Home service startup UrbanClap has raised Rs.20 Crore of debt funding from California-Based Trifecta Capital through Non-Convertible Debentures.
A Non – Convertible debenture or NCD do not have the option of conversion into shares and on maturity, the principal amount along with accumulated interest is paid to the holder of the instrument. There are two types of NCDs-secured and unsecured.
Previously, UrbanClap raised an undisclosed amount funding from Ratan TATA in December 2015. The total equity funding from UrbanClap is about $36.6 Millions. The startup investors base include SAIF Capitals, Rohit Bhansal, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Capital and others.
The startup has also acquired similar startups like GoodServices and Mumbai-Based HandyHome.
The Delhi-Based startup was founded in October 2014 by Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra and Abhiraj Bhal. UrbanClap is the simplest way to hire trusted services. The startup helps their customers to find the right service professionals for activities important house works. Their vision is to use technology and smart processes to structure the highly unorganised services market in India and emerging markets.
Trifecta Capital is an early stage technology fund that invests in the best start-ups. Current portfolio companies include Equipment Share, Second Spectrum, Moltin and others. Trifecta Capital is a top quartile Silicon Valley-based seed fund. The venture capitalist is industry agnostic and look to support companies starting at seed stage but continue our support until IPO.
Commenting on the funding Rahul Khanna, managing partner at Trifecta Capital, said: “We are very focused on identifying category leaders. The venture debt firm has so far committed Rs 300 crore to 21 startups in the last 18 months through its Trifecta Venture Debt Fund I, the target corpus for which is Rs 500 crore.”
The venture debt firm has invested in several startups such as BigBasket, Rivigo and Urban Ladder.
Financial technology startup Defmacro Software , which owns and operates online tax returns filing platform ClearTax , has raised $2 million (Rs 13.3 crore) from FF Angel , the angel investing arm of Peter Thiel-led Founders Fund , and Sequoia Capital .
The five year-old company will use the proceeds from the round to launch a slew of consumer-focused tax-saving products, including mutual funds and other equity-linked saving schemes. It will also be adding to its leadership team, said Archit Gupta , chief executive of ClearTax.
“We have taken the long route, and now we are extremely excited to have some of the biggest thought leaders and investors on board as our partners,” Gupta said. “We are an instrument-agnostic platform that will allow consumers to choose their rate of return and select what to have in their tax savings basket.”
The transaction, which closed last week, marks FF Angel’s first investment in India, and comes a month after Bengaluru-based ClearTax secured $1.3 million in a seed funding round from a group of Silicon Valley investors including PayPal cofounder Max Levchin and Scott Banister, an early investor in Facebook and Uber.
Riding on advertisement growth, social media giant Facebook on Wednesday reported a stellar $1.5 billion first-quarter profit or 52 cents per share in 2016
Facebook Inc’s quarterly revenue rose more than 50 per cent, handily beating Wall Street expectations as its wildly popular mobile app and a push into live video lured new advertisers and encouraged existing ones to boost spending.
The company’s shares rose 9.5 per cent in after-hours trading on Wednesday to $118.39, setting it on track to open at a new high on Thursday, at nearly triple its initial public offering four years ago.
Facebook also announced it will create a new class of non-voting shares in a move aimed at letting Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg give away his wealth without relinquishing control of the social media juggernaut he founded.
The company plans to create a new class of non-voting shares, which would be given as a dividend to existing shareholders. That would allow Zuckerberg, who wants to give away 99 per cent of his wealth, to sell non-voting stock to fund philanthropy and keep the voting stock that assures his control.
Alphabet Inc passed a similar proposal in 2014 that ensured its founders’ control by creating new non-voting shares.
Some 1.65 billion people used Facebook monthly as of March 31, up from 1.44 billion a year earlier. Zuckerberg said users were spending more than 50 minutes per day on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, a huge amount of time given the millions of apps available to users.
Advertisers are shifting money from television to web and mobile platforms, and Facebook is one of the biggest beneficiaries. It faces fierce competition in the mobile video market, where rivals Snapchat and YouTube also garner billions of video views every day.
Facebook recently expanded its live video product, rolling out several new features and making it more prominent on the app to encourage users to create videos and share them. The quarterly results showed success attracting advertisers with the move, and the company was able to expand its operating profit margin to 55 per cent from 52 per cent a year earlier.
“The company consistently ‘warns’ about higher spending, but they consistently manage their spending to deliver earnings upside. They’re an impressive company, and they leave very little room for criticism,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who called the operating margin a good surprise.
Facebook did not offer details on sales of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, but emphasized that it was early days and said that sales would not significantly impact 2016 revenue.
The results come after disappointments for investors from several major Silicon Valley firms.
“After Intel and IBM last week, and then Twitter and Apple yesterday, this is by far the best number I’ve seen in technology,” said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Company which owns about $40 million worth of Facebook shares, commenting specifically about Facebook ad revenue.
Facebook has not begun advertising on some of its most popular apps. “They haven’t yet turned on the monetization spigot for Messenger or WhatsApp, so there should be significant headroom still,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.
The company’s net income attributable to common shareholders nearly tripled to $1.51 billion, or 52 cents per share, in the first quarter from $509 million, or 18 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned 77 cents per share, beating Wall Street’s 62-cent consensus.
Total revenue rose to $5.38 billion from $3.54 billion, with ad revenue increasing 56.8 per cent to $5.20 billion. Mobile ad revenue accounted for about 82 per cent of total ad revenue, compared with about 73 per cent a year earlier.
Analysts on average had expected revenue of $5.26 billion.
If the stock proposal is approved – and Zuckerberg has a majority of voting stock – the company will effectively carry out a 3-for-1 stock split, issuing two shares of non-voting Class C capital stock as a one-time stock dividend for each share of Class A and Class B common stock.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced last year that they would give away 99 per cent of their Facebook shares to fund charitable endeavors.
Investors said they were not concerned that Zuckerberg would have increasing control, pointing to the company’s consistent ability to grow and exceed expectations.
“I honestly don’t think anyone cares if he has more power, since he’s done everything right since they went public,” said Pachter.
Home service startup UrbanClap has raised Rs.20 Crore of debt funding from California-Based Trifecta Capital through Non-Convertible Debentures.
