Lightspeed Venture Partners

Over 150 investors, including Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek and Malaysia’s Khazanah, gathered at Mumbai’s five-star Trident Oberoi hotel on a recent Friday for venture firm Lightspeed India Partners’ “Lift Off” summit. The two-day event aims to spark partnerships by enabling “in a short window, many views, ideas and investments to be shared between nC2 connections (every permutation and combination),” described Karthik Reddy, co-founder of Blume Ventures. The event builds on the success of last year’s inaugural…

Embattled edtech firm Byju’s on Tuesday filed its much-delayed audited FY22 results with the Registrar of Companies. We decode this and more in today’s ETtech Top 5.Also in this letter:■ Lightspeed appoints two venture partners ■ Groww app hit by technical glitch■ ‘Gig workers in demand across 8 out of 10 firms’ - reportByju’s losses bloat; eyes rights issue at $500 million valuation After several delays and multiple deadlines missed, Byju’s parent Think & Learn filed its audited FY22 financials with…

Vestwell, which provides the infrastructure for employers to power workplace savings programs, has raised $125 million in what the company describes as a “preempted” round of funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, which included participation from existing backers Fin Capital, Primary Venture Partners and FinTech Collective, as well as new investors Blue Owl and HarbourVest. The New York-based fintech declined to reveal its valuation. As part of the round, Lightspeed’s lead fintech partner, Justin…

ShareChat is in final stages of deliberations to secure about $50 million in new funding that trims the startup’s valuation to below $1.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Existing backers including Temasek and Tencent are among the investors in advanced stages of talks to invest in the new round, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. ShareChat has had discussions with several potential new investors this year, but many have balked at the…

Lightspeed Venture Partners is formalizing its scale-up efforts, as other outfits make similar moves Connie Loizos @Cookie / 20 hours The hurdle for Series A funding is a lot higher than it was a year ago — and investors in seed-stage companies are having to respond. They don’t have much choice if they want their startups to survive. When the market abruptly turned in the spring of 2022, late-stage companies were the first to feel the pain.…

Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce firm Udaan has raised $340 million through conversion of its debt and fresh equity infusion. This and more in today’s ETtech Top 5. Also in this letter:■ ETtech Done Deals■ Wipro Consumer Care enters D2C space with Bio-essence■ Influencers lawyer up to help protect personal brandsUdaan raises $340 million in funding led by UK’s M&G Prudential Vaibhav Gupta, CEO, UdaanBusiness-to-business (B2B) ecommerce startup Udaan on Thursday said it has raised…

Early-stage investment fund 3one4 Capital, an investor in companies like Licious, neobank Open, Jupiter and software firm Darwinbox, has raised $200 million to back a new set of startups across sectors including consumer, fintech, software-as-a-service (Saas) and digital health.Around 50% of the capital in the new fund has come from Indian banks and mutual funds, said Pranav Pai, founding partner at 3one4 Capital. Rest of the limited partners (LP) —who invest in venture funds — are investors such as US university…

As the funding dry spell continues for startups across stages, school management software startup Teachmint has laid off 70 of its employees in the second round of layoffs in six months, a person directly aware with the matter told ET.The Lightspeed Venture Partners-backed edtech firm had earlier fired 45 staffers in November 2022 to seek better operational efficiencies, the person added.Teachmint confirmed the layoffs, without commenting on the number of roles affected, in response to ET’s query on the matter.“Some roles…

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has granted new-age insurer Acko a licence to operate a life insurance business. The insurance regulator also gave a nod to microfinance company Credit Access to commence a life insurance business, as per a note from the regulator.The last company to have received a licence for life insurance was Edelweiss in 2011.Acko, which is backed by the likes of General Atlantic and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), is close to raising a fresh funding…

In recent online slide presentations, blog posts and social-media threads, venture-capital doyens including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator are telling the founders that they need to take emergency action for what could be the sharpest turn in more than a decade. Their advice includes cutting costs, preserving cash and jettisoning hopes that hedge funds or other investors will swoop in with big checks. “The boom times of the last decade are…