Sun Pharma’s Dilip Shanghvi remains the country’s richest pharma promoter. His net worth is ₹81,200 crore.

The new billionaires in the stream are Prathap C Reddy of Apollo Hospitals, Premchand Godha of IPCA Labs, Arvind Lal of Dr Lal PathLabs, Mannalal Agrawal of Ajanta Pharma, VC Nannapaneni of Natco Pharma, Sunil S Lalbhai of Atul, and Chirayu R Amin of Alembic.

While others entered the club of the billionaires, Divi’s Labs Murali Divi saw amiracle with his net worth more than double to ₹53,000 crore. A significant rise in the fortunes of Aurobindo Pharma’s PVR Reddy and KN Reddy and Cadila Healthcare’s Sharvil Patel is also seen.

Afterall pandemic did not go bad for all!

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During the address the Prime Minister also said that the government will provide guarantees to help startups raise debt-capital. He further said that the government is trying to build a startup ecosystem which functions on the ‘of the youth, by the youth, for the youth’ mantra.

He said the target for India’s startups should be to become global giants in their respective service areas over the next five years.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had earlier last year initiated a similar fund to identify startups and give them financial help and this new seed funding comes after that only. In August 2020, the ministry had launched a fund to identify 300 startups and these startups would be provided seed funds of up to Rs 25 lakh along with other facilities as well. A budget of Rs 95.03 crore has been set for the programme and is to be spent over a period of three years.

The IT Ministry’s programme also seeks to award startups in the fields of medical health care, edu-tech, diagnostics, preventive and psychological care, agri-tech, supply chain, logistics, and transport management, as well as medical healthcare, diagnostics, preventive and psychological care.

The ministry has also conducted several other competitions to award startups working in several areas, such as video-conferencing, artificial intelligence over the last years. Like, in July 2020, the ministry had launched a challenge and it invited the Indian developers to come up with apps in a range of segments including social networking, e-learning, news, games, health and wellness, office management, fin-tech and entertainment, and speech translation etc.

The Prime Minister also interacted with the founders of startups from BIMSTEC nations, which include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand during the event.

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Although the approval of Covaxin has come under criticism from the opposition as it is still under Phase-3 trials. A section of experts say that it shows lack of transparency and verified efficacy.

Bharat Biotech CMD Krishna Ella said that Covaxin is 200 percent safe in comparison to other Covid-19 vaccines in the world.

He said, “We have not done anything wrong and we would not put anyone at risk. We are far better than others but sadly we do not get the recognition deserved. Why are MP Shashi Tharoor and others not questioning the UK firms.” 

Ella expressed anguish as his company’s work on vaccines and adherence to strict test protocols is better than some globally-recognised pharma brands. 

According to him Covaxin has shown less than 10 per cent adverse reactions. He assures that Covaxin is 200 percent safe in comparison to other vaccines in the world. 

Ella said that the permission for Covaxin was based on immunogenicity data. The tests on hamsters and monkeys displayed 100 percent protection offering the best animal challenging data compared to other vaccines. The company also claims the safety data of about 25,000 volunteers, compared to the 1,000 figure of the other company

The Hyderabad based company has an inventory of 20 million doses of Covaxin and the production would be increased up to 700 million doses per annum soon. 

The cost of a Covaxin dose has not been revealed yet because it would be depending upon the volumes. Though it is anticipated that it would be higher in the beginning.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven logistics startup Fleetx.io which was founded in 2017 by Sharma, Abhay Jeet Gupta, Udbhav Rai, Parveen Kataria and Vishal Misra, is looking to raise INR 23.19 Cr.

According to filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and accessed by Inc42, the company has received stakeholders’ approval to issue 8,888 Series A3 Cumulative Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS).

A suite of software-based products are offered by Fleetx.io. It helps fleets of all sizes to monitor and optimise their daily logistics operations. AI and predictive analytics are used to help businesses improve efficiencies and reduce cost on logistics.

The Series A funding was announced earlier this year. Fleetx.io co-founder and CEO Vineet Sharma had said that the company was catering to 1,000 clients with its AI-driven fleet management software and growing at 20% month-on-month (MOM). Sharma further said that the company had grown six times between 2018 and 2019.

It is worth noting that the company includes both mid to large fleet owners and enterprise shippers as the client base of it. But according to Sharma, fleet owners don’t have advanced technology infrastructure and the logistics industry ultimately relies on the fleet owner for moving the goods between locations.

Fleetx.io is not the only startup in the logistic space. BlackBuck and GreyOrange are in competition with it along with several other startups in the logistics space.

They wish to provide even better service to small farmers by improving their own lending abilities. Right now it is difficult for small farmers to acquire loans because of the complex policies and conditions of loans. The company will be using technologies like satellite imagery and soil testing. Using these technologies it will provide loans to these low-income and small farmers.

In the past 5 years, the growth of agriculture-based startups has been around 25-30%. It is believed that a bright future awaits for Samunnati. It will be interesting to see how the startup manages its funding and move forward to keep raising such funds in the future.

According to the founder and CEO of Samunnati, Anilkumar SG, “Samunnati is working with many FPOs on the supply side and Agri enterprises on the demand side across 19 states in India. We are delighted to partner with DFC as this will help us further offer customized financial solutions. By using social and trade capital, to FPOs and SMEs, enabling the Agri value chain to operate at a higher equilibrium.”

The Managing Director of South Asia Region of DFC, Ajay Rao said, “The DFC is proud to work together with the experienced team at Samunnati. We look forward to collaborating in scaling up the breadth and depth of the company’s operations across India.”

The aim of Acculi Labs is to make home-based care available even to the last person at the bottom of the pyramid. Lyfas is its flagship product. It enables easy and regular early diagnostics and monitoring for early-stage asymptomatic patients even in the remotest part of the world. It also helps them to approach their doctor at an early stage.

CTO and CEO of Acculi Labs, Rupam Das said,”The investment will be used to bring our vision to reality. [Our] R&D will work with new vigour and rigour to simplify healthcare for the needy. [We] will run full business operations to ensure that Lyfas becomes the need of every household, irrespective of geophysical location, as we at Acculi believe that healthcare is the need of people.”

Geetha Mahadevappa from PirE Ventures said, “We see a lot of potential in Lyfas to transform the way we diagnose and monitor diseases today. The asset-light and tech-driven models of the company are easily pluggable into various setups, including OPD, telemedicine, and post-surgery care. We believe that together PirE and Acculi can redefine digital health not only for people, but for the nation”.

In September 2019, Acculi Labs had received undisclosed pre-seed funding from a group of angels and Bengaluru-based consultancy and services firm named Startup Basket. It had also received funding under the Idea2PoC scheme, under the Startup Karnataka policy. It was also selected as one of the top startups of ELEVATE 2018, an initiative of the Department of Information Technology and Biotechnology, Government of Karnataka.

AIF’s are funds that pool capital from institutional investors and wealthy individuals to invest in riskier assets. All AIF’s in India come under the Security and Exchange Board of India’s purview.

The aim is to provide more domestic funding options for the startup community and reduce their dependence on foreign private equity players.

It is worth noting that compared to 2019, both the funding amount and deals in 2020 remained relatively low, indicating the adverse impact of the pandemic on startup investments in 2020. But the recommendations for AIF come amid a persistent anti-China “movement” in India. The Indian government has banned hundreds of Chinese mobile applications and told e-commerce platforms to list ‘country of origin’ for all products listed on their website.

The government is also looking to bring in several special changes to the existing law. Global pension funds and insurance companies will also be one of the investors in the government’s efforts. Recently the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has also called for an expansion of the SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) Fund-of-Funds vehicle as these will be enabled to function as an anchor investor.

In April this year India had already changed its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rules which mandated that all investment from neighbouring countries in Indian companies would require the approval of the Indian government.

It is predicted that due to the pandemic, the total annual funding in the calendar year 2020 will remain relatively lower compared to the previous year. The annual funding amount is estimated to remain anywhere between 11% to 36%.

