Inside BlackSoil’s Present Chain Financing; BlueHill VC’s Deeptech Playbook

Howdy,

Money flows the place it has a aim.

IIT Madras-incubated enterprise AI company Uniphore has secured $260 million, co-led by tech firms NVIDIA, AMD, Snowflake, and Databricks. It plans to develop its data platform, Enterprise AI Cloud, which allows firms to automate processes, analyse data, and enhance purchaser interactions.

This funding follows a well-recognized growth, with AI startups on observe to grab over 50% of world VC funding in 2025, in accordance with a CB Insights report.

Nonetheless, the AI race and the ‘tangle of AI gives’ have fuelled fears of a bubble inside the US equity markets, signalling dangerous overinvestment inside the rising know-how. Some observe that the misallocation of capital may presumably be 17x bigger than the dot-com bubble.

Such fears of an AI bubble prompted Meta to place off 600 employees in its AI unit. Notably, these job cuts don’t affect Meta’s newest hires tasked with rising ‘non-public superintelligence’—a sort of AI that will surpass folks on mainly all cognitive duties. 

These are murky waters, and even AI godfathers can’t shake off the doomsday feeling. Plenty of of public figures, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson, have known as for a pause inside the development of superintelligence, warning of human monetary obsolescence.

In as we communicate’s e-newsletter, we’re going to talk about 

• Inside SaralSCF’s lending model
• BlueHill VC’s deeptech playbook
• Misfits serving “soda pop” moments

Proper right here’s your trivia for as we communicate: What’s the flattest nation on this planet?

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Fintech

Inside SaralSCF’s lending model

Everytime you ask Gaurav Bagrodia, President of SaralSCF—the supply chain arm of BlackSoil Group—what’s behind the company’s brisk progress, he doesn’t boast grand approach. “Lending is lending,” he says, almost dismissively.

Whereas present chain finance has existed in India for a few years—companies like SBI Parts have been offering it to blue-chip buyers like Mondelez and Pepsi as a result of the Eighties—it remained largely inaccessible to unrated or low-rated companies. That’s the middle flooring SaralSCF bought all the way down to seize in 2021.

Standing apart:

• The urge for meals for present chain financing from rising startups is clearly mirrored on the company’s steadiness sheet. Belongings beneath administration (AUM) have climbed from Rs 50–60 crore in March 2023 to roughly Rs 170 crore a yr later, and as a lot as Rs 344 crore by March 2025.
• SaralSCF was born as BlackSoil’s risk-diversification experiment. “We wished to diversify every the product and the hazard. So we acquired a company, constructed our private tech stack,” Bagrodia explains.
• The company is experimenting with AI and ML for credit score rating scorecards and rule engines, nonetheless Bagrodia is cautious. “At current, the product and commerce often aren’t ready… Data simply isn’t that extraordinarily obtainable.”

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Funding Alert

Startup: Uniphore

Amount: $260M

Spherical: Sequence F

Startup: Wonderland Meals

Amount: Rs 140 Cr

Spherical: Institutional

Startup: Megaliter Varunaa

Amount: Rs 15 Cr

Spherical: Seed

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Investor

BlueHill VC’s deeptech playbook

BlueHill VC is inside the midst of elevating its maiden fund with a aim corpus of Rs 350 crore and a inexperienced shoe chance of Rs 50 crore. The Chennai-based early-stage VC is in search of to once more companies developing foundational know-how in engineering and sciences, specializing in psychological property. 

In a dialog with YourStory, BlueHill’s Managing Confederate, Manu Iyer, said, “We want to once more companies developing this tech from the underside up, not companies which might be, let’s say, copying one factor that exists inside the West, nonetheless, saying, ‘I can do it cheaper’… We want to once more founders altering the paradigm of how certain points are completed. And broadly, that’s the thesis of our fund.”

Key takeaways:

• BlueHill VC has invested in Hyderabad-based startup Helex, which is rising superior therapeutics for the needs of victims with genetic kidney diseases. Whereas the funding stays undisclosed, preliminary cheque sizes are about $1 million per agency, and follow-on investments differ between $2–4 million.
• It’s investing about $3 million in home tech startup EtherealX’s upcoming $20 million spherical, which, in accordance with Iyer, is happening at 4.5X markup for the VC company. 
• BlueHill will look to take a place about $1 million each in 15–20 companies and make follow-on investments in about 7 or 8 companies, Managing Confederate Sridhar Parthasarathi instructed YourStory.

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Startup

Misfits serving “soda pop” moments 

Primarily based by Aditya and Yash Pai, D2C mannequin Misfits is betting on daring flavours and gut-friendly benefits to win over a model new period of health-conscious clients. Instead of sticking to predictable cola, apple, lemon, or orange, the startup debuted with two distinctive flavours. 

Grape Soda was impressed by an episode of The Office, whereas Mango Chilli was designed for the Indian palate by pairing Alphonso mango with a kick of spice. 

Aditya Pai and Yash Pai are brothers and co-founders of Misfits.

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Info & updates

• Bikes: Hero MotoCorp will enter the UK market with a partnership with Lancashire-based distributor MotoGB, making the company’s merchandise obtainable in 51 nations. By the partnership, Hero will promote its Euro 5+ compliant Hunk 440 bike inside the UK, priced at $4,650.
• Gaming: Amazon unveiled its revamped sport streaming service, Amazon Luna, which now consists of latest beginner-friendly multiplayer video video games which may be managed collectively together with your phone. 
• Forfeit: US Google clients who gained a $425 million jury verdict in a consumer privateness class movement have requested a federal select to stress the Alphabet unit to forfeit an additional $2.36 billion. The jury found that it secretly collected app train data from tons of of 1000’s of shoppers who had disabled an account monitoring attribute.

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What’s the flattest nation on this planet?

Reply: Maldives, with a imply elevation of only one.5 metres. 

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