ETtech Deals Digest: Startup funding rises 97% YoY to $242 million this week

Startups raised around $241.7 million in the first week of July, a 96.5% surge compared to the same period last year. However, this marks a 38.5% decline from last week's funding total of $393.3 million, which was significantly boosted by low-code software platform Creatio’s $200 million deal.

This week, startups, mostly at the late and early stages, raised funds through 18 rounds, compared to 43 in the same period last year, when they raised a total of $123 million, according to data from Tracxn.

This week, beauty retailer Purplle's $120 million funding round accounted for nearly 50% of the total funding corpus.

Top Deals of the Week:

Purplle: Beauty retailer Purplle closed a $120 million round led by sovereign fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), valuing the company at around $1.3 billion. This investment highlighted growing investor interest in the beauty sector. Almost 70-80% of this round was through secondary transactions.

Oyo: Hospitality startup Oyo raised around $50 million from InCred. ET had reported earlier that the company is in an advanced stage of talks to raise around $120 million from various Indian family offices, at a valuation of $2.5 billion, a significant drop from its peak valuation of $9 billion.

Arya.ag: Agritech startup Arya.ag raised $29 million from existing investors, marking its first investment since raising $60 million from Luxembourg-based investment firm Asia Impact SA in 2022.

Rare Rabbit: New-age men’s apparel and fashion brand Rare Rabbit raised $18 million from investment fund A91 Partners. On May 20, ET reported that Ravi Modi, founder of Vedant Fashions that operates ethnic fashion brand Manyavar, and Zerodha’s cofounder Nikhil Kamath might join the Bengaluru-based startup’s total Rs 500 crore funding round.

Dice: Enterprise spend management platform Dice raised $5 million in a round led by venture capital firm Dallas Venture Capital (DVC). The round also saw participation from venture capital fund GVFL (formerly Gujarat Venture Finance Limited).