Direct-to-consumer (D2C) firm Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters and financial services firm Seeds Fincap have raised early-stage funding, the companies said on Friday.
Homegrown coffee brand Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters has secured an undisclosed amount in its ongoing Series B funding round from Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone's investment entity Ka Enterprises.
Blue Tokai has earlier raised $30 million in a Series B round in January, led by A91 Partners along with participation from White Whale Ventures and existing investors Anicut Capital and 8i Ventures.
Founded in 2013, Blue Tokai sells specialty coffee as well as runs standalone cafes and roasteries. At present, the brand operates in India and Japan with 4 roasteries and 80 physical outlets across cities and regions including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Mohali and Pune as well as regular pop-ups in Tokyo.
The brand also raised Rs 17 crore from the Anicut Angel Fund in August 2022. Prior to that, it snagged close to Rs 40 crore from early-stage funds and angel investors in 2020.
Seeds Fincap Pvt. Ltd, a micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME)-focused financial services firm has secured $6 million (Rs 50 crore) in a Series A funding round from Lok Capital.
The funding will be used to consolidate and expand its presence across geographies.
Founded by Subhash Acharya and Avishek Sarkar in 2021, Seeds Fincap is a non-deposit-taking non-banking financial company (NBFC) that provides unsecured and secured loans to underserved MSMEs. It claims to have assets under management (AUM) to the tune of Rs 212 crore and claims to have facilitated 40,000 disbursements worth Rs 340 crore.
It has 72 branches across six states with an employee count of 700 employees.
Meanwhile, Lok Capital, which marked the fund’s first close in January this year with commitments of about $90 million, onboarded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) into its LP mix as it is in the process of getting a cheque of $30 million from the Beijing-headquartered firm.