Startup Street: An Emergency Services Venture, LinkedIn's Top Picks And More

This month on Startup Street, the word is resilience.

Amid continuing volatility, funding in India's startup ecosystem held its ground in September, according to Tracxn. The country also added two more to its tally of unicorns.

Separately, conversations with a startup focussed on medical emergency services and analysing LinkedIn's 'Top Startups' list.

Here’s what went on in September...

Funding trends in September showed that investments in Indian startups will most likely not meet the $1-billion (Rs 8,100 crore) mark for the second month in a row, according to startup data analytics platform Tracxn.

Investment inflows have reduced considerably from the highs of December last year.

As many as 92 startups received funding across various stages and only equity funding has been considered while debt, grants and post-IPO rounds have not been taken into account by Tracxn.

Goa-based diagnostics startup Molbio Diagnostics, Yulu Bikes, Zopper and Signzy saw some of the biggest funding rounds in September.

A Tata Digital-led round of $40 million (Rs 325 crore) in 1mg turned it into a unicorn. Molbio Diagnostics also crossed the $1 billion valuation mark after bagging the month's largest round of $85 million (Rs 692 crore).

Here are the top ten biggest funding rounds of the month:

Prabhdeep Singh says he is out to "patch a broken emergency response system".

"By 2030, we will have 20 crore people above the age of 60. As Indians, we are predisposed to issues of the heart, diabetes etc. A lot of emergencies come 10 years younger too. If a heart attack in the US has to come at 75, in India, we should expect it to come at 65."

Singh is the founder and chief executive officer of StanPlus, a startup that provides ambulances in 15 Indian cities in 15 minutes or less.

"Pan India, there is no brand that manages emergencies at scale. In limited pockets, we have the 108 ambulance service that the government runs and hospitals that change from city to city, so there is no single number that one can rely on."

The Hyderabad-based startup wants to change that. In 15 cities including as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, one can call on their number and expect immediate medical assistance.

But direct-to-consumer is not the route they have taken first. "We are launching our direct-to-consumer efforts soon, both through subscription and incident-based models. Our current go-to-market strategy is through hospitals and employers."

Which means several top multi-city hospitals, such as recently-listed Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Apollo Spectra, CK Birla, Fortis and Manipal have outsourced their emergency support units, staff and ambulances combined, to Stanplus. This allows the startup to earn revenues from the hospitals and also provide a network of hospitals for corporates as an emergency insurance package.

"We also enable employers to provide protection for their employees, inside and outside of the workplace as well."

Citing the example of the recent death of Cyrus Mistry, the Shapoorji Pallonji group scion, Singh said, "Imagine you are a HR head and you get a call that one of your leaders has been in an accident in Navi Mumbai. How does a company take care of medical response for their employees?" He followed that up with an example of Zomato. "Not just leaders, what if one of Zomato's delivery executive has an accident? It extends to partners."

"We help large companies help protect their employees when something wrong happens." He said companies already buy insurance policies and health check ups, but that's all preventive.

StanPlus' business is divided into two revenue streams, subscriptions and incidents. "Incidents make up 60%, while subscriptions are 40% of our revenue. Subscriptions are paid for by the hospitals and employers, and incidents are paid by users directly when they use our services."

StanPlus owns all the advanced life support ambulances on their fleet. When questioned about the having expensive equipment on its own balance sheet, Singh said they are not an asset-light, but an asset-right model. "High-risk cases are taken care of on our fleet, and low-risk cases are outsourced to independent operators."

Singh, who has raised close to Rs 200 crore so far from investors such as HealthQuad and Kalaari Capital, said there's no pressure to raise funds anytime soon, but scaling-up technologically would require future rounds of funding.

Employment-oriented platform LinkedIn released its fifth annual 'Top 25 Startups' list for the year.

"Backed by unique LinkedIn data measuring different elements of growth and demand, the list reveals companies like CRED, upGrad and Zepto that you should be paying attention to," it said in a press release.

Instead of revenues, downloads and profit and other metrics, LinkedIn measures startups based on four pillars:

• Employment growth: Measured as percentage headcount increase over methodology time frame (July 1, 2021-June 30, 2022), which must be a minimum of 10%.

• Engagement: Looks at non-employee views and follows of the company’s LinkedIn page, as well as how many non-employees are viewing employees at that startup.

• Job interest: Rate at which people are viewing and applying for jobs at the company, including both paid and unpaid postings

• Attraction of top talent: Employees the startup has recruited away from any global LinkedIn Top Company, as a percentage of the startup’s total workforce.

By these standards, the platform listed the following as its top honorees:

• Unacademy acquires Gate Academy, plans to launch 50 YouTube channels.

• SoftBank plans a $35 million (Rs 285 crore) bet on GoMechanic, Reuters reports.

• Hospitality firm StayVista raised Rs 40 crore in Series B funding.

• GroMo raises $11 million (Rs 90 crore) in funding from SIG Venture Capital and others.

• Retail tech startup Daalchini raises $4 million (Rs 32.5 crore) in Series A round led by Unicorn India Ventures.

• Agnikul Cosmos secures patent for its single-piece 3D printed rocket engines.

• Actor Ranveer Singh makes first startup investment in Vineeta Singh-led Sugar Cosmetics.

• Matrix Partners India leads $10 million (Rs 81 crore) round in ZippMat.

• Sequoia Capital launches Pathfinders, Sequoia India and Sequoia Southeast Asia's platform, to connect portfolio companies who have ambitions to compete in global markets.

• 76 startups onboarded under the ‘India Water Pitch-Pilot-Scale Start-Up Challenge’ by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs.

• EV sharing service Yulu raises $77 million (Rs 676 crore) from Canada’s Magna, the two have also established a new battery swapping entity named ‘Yulu Energy’ as part of the deal.

• Mensa Brands acquires leading Peanut Butter brand MYFITNESS.

• BharatPe appoints BP Kanungo and Kaushik Dutta on its board. Kanungo is a former deputy governor of the RBI, while Dutta is chairman at Zomato. BharatPe board now consists of two executive directors, five non-executive directors, and two independent directors.

• Procurement management startup Procol raises $6.4 million (Rs 52 crore)

• Awiros raises $7 million (Rs 57 crore) led by Inflexor and Exfinity.

• Product adoption platform Chameleon raises $13 million (Rs 105 crore) led by Matrix Partners.

• Motilal Oswal Financial Services picks up strategic stake in StockPe.

• Info Edge to invest Rs 80 crore in e-learning startup Adda247.

• upGrad acquires corporate training firm Centum Learning.

• Fundamentum leads $22 million (Rs 179 crore) round into audio platform Kuku FM.

• Light Microfinance raises $25 million (Rs 203 crore) led by BII.

• Gifting-focused house of brands Join Ventures bags $23.5 million (Rs 191 crore).

• Crypto tax reporting startup Binocs raises $4 million (Rs 32.5 crore) seed capital.

• Dukaan fires 23 employees.

• Razorpay buys customer loyalty and rewards platform PoshVine, marks seventh acquisition.

• Digital lending startup EarlySalary rebrands itself to Fibe.

• Elev8 Venture Partners introduces $200 million (Rs 1,627 crore) India growth-stage fund.