Funding Wrap Of The Week: Asian Startups, August 2–7

Asia’s startup ecosystem closed the first week of August with a burst of activity, led by a handful of large late-stage rounds and a long tail of early-stage bets across fintech, mobility, AI and insurtech. Ten deals stood out across the region, and in India specifically, the week marked a sharp rebound from a quiet previous seven days.

The Ten Biggest Raises Across Asia

Acrab topped the list with a $130 million Series B, backed by continued support from existing investors Vertex Ventures SEA & India and Vertex Growth, joined by new institutional investors from Europe and Southeast Asia.

River Mobility, the Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler maker, raised $120 million in Series C funding — a mix of equity and venture debt — making it one of the largest private growth-stage rounds India’s electric two-wheeler sector has seen to date.

Faye, a travel fintech startup, closed a $50 million Series C, pushing its total funding raised to date to $100 million.

InRisk Labs, an Ahmedabad-based insurtech, secured $27 million (roughly ₹256 crore) in Series A funding, co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Northpoint Capital.

X Mile, a Tokyo-based startup, raised 3.2 billion yen — about $20 million — in Series C.

HomeRun, a Bengaluru-based quick-commerce startup for construction materials, picked up $12 million in a Series A+ round.

Arrakis Security, an Israeli cybersecurity company, raised $8 million in Seed funding to build out a platform that helps businesses monitor and govern the actions of AI agents.

IAIG (Inevitable AI Group) closed a $6 million pre-seed round led by Aleph, with participation from several angel investors.

Enrola raised $2.1 million in Seed funding to build AI agents that help consumer-facing businesses engage prospective customers and drive sales.

Rime, a Saudi startup building AI tools for business operations, rounded out the list with more than $2 million in Seed funding.

India’s Week: Funding Jumps 4.7x

Zooming into India alone, 28 startups raised a combined $383.5 million this week — spread across 5 growth-stage deals, 21 early-stage deals and one round of undisclosed size. That’s a 4.7x jump from the roughly $82.2 million raised by 17 startups the previous week, and comfortably above the trailing eight-week average of about $316 million raised across an average of 21 deals per week.

Growth-Stage: $273.7 Million Across Six Deals

River Mobility’s $120 million Series C, led by Elev8 and Claypond Capital, anchored the growth-stage tally. Logistics platform Leap India raised ₹371.3 crore in a pre-IPO placement from Gamnat Pte Ltd, a GIC subsidiary. AI unicorn Sarvam added $74 million in an extension of its Series B, led by chipmaker NVIDIA.

Rounding out the growth-stage list: activewear brand BlissClub raised ₹160 crore in Series B from Singularity AMC; Matel Motion & Energy Solutions secured ₹130 crore (about $15 million) from UC Impower; and payments company Mintoak brought in ₹80 crore (roughly $9 million) in acquisition financing from BlackSoil.

Early-Stage: $109.8 Million Across 19 Deals

InRisk Labs’ $27 million Series A led the early-stage pack, followed by HomeRun’s $12 million Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners. Mitti Labs raised $9.5 million and Pinegap raised $8 million. Also securing funding this week: Vaaree, GetVantage, Kaapi Machines, Solinas Integrity, Benne, and 14 other early-stage startups.

Where and What: The City and Sector Breakdown

Bengaluru continued to dominate, hosting 16 of the week’s deals, followed by Pune and Delhi-NCR with four each; Mumbai and Chennai also recorded activity. By sector, AI led with six deals, followed by fintech and deeptech at four apiece, with e-commerce, manufacturing, mobility and supply chain startups also raising capital. By stage, Seed rounds led with 11 deals, followed by eight Series A rounds, while Series B, pre-Series A, Series C, pre-IPO, debt and angel rounds each saw activity.

Beyond The Raises: Hires, Funds And M&A

Leadership moves: Razorpay built out its AI leadership bench with four hires — Sudhir Reddy (from Divyam.ai), Abhishek Agarwal (from Microsoft), Bhavya Shivaprakash (from Salesforce) and Anuj Mathur (from CRED). Elsewhere, InsuranceDekho named Rohan Mittal Group CFO, Honasa Consumer elevated Nilesh Kotalwar to Chief Marketing Officer, Atoms brought in Gautam Gupta as CFO, InCred Capital appointed Abhinav Khanna CEO of Capital Markets, and Medi Assist named Gaurav Bhatnagar Chief TPA Officer.

New funds: Lighthouse Canton closed a ₹105 crore private credit investment in Emerald Leisures through its India-focused Category II AIF. Piper Serica announced the first close of its ₹800 crore Bharat Tech Fund at ₹300 crore — capital earmarked for Indian deeptech startups in semiconductors, defence, spacetech, fintech, robotics and biosciences.

M&A: Imarticus Learning acquired Singapore’s BELLS Institute of Higher Learning. Mintoak acquired ICC Loyalty to extend its international footprint. Times Network acquired fintech startup OpiGo for an undisclosed sum to strengthen ET NOW’s investor-focused financial services offerings.

The Wider Market Picture

A few other developments framed the week. Elevation Capital, one of India’s oldest venture firms, has realised close to ₹6,000 crore from partial stake sales in listed portfolio companies over the past 15 months via IPO offer-for-sale transactions and block deals — while still holding listed stakes worth more than ₹20,000 crore (over $2 billion) across Meesho, Paytm and Urban Company. In a related move, Peak XV and Elevation Capital together sold a 2.27% stake in Meesho for ₹1,949 crore via block deals this week.

Logistics-tech firm Shiprocket trimmed its IPO size by 31%, to ₹1,617.48 crore from a previously proposed ₹2,342.35 crore, ahead of its issue opening on August 12 at a price band of ₹92–97 per share — valuing the company at roughly ₹7,057 crore. KKR-backed Leap India separately filed its RHP for a ₹2,480 crore IPO, with its issue also opening August 7.

On the product side, mobility startup E3 Electric.AI launched its intelligent e-scooter, the E3 TRION. Fintech platform super.money entered commerce with splitStore, an instalment-based marketplace offering zero-interest payments across more than 60 lakh products, fulfilled through Flipkart’s logistics network. Corporate intelligence platform Probe42 launched two new products — P&P CERSAI, for security-interest registration data on proprietorships and partnerships, and Mercury, an AI-powered research assistant for company and business intelligence.

Healthcare payments platform QubeHealth-Pay partnered with Petos Insurance to launch Petos Pay, letting pet owners pay veterinary bills, earn healthcare-linked cashback and access affordability tools inside the Petos app — a tie-up expected to facilitate more than ₹50 crore in pet healthcare payments over the next 18 months.

Separately, PhonePe’s Daily SIPs feature — which lets users invest from as little as ₹10 a day — has onboarded more than half a million unique investors since its December 2025 launch, underscoring a broader shift toward small, disciplined retail investing in India. And Newton School of Technology’s Startup Foundry programme, paired with its ₹1 crore StartX seed fund backed by Nexus Venture Partners’ Pratik Poddar and entrepreneur Varun Mayya, continues to help engineering students build revenue-generating startups before they graduate.

Figures compiled from publicly reported funding announcements for the week of August 2–7, 2026. Amounts in Indian rupees are as originally disclosed; USD conversions reflect approximate exchange rates at the time of each announcement.