The Weekly Dispatch

Avaana Capital, a climate-focused VC firm, has secured commitments of $70 million for the 1st close of its Avaana Climate and Sustainability Fund. The VC firm is targeting a total corpus of $100-125 Mn for the fund. The fund will focus investments in 3 sectors including energy transition and resource management, mobility and supply chains, sustainable agriculture and food systems. It will also invest in tech-driven and innovative climate solutions.

Airavat Capital has floated a global technology fund domiciled in the Gift city Gujarat to invest in technology companies.The Airavat Global Technology Fund R (AGTF R), a category III alternative investment fund, will raise capital from India’s HNIs & Institutional investors, while investing in top listed technology companies globally. So far, it has received interest worth $40 million for the open-ended fund from a range of investors including family offices, VC investors & technology founders.

Blume Ventures has made the first close of its new opportunity fund at ?200 crore (around $25 million), about half the final target that it expects to achieve by August. Blume will use 3/4th of the corpus to purchase assets held by its existing funds, giving investors in those funds an exit option, the VC firm’s partners said. Blume has backed startups such as Exotel, Grey Orange Robotics, Smallcase, Slice and Unacademy.

Unacademy's Graphy, a SaaS based platform for content creators, has bought Scenes, a community platform for creators, marking the first acquisition for the SoftBank-backed edtech unicorn in 2023. According to Graphy, the acquisition will allow it to enhance its offerings as well as expand its reach in the creator ecosystem.At present, the platform, which was launched in 2020, claims to have helped over 1,00,000 educators and creators launch their online courses.

Freshworks added Generative AI capabilities by introducing 'Freddy Copilot',an add-on feature designed to enhance the developer experience. This tool helps in eliminating mundane tasks, allowing coders to focus on app development & other core functions. It also launched two Gen AI capabilities for its enterprise customers, Freddy Self Service & Freddy Insights.It chose to integrate Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service into Freddy AI solutions to ensure the privacy & security of Freshworks customers' data, the firm said.

Temasek will lead a $300-$350 million round in Ola Electric and the PE firm plans to make an infusion of $100- $150 million. The deal is in the final stages of due-diligence, the sources added . The funding round is set to take Ola Electric’s valuation to $6 Bn, 20% higher than the $5 Bn valuation it secured in its $200 Mn funding round last January. Bhavish Aggarwal was also said to be in talks with Catamaran Ventures, the VC firm founded by Infosys Co founder NR Narayana Murthy.

VC firm 100X.VC has invested $3.4 million in 22 startups that are part of its 9th cohort. This takes the fund's total investments to 127 since the launch of the fund in July 2019. The new set of portfolio companies were announced during the in-person VC Pitch Day, which was held in Mumbai. The event was attended by over 400 investors, which included HNI’s, family offices, VC funds, and corporations. The venture capital firm has invested ?1.25 crore per startup, it said in a statement.

Golden Sparrow, a US-domiciled micro VC firm, has formed a separate fund to invest in AI and SaaS startups in India. Golden Sparrow, led by Rishaad Currimjee as General Partner, has raised $6 million in the fund's first closure, with the eventual size estimated to be $8 million. Michael Marmor and Anand Rao are also partners in the fund. Golden Sparrow made its 1st investment in Sentra.world earlier this month, investing ?200k in the ESG-focused SaaS firm.

Deloitte has resigned as auditor of BYJU's three years prior to the expiry of its contract due to a long delay in the firm's financial statement for the FY ended March 2022, the audit firm said? BYJU'S also announced that it has appointed BDO (MSKA & Associates) as its statutory auditors for the next 5 years.As per the reports, G V Ravishankar of Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV Partners), Vivian Wu of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Russell Dreisenstock of Prosus have resigned from the board.

Cred has acqui-hired the founding team of YCombinator-backed personal finance app, Spenny. As a part of the arrangement, some founding team members, including Spenny Founder Rathin Shah, will be joining the Cred product team and work on building new features. Founded in 2019 by Shah and Gaurav Arora, Spenny was a micro-investment platform which nudged users to invest small amounts of money in mutual funds and digital gold every time they chose to spend.

Sunny Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Apptio, is having a homecoming of sorts. The SaaS company made headlines after IBM announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire the firm for $4.6 billion. The deal will mark the return of Gupta to IBM, where he began his career in 1992. Founded in 2007, Seattle-based Apptio helps companies manage and understand their spending on cloud services and offers functionalities such as IT budgeting, forecasting and financial analyses.

Arkam Ventures launched its 2nd fund with a target of raising $180 million.The firm -- floated by Co-founder & former Managing partner of Helion Venture Partners Rahul Chandra and Kalaari Capital’s Bala Srinivasa -- plans to complete raising the fund fully by the end of 2023. By October, it will cover half of the target, Srinivasa said. Arkam’s Fund II will build a portfolio of 20 tech startups, entering stages A and B, over 3 years, Chandra said.