WestBridge Capital led the $3 million seed round for Firefly Diamonds, an Indian lab-grown diamond jewelry company.
The money raised will be utilized to support R&D for fresh and unique jewelry designs as well as to speed up the brand's retail and online presence.
Adit and Aayush Bhansali co-founded Firefly, a company that uses cutting-edge technology to produce lab-grown diamonds that have the same physical, optical, and chemical properties as diamonds that are mined but have a significantly smaller environmental effect during manufacture. It sells exquisite jewelry crafted from 14K and 18K gold.
With plans to open more than 20 locations in the next two years, the company now operates stores in four cities: Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, and Mumbai.
The lab-grown diamond (LGD) brand COLUXE was introduced last month by serial entrepreneur Priyanka Gill, a co-founder of the Good Glamm Group and a previous venture partner at Kalaari Capital.
Firefly Diamonds will face competition from a number of companies in the lab-grown diamond market, such as COLUXE, Fiona Diamonds, Limelight Lab Grown Diamonds, and Jewelbox. GIVA, supported by Aditya Birla, also sells jewelry made with lab-grown diamonds.
With assistance from current backer Binny Bansal and under the leadership of BlackSoil Group, cloud kitchen startup Curefoods is raising Rs. 56.4 crore (roughly $6.6 million) in debt. This will be the Bengaluru-based company's first debt round of the year.
According to a regulatory filing obtained from the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the board of Curefoods has passed a special resolution to issue 595 mandatory convertible debentures to Binny Bansal worth Rs. 6.4 crore and 1,000 non-convertible debentures to BlackSoil at an issue price of Rs. 5,00,000 each, raising Rs. 50 crore.