Eduauraa was founded in December 2018 by 23-year-old Akanksha Chaturvedi, an alumnus of Columbia University. The startup is based in Mumbai and wants to take K-12 education to every corner of the country. It wants to penetrate the 97 percent which still remains to be tapped.

According to Akanksha Chaturvedi when they looked around they saw that people had access to OTT apps like ZEE5, VOOT, etc. So, they decided to find a way where education is available the way entertainment is. The startup found success after 18 months of content and product development. The app has already crossed 25,000 downloads. It reduces the entry barrier for e-learning by making 6,000 hours of K-12 content available for an “OTT price” of Rs 999 a year.

Eduauraa is the finest platform for e-learning as it has the curriculum of nine boards under its ambit. Not only CBSE and ICSE but state boards of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh also find representation in this Edu-tech application. The startup also realised that language was a barrier for students in India’s northern belt. So, they launched their app in Hindi and English.

Eduauraa is an ad-free app. Besides the school syllabus, it also offers a range of value-added services (VAS) such as e-books, mind maps, test papers, MCQs, past papers, and practice material. Its additional features also include Eduauraa Proficiency Quotient (to analyse learning progress) and Eduauraa Assistant (to track and schedule studying). All the content IP is created and owned by the startup.

Founded in 2014 by Apurv Agarwal, Kanika Jain and Vikas Gulati,the startup helps consumer businesses that sell high-ticket products and services across sectors such as real estate, financial services, education, healthcare, and retail improve their sales conversions and funnel efficiency.

Apurv Agrawal, CEO of SquadStack said, “We’re grateful to everyone who believed in our mission to create the ultimate sales acceleration and funnel efficiency stack for consumer focused businesses around the world. To our customer partners, we promise that our vision to make your lives easier by providing the best quality products will never change.”

“We’ve worked across industries because lead qualification and conversion is a challenge for every company irrespective of their industry or niche” said Saswata Shankar De, GM of the SquadIQ business.

According to the company the funds will be used for product growth and scaling its engineering and data science team in the US and India. While the company services both India and the US markets, its product offerings are tailored for market requirements.

In 2017, the firm had raised $2.1 million in pre-series A funding led by Blume Ventures. In 2019, it launched a similar offering as Series A.The offering was made in the massive US Real Estate market. During the initial months of covid-19, they were asked for a software to maximize profitability by the executives at multiple leading US broker teams.The executives also asked them to also provide team performance during the original market downturn. This led to the creation of their offering ‘Auctm’, a business management platform that helps broker teams boost revenue, cut costs, and improve agent training and retention by applying its core principles of data-driven sales acceleration.

The company has already tested a solid-fueled engine. But according to the company, the cryogenic engine is even more significant because of the extreme complexity in the technology and the handling of its fuels. It is revealed that the cryogenic engine would be powered by Liquid Natural gas as fuel(LNG) & Liquid Oxygen as oxidizer (LoX).

The LNG being used comprises over 90% methane gas which makes it a clean-burning, low-cost, and highly re-usable field. It is also well suited for long-duration space missions.

According to the CEO of Skyroot Aerospace,Pawan Kumar Chandana their team has successfully completed many tests to check the fuel flow and structural integrity. He also said that they were also building a dedicated test facility for hot fire testing of this engine.

The company is looking forward to a maiden launch of Vikram-I by December 2021. It has successfully tested the upper-most stage engine of its first rocket Vikram-I and its initial stage engines are being manufactured. The cryogenic engine is meant for their bigger rocket Vikram-II and would not see action in Vikram-I.

Vikram I is meant to lift 225 kg to 500 km Sun Synchronous Polar Orbit(SSPO) and 315 kg to 45º inclination 500 km Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in terms of payload capacity. Vikram II is designed for 410 kg to 500 km SSPO and 520 kg to 45º inclination 500km LEO. In the case of Vikram III, the company is looking at 580 kg to 500 km SSPO and 720 kg to 45º inclination 500 km LEO.