Credit: Giphy
Also in this letter:
■ B Capital raises $250 million for early-stage fund Ascent
■ Crypto exchange Gemini sacks 7% of staff
■ Twitter accuses Musk of “slow-walking” trial
PharmEasy plans $200 million fundraise at up to 25% lower valuation
Online pharmacy PharmEasy is in talks with investors to raise $200 million, but at a valuation that could be 15% or even 25% lower than last year’s $5.1 billion, two people with direct knowledge of deal talks told Reuters.
A ‘down round’ deal by PharmEasy — when a firm sells shares at a lower valuation than before – will be the first for a high-profile Indian startup in recent times.
Details: One source said PharmEasy, which is backed by big-name investors such as Prosus, TPG and Temasek, is in talks to secure the new funds at a valuation of up to 15% below last year’s.
A second source said the company has told its bankers to consider even a 25% reduction if needed to close the deal.
That could cut PharmEasy’s valuation for the new funding round to $3.8 billion.
IPO delayed: The sources said the company’s initial public offering (IPO) has been delayed.
Betting on higher healthcare spends and growing use of online ordering, PharmEasy’s parent firm API Holdings last year filed a prospectus to raise $782 million in an IPO, hoping to list in 2022.
ETtech Done Deals
■ Temasek and Zomato-backed logistics aggregator Shiprocket said that it has acquired Arvind Retail’s omni-channel technology business Omuni in a Rs 200 crore cash-and-stock deal. This marks another attempt by Shiprocket to double down on its direct-to-consumer shipping business. Last month, it announced the acquisition of Pickrr in a $200 million deal.
■ Financial infrastructure provider M2P Fintech has made its third acquisition this year in identity verification service provider Syntizen, as it looks to bolster its offerings to fintechs and other financial institutions. The company bought out Bengaluru-based cloud lending platform Finflux earlier this month.
■ Healthtech startup Eka Care has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Hummingbird Ventures, with participation from 3one4Capital, Mirae Asset, Verlinvest and Aditya Birla Ventures. Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal and Rohit MA, cofounder of the Cloudnine group of hospitals, also invested in the firm.
B Capital raises $250 million for early-stage fund Ascent
Karan Mohla, partner, B Capital
Global tech-focussed investment firm B Capital said it has raised $250 million as part of its first dedicated early-stage vehicle Ascent Fund.
B Capital’s chairperson Howard Morgan, cofounder Eduardo Saverin, and general partners Gabe Greenbaum and Karen Page along with Karan Mohal are behind the launch of Ascent as a separate fund, a statement from the firm said. Prior to this, Ascent was a partners’ fund with no external capital coming in.
B Capital has previously backed startups such as Meesho, Byju’s, PharmEasy and others.
India head: Mohla, who left Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDGVentures India) to join B Capital earlier this year, will lead the Asia team for Ascent.
B Capital’s dedicated early-stage fund will cut cheques in the range of $1-10 million across sectors like fintech, enterprise and software-as-a-service, and healthcare, Mohla told us.
Early-stage trend: Many large venture capital firms have set aside separate funds for seed and early-stage investments of late.
Last month, Sequoia Capital said it had racked up $2.85 billion across three different pools of capital to double down across stages and geographies in India and Southeast Asia.
Building arsenals: The announcement from B Capital adds to the massive dry powder mopped up by various funds despite a gloomy macroeconomic outlook.
We reported on July 5 that venture capital funding into Indian startups dipped 37% in the second quarter of this year to $6.9 billion, according to data from research firm Venture Intelligence.
Tweet of the day
Crypto exchange Gemini sacks 7% of staff in second round of layoffs
Crypto exchange Gemini has fired 68 employees, 7% of its workforce, amid the ongoing crypto winter, a month after cutting 10% of its workforce, reports Techcrunch.
Layoff season: The company will continue to cut its headcount in the coming months as inflation rises and the Fed hikes interest rates.
Last week, NFT marketplace OpenSea laid off 20% of employees, while crypto lending company Celsius Network, which recently laid off 150 employees, has filed for bankruptcy in the US. Last month, crypto exchange Vauld decided to reduce its headcount by about 30%.
Apple to slow hiring: Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Apple will slow down hiring for next year owing to poor macroeconomic conditions, making it the latest Big Tech firm after Microsoft, Meta and Google to slow hiring plans or lay off workers. Tech companies boomed during the pandemic but have struggled since the start of 2022.
Twitter accuses Musk of “slow-walking” trial
Twitter took a shot at Elon Musk again on Tuesday, accusing him of trying to “slow walk” the company’s lawsuit while urging the court to conduct a trial in September to ensure deal terms for the $44 billion takeover remain intact, according to court filings.
Quote: “Millions of Twitter shares trade daily under a cloud of Musk-created doubt. No public company of this size and scale has ever had to bear these uncertainties,” Twitter wrote in the filings.
In a rush: Twitter is determined to wrap up the trial quickly since the merger agreement with Musk expires on October 25. A few days ago, Musk filed a motion seeking to block Twitter’s request to hold the trial in September.
Softbank delays Arm’s London IPO
Japanese behemoth Softbank has halted plans to list its British chip maker, Arm, in London owing to the collapse of the UK government, reports the Financial Times.
Tell me more: According to the report, Softbank paused negotiations as investment minister Gerry Grimstone and digital minister Chris Philip — who were playing leading roles in the deal — departed following the implosion of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. It will now seek to list Arm directly in the US, as Masayoshi Son stated last month.
Softbank had acquired Arm in 2016 for $32 billion and was set to sell it to chip giant Nvidia in a deal worth $80 billion last year but saw the deal collapse owing to regulatory resistance.
Arm supplies the intellectual property in chips to leading smartphone makers Apple and Samsung.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai and Ruchir Vyas in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
