: Wise (LON:WISE), the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world, has released a new study revealing that Indians paid over ₹263 billion on foreign exchange fees in 2020, of which roughly ₹97 billion were hidden as exchange rate markups on currency conversions, payments and card purchases. The remaining ₹166 billion were spent on transaction fees.

These figures were from an independent research carried out by Capital Economics in August 2021 which aimed to estimate the scale of foreign exchange transaction fees in India. The research also reveals that between 2016 and 2020, the annual amount Indians lost in fees and exchange rate markups increased from ₹187 billion to ₹263 billion.

Indian consumers continue losing out on hidden fees
While the overall amount Indians have spent on transaction fees for sending money abroad have decreased over the past five years, the fees paid to exchange rate margins are growing. This highlights a lack of transparency in remittance fee structures, putting consumers at risk of hidden fees as they unknowingly pay more than advertised for the remittance service in the form of a marked up exchange rate.

Fig 1: Total foreign transaction fees (INR) paid on remittances from India

Consumers sending money into India from abroad are not spared from hidden fees. Over the past five years, money lost to exchange rate margins on inward remittances have grown from ₹42 billion to ₹79 billion. Meanwhile, fees paid to transaction costs have grown from ₹102 billion in 2016 to ₹140 billion in 2020.

A significant portion of these fees paid on remittances to India come from people in Gulf countries where most people are employed in blue collared jobs to support their families back home in India. Of the share of total fees paid on inward remittances to India in 2020, Saudi Arabia ranked first at 24%, followed by United States (18%), United Kingdom (15%), Qatar (8%), Canada (6%), Oman (5%), United Arab Emirates (5%), Kuwait (5%), Australia (4%).

Fig 2: Total foreign transaction fees (INR) paid on remittances to India

The study also revealed that pre-pandemic, Indian travellers spent ₹42 billion in foreign exchange fees in 2019 alone, of which ₹24 billion is hidden in exchange rate markups.

Ambiguous remittance pricing structures
Most people today are unable to understand the actual costs of sending money abroad due to a continued lack of transparency around fee structures. There are two costs associated with foreign currency transactions: the upfront transaction fee and the exchange rate. The upfront fee can vary but would often not represent the total cost of the transaction as traditional banks and providers tend to add an undisclosed markup on the exchange rate, instead of using the fair, mid-market rate. The difference between rates result in a hidden fee, which unnecessarily costs people a lot more when sending money abroad.

Call for greater transparency across the industry
The India survey marks Wise’s continued global fight against hidden fees in foreign exchange transactions. Wise’s campaign (#WiserBanegaIndia) against hidden fees calls on banks and brokers to:

● Provide a clear breakdown of the costs associated with every transaction
● Show the difference between the exchange rate offered by the provider benchmarked against the mid-market rate
● Put an end to the use of misleading terms such as ‘free’ and ‘0% commission’. Providers often say they have low, or even no fees, but sneak extra charges in the fine print or hide hidden fees in the form of a marked up exchange rate.

Commenting on the survey, Rashmi Satpute, Country Manager, Wise India said, “While technology and internet has eased some of the issues related to the convenience and speed of foreign funds transfers, the age-old practice of hiding fees in the exchange rate results in people spending too much on hidden foreign currency fees — money which should rightfully stay in their pockets.”

She further added, “Any time the rupee changes into a dollar or Euro or any other international currency or vice versa, consumers find themselves tangled in a web of hidden exchange rate markups, high fees, delays, and small print. Today’s research exposes a severe lack of transparency in foreign exchange transactions — for far too long consumers have been fleeced into paying unnecessary costs for foreign transactions when providers hide fees in exchange rate markups.”

Exclusive interview – Harmandeep Khurana, CEO and founder, Barbeque Company

1. How you began your Entrepreneurial journey?

– My journey as entrepreneur started much before in my mind before it actually started. As a visitor to restaurants in my early days i always aspired to open my own. We all know it’s never an easy task to start your own restaurant. So i decided to give a lot of time in exploring what to start, when to start and how to start?

Before starting the barbeque company, I explored other business too. They were good and they taught me real entrepreneurial lessons, but they weren’t my final goal.

Then around 2015 I finally started The Barbecue Company and I think I am going to do it for major part of my life.

2. What were the challenges you faced while building The Barbeque Company?

– Restaurant business look very lucrative as an industry, but it has very peculiar challenges. As an owner of one of the fastest growing live grill restaurant chain I feel one of the biggest challenges is building loyal customer’s base. We are not in 90s where customer has limited option. They have 1000s of options available with a new brand coming of every day.
This hade made food industry very competitive. You are required to give as many as reasons to your customers so that they choose you. Now they just don’t want food but also want a great experience, pleasant ambience, customer service and many such new things. We are glad that we have been able crack this hard nut and take customer retention very seriously. What our customers want is the basis of all our decisions.

3. What was the impact of the pandemic on your company?

– We have never faced anything like this before. Pandemic has changed the world and the way it operates. So, it has impacted my company and the Startups of this industry. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology we have now digital menus, digital payment, and digital invoice management. All this would have taken a lot more time to be part of our lives, but the pandemic made it all a routine for us. Also, when people are desperately coming out to have food in the pandemic sanitization, wearing masks and social distancing has been part and parcel of our lives.

