Mindtree invests in COPE Health; PhonePe plans to fill 2,800 jobs to double strength; Speciale closes second fund at $38 mln

Speciale Invest, a VC firm in Chennai that focuses on early-stage deep tech ventures in India, has announced the final close of its second fund at $38 million. The fund was oversubscribed twice over since the firm announced its first close in April last year. “This fund is 4X our first fund, and we are excited to play an active role in influencing the deep-tech entrepreneurial ecosystem in India,” Vishesh Rajaram and Arjun Rao, who founded Speciale in 2017, told Forbes India. They have backed entrepreneurs in areas including enterprise software products emerging from deep tech in the cloud, voice and vision ML/AI, image analytics, AR/VR; and industrial hardware products in propulsion technologies, robotics, rocket engines, lithium technologies, microelectronics and optical communications. Gupshup, a conversational engagement platform company, has acquired Active.Ai, a conversational AI platform provider to banks and fintech companies. The acquisition strengthens Gupshup’s customer experience (CX) solutions for BFSI customers, it said in a press release. CynLr, a deep-tech startup developing a computer-vision-enabled robot to make ‘universal factories’ of the future a possibility, has raised $4.5 million in fresh funding. CynLr’s Visual-Robot Platform eliminates the trap of machinery customisation. CynLr envisions its Visual-Robots or Object Computers to ‘simplify’ manufacturing, just as the computers simplified data processing. CynLr will be establishing its business presence in the US, expanding its team and building capacity to address the current pipeline of customers and deliver 100 Robots annually, the company said in a press release. Futwork, a sales-as-a-service platform for companies looking to scale their outbound tele-calling operations, has raised $1 million in funding led by Blume Ventures and Simile Venture Partners. Other participants include Silicon Valley-based Riverside Ventures and various angel investors. PhonePe plans to double its employee strength this year. The digital payments unit of Walmart’s Indian ecommerce business Flipkart, said in a press release. The company plans to fill 2,800 vacancies in engineering, product development, analytics, business development, and sales. The jobs are based in Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, and other parts of the country. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds