BlackSoil, a venture debt business, is investing in Blu-Smart Mobility, BigHaat, And LoanTap
- ByStartupStory | March 24, 2022
BlackSoil Capital, venture debt and alternative credit platform, announced on Thursday that it had invested over $4.5 million (about Rs 34.2 crore) in three startups: BluSmart Mobility, BigHaat, and LoanTap. The Mumbai-based debt investor supported SME-focused fintech business LivFin with a $2 million investment earlier this year (Rs 14.8 crore).
BlackSoil has invested in five unicorns: Udaan, OYO, Zetwerk, Spinny, and the troubled Infra. Market, as well as a number of other firms at various stages of development. In 2021, BlackSoil had taken involved in 28 transactions. In the sustainability-focused segments of e-mobility and agri-tech, BlackSoil’s top bets are Blu-Smart and BigHaat, And LoanTap.
In the year 2019, Anmol Jaggi and Punit Goyal founded BluSmart. Only in the Delhi-NCR region does the ride-hailing app work with all-electric cars. The startup has received $36 million in funding from a number of notable equity investors, including bp Ventures, Mayfield Fund, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalyst, and several additional high-net-worth individuals (HNIs).
Meanwhile, BigHaat, based in Bengaluru, was founded in 2015 by Sateesh Nukala, Sachin Nandwana, and Kiran Vunnam with the goal of digitizing the agriculture value chain using science, data, and technology. It also uses data to provide agricultural advice services on concerns such as growth and disease. JM Financial Private Equity and previous investor Beyond Next Ventures led a Rs 100 crore (about $13.5 million) funding round in January. Ankur Capital and RockStud Capital are among the firm’s other investors.
The company’s third wager LoanTap was founded by Satyam Kumar and Vikas Kumar in 2016 as a homegrown, hyper-growing digital lender with its own NBFC, with the goal of providing a seamless consumer experience from application to disbursement. LoanTap established cooperation with ArkaFincap Ltd, a non-banking financial company (NBFC), last month (Arka). It has also partnered with MAS Financial Services Ltd, an RBI-registered NBFC, in a co-lending model for salaried and MSME borrowers. The platform raised $12 million (about Rs 85.08 crore) in a Series B investment headed by Avaana Capital in September 2019.
Over $215 million has been invested in over 100 businesses by BlackSoil, which administers an alternative lending marketplace. The domestic venture debt firm announced in January that it had invested $80 million in 20 transactions in 2021, representing a 2.5-fold increase in terms of value and a 1.8-fold increase in terms of volume of investments over 2020.
Udaan, a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce firm, Infra. Market, a marketplace for building products, and Purplle, a beauty marketplace, are among its key investments in startups.
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