By: Recently, UrbanClap Raised Funding of Rs 20 crore from Trifecta Capital. The investment came as a venture debt via non-convertible debentures.
UrbanClap is home services based marketplace startup founded by Varun Khaitan and Abhiraj Bhal in 2014. The company hails beauticians, cleaners, electricians and other such home service professionals. UrbanClap competes with some other similar companies like QuikrServices and Housejoy.
Previously, UrbanClap Raised 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 home services aggregator also recently tied with Google that launched a similar service based Areo in India. Areo provides home services as well as food delivery. The startup raised more than $35 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Saif Partners, Accel Partners, and angels like Ratan Tata and Snapdeal fame Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
UrbanClap in this round got Rs 20 crore from Trifecta, a venture debt firm. It also alloted a small equity via mandatory preference shares to the venture debt firm for Rs 2 crore. The filing of the company with the Registrar of Companies revealed this information. NCDs fall in the category of unsecured bonds that aren’t convertible to an equity or a stock. These apply higher interest rates than convertible debentures. Convertible debentures are convertible into stocks as well.
Owing to the recent cash crunch phase, venture debts have gained huge popularity. Trifecta is one of the top Indian firms as far as venture debts are concerned. The other such investors are IntelleG row and InnoVen Capital.
Trifecta has invested in many Indian startups like Urban Ladder, Rivigo, BigBasket, etc. In just last 18 months, the company has invested about Rs 300 crore in 21 startups. The target corpus of the company is Rs 500 crore.
Rahul Khanna, the Managing Director says, “We are very focused on identifying category leaders.“
