Dutch investment group, Prosus is close to leading a funding round of $100 million in omni-channel jewellery startup, BlueStone, industry sources said. The round is likely to value BlueStone at around $960 million, more than double its valuation of $440 million as of September 2023.
The round, which is expected to be a mix of primary and secondary share sale, may also include VC firms like Peak XV Partners, Steadview Capital, and Think Investments, sources added.
Around $60 million of the round is expected to be a primary capital raise, which BlueStone will plough back into the business. The balance will be a secondary component, in which early investors are likely to offload a portion of their shares.
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If the funding round materialises, it will come just after Zepto’s $665 million fund raise at a valuation of $3.6 billion, which happened late last month. It will also come at a time when the industry continues to see muted number of deals.
For Prosus, which has invested over $7 billion in unicorns like Meesho and Swiggy, the deal will be significant, because it will be its first late-stage bet since mid-2022. It was involved in Series A deals in 2023, with transactions in contract software firm, Spotdraft, and fashion brand, Virgio, besides backing portfolio startups like Urban Company and Captain Fresh. It has been missing from late-stage activity like its peers, SoftBank and Tiger Global.
Both Prosus and BlueStone could not be contacted for comments.
BlueStone reported Rs 788 crore in operating revenue in FY23, up from Rs 476 crore a year back. Its losses narrowed to Rs 167 crore from Rs 1,268 crore in FY22.
According to Tracxn data, domestic tech startups saw a 13% decline in funding in the first half of the current calendar year (January-June) to $4.1 billion. The firms had raised $4.8 billion in the same period in 2023.
The number of funding rounds also saw a decline of 54% to 540 during the period from 989 in the first half of last year.
The decline in funding was across stages during this period. While seed stage funding dropped 17.3% year-on-year in the first half of this year, funding in early-stage startups were down 28% and that in late-stage companies were slightly lower by 1.3%.
However, when compared to the second half of 2023, the funding scenario has improved in the first half of this year. Overall funding increased by 4% from $3.96 billion in the second half of last year, while across stages, too, funding saw an uptick.
April saw the highest monthly funding of $862 million in the first half of 2024, while January had seen the highest funding of $1.41 billion in H1 of last year. So far this year has seen eight $100 million-plus funding deals. Apart from Zepto, companies such as Flipkart, Apollo 24|7 and Meesho have managed to raise funds above $250 million during this period.
Flipkart raised $350 million, followed by Apollo 24|7, which raised $297 million and Meesho raised $275 million. Startups in the retail, enterprise applications and fintech industries recorded the highest funding during this period.
Three startups – Zepto, InCred Finance and Porter – became unicorns among Indian startups in the first half of this year.
From: financialexpress
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