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Leaf Round raises $300K in pre-seed round

Leaf Round, an alternative investments platform, has raised $300,000 in a pre-seed funding from micro VC firm Upsparks, Superb Capital and senior business leaders from McKinsey, Bain, Barclays, and Adobe. 

The startup will use the funds to further its product building efforts and create market awareness about the company and its offerings. It will also be doubling down on its efforts in hiring the right talent, building a highly scalable tech stack and focusing on content driven marketing to enhance the understanding of the product.

Leaf Round is a fintech startup that offers asset renting as an alternative investment product and has witnessed strong traction from its early users since its launch in April 2022. It was founded by Nishchay Nath, Soumya Kushwaha and Avinash Verma, in order to solve the problem of wealth creation for the average Indian investor. In its private beta stage, the investments have been growing by 50 percent MoM with an average ticket size of Rs 54,000 and repeat rate of 29 percent. Leaf Round is a platform where investors can buy and rent assets such as furniture, IT equipment and more, to earn high yields in the form of monthly rentals.

“We are making it easy for the Indian investor to create wealth by taking a common concept of real estate rentals and extending it to assets that companies require. We aim to target the MSME credit gap of $345 billion as an investment opportunity, which can be plugged using leasing. There is massive potential in this space and the success of this funding round gives us the boost needed to achieve the goals of our product and create an impact on the Indian investor,” said Nishchay Nath, Co-founder, Leaf Round.

18 early-stage startups raised funds from Sat Industries

Sat Industries Limited (SIL), a BSE listed company engaged in various business sectors, has invested Rs 2 crore in 18 early-stage startups across multiple sectors. The funds invested will be allocated towards the expansion and growth by investee companies in marketing, operations, team expansion and technology upgradation.

During the last quarter, SIL has invested an average cheque size of Rs 11 lakh each across sectors such as FMCG, robotics, technology, consumer, fintech, logitech, foodtech, cold chain logitech, and HRtech.

SIL has also invested in angel funds and VC funds such as 9Unicorn, India Quotient, BlinC Invest, Artha, Z Nation Growth Fund, and Beams Fintech Fund. These funds in turn invest their corpus in various startups.

“Sat one of the leading corporate angel investors in India invests in seed stage and early-stage startups which have innovative business models and high potential for scaling by using new age disruptive technology. We aim to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship and provide fuel for the growth of young innovative companies,” said Asad Daud, Director, SIL.

Pine Labs makes a significant majority investment in Mosambee

Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs on Wednesday announced that it has made a significant majority investment into Mosambee, an end-to-end payment solution provider in India. This investment by Pine Labs will now value Mosambee at upwards of $100 million.

Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said, 

“At Pine Labs, we continue to focus on deep technology and SaaS. Ever since its founding, Mosambee has made tremendous inroads into elevating the merchant experience through cutting-edge fintech solutions. They were a natural fit for us due to our shared purpose of making innovative fintech products accessible to all and driving forward the digital payment revolution in India. I look forward to great outcomes ahead and welcome Sameer and team to the Pine Labs family.”

The leadership team at Mosambee will continue to operate independently and use its proprietary tech platform that has served well to the needs of their clients across diverse industry verticals.

“We have long admired Pine Labs as an invaluable contributor to the Digital India vision and everyone at Mosambee is thrilled with their investment in us. In fact, Pine Labs was our first partner when we launched our platform. Mosambee today caters to a wide array of businesses, from SMEs to private and government entities to leading banking institutions in India. With the extensive reach of Pine Labs and their portfolio companies, we aim to continue to deliver strong profitability and breakthrough solutions to our clients,” said Sameer Chugh, Co-founder of Mosambee.

In February 2022, Mosambee had announced the acquisition of Benow, a digital payments and EMI technology platform. Pine Labs is also scaling its Pay Later proposition to newer markets outside India and recently announced the ‘Mastercard Installments with Pine Labs’ programme in association with Mastercard and DBS Bank to enable interest-free installment purchase options to the two million DBS Bank cardholders in Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong SAR.