4. What is the USP of your The Barbeque Company?

– The USP is the Celebration brand and Value for money. We never expected people will love it so much that we open multiple outlets. We feel that in India families and groups love to celebrate every small and big event by eating out. It’s very difficult for anyone restaurant to make everyone happy on a budget. So, when you offer people more than 50 varieties of food in a pocket-friendly budget at one place they just love it. We love our customers; we take regular feedback and get back to work and deliver what people like. So, if you listen to your customer, they will stay loyal and will become your advocates in long run. And we are thankful to them for extending patronage to us.

5. What is vision of your company behind expanding the chain?

– See when I started with the thought of making The Barbecue Company as the most delicious and affordable live grill restaurant chain for people of India. This was the only vision I had at that time. But in the last few years, I have added another dimension to my vision and that is offering franchise business to people who want to start a franchise restaurant, but the cost and technicalities aren’t allowing them to do so. My team is really working hard to make the owing The Barbecue Company franchise affordable and easy.

6. Future expansion plans?

– We know that dining out is never going out of fashion, but we have lockdown and night curfews, so it becomes difficult for people to enjoy outside food. That’s why takeaway has gained traction. Based on several inputs from stakeholders and customers we are planning to parallelly to start a takeaway outlets chain. Growth and expansion in new cities especially Punjab, Maharashtra, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and the southern region of the country are on the table for now. A lot of people have approached us to open a franchise with our brand name. We are overwhelmed with the kind of interest people are showing in our brand.

Huddle, India’s leading accelerator & fund, commits INR 50 Crores to grow early-stage startups by 2022

Gurugram, October 27, 2021: Huddle, India’s leading accelerator and fund for early-stage disruptive start-ups, today announced their active investment history and pipeline to invest INR 50 Crores by 2022. Of this amount, the Huddle team has deployed close to INR 25 crore in 2021 across 19 ventures, making them one of the most active early-stage investors in India. The funds have been and will continue to be invested in startups across sunrise sectors such as D2C, electric vehicles, alternative nutrition, creators’ economy, and gaming, among others. The aim of the accelerator is to fund ventures building for a new-age consumer, and in businesses disrupting traditional economies.

In 2021, Huddle has invested in a total of 19 startups across the sectors of retail, D2C brands, electric vehicles, agri-tech, fitness-tech, to name a few. Some of its key portfolio companies include Bold Care, Cell Propulsion, Wellversed, RACEnergy, F5, Celcius, and The New Shop, to name a few. Several of Huddle’s portfolios have gone ahead to raise funds from reputed investors, including Hapramp (from Anand Mahindra), Cell Propulsion (from Endiya Partners, growX Ventures, Micelio), Wellversed (from Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd), etc.

Founded in 2017 by investors and serial entrepreneurs Ishaan Khosla and Sanil Sachar, the Gurugam-based accelerator and fund began with one clear mission – creating future-ready businesses with a keen focus on enhancing execution.

“Our core principle from Day One has been about accelerating the execution journey of promising teams. As an accelerator, our focus on execution has allowed us to reduce the risk of early-stage building and investing. Now, with capital backing our efforts, we’re able to further strengthen our long-term commitment to founders to build large venture-backable businesses together. We’re pumped for the next phase of growth as we build India’s leading accelerator” commented Huddle Founding Partner, Ishaan Khosla.

“Over the course of us supporting over 100 founders, we have witnessed an increasing need for acceleration of startups. As an accelerator-led fund, we have built the infrastructure and support functions that can assist ventures across diverse sectors from their early days up. The last few years have been a testament to the success our founders have seen through this methodology. With us investing 50 crore into accelerated ventures, we believe all the right pieces are placed within this huddle and we are poised to meet our aim of launching a larger investment fund by mid next year,” highlighted Huddle Founding Partner, Sanil Sachar.

“Having been associated with Huddle for about a year now, both as an LP in the Huddle accelerator-led fund and as a mentor/advisor to one of their startups, I have seen early-stage entrepreneurs benefit significantly from Huddle’s holistic approach. The Huddle team’s support for startups spans from a strong push to focus and prioritise, deep problem-solving to fine-tune their offerings, hiring talent and building a great team, constant encouragement and backing, to capital raising. The team’s rich network of investors and mentors has been helping the startup founders avail access to Huddle’s extended network and expertise – something that has been helping several new founders in building their businesses,” remarked Ankit Tandon, Global Chief Business Officer at OYO, and an LP & mentor at Huddle.

The Huddle differentiation stems from its keen focus and ability to support early-stage start-ups across multiple business functions such as go-to-market strategy, business development and capital structuring. Huddle works closely with all its founders and equips them with the right infrastructure, social and intellectual capital to build large venture-backable businesses. Huddle also co-invests up to $300k per venture (on select ventures) alongside a stellar network of funds, family offices, corporate VCs and high-value angels.

Huddle has also been helming several co-acceleration programmes in the country, bringing the expertise of sector-specific partners to entrepreneurs. As part of this, Huddle recently partnered with Shiprocket and launched Rocketfuel X Huddle, an accelerator program aimed at investing in and accelerating D2C start-ups across early to growth stages. Huddle earlier partnered with growX ventures to co-accelerate startups in the EV landscape.

Huddle is on a mission to build and scale India’s accelerator ecosystem, by creating opportunities, accessibility and enabling start-ups to truly benefit, in order to create future-ready ventures.