Fresh Round of Funding for DrinkPrime

DrinkPrime  a Water purifier startup had recently raised Rs 21.56 crore in its pre series A round of financing which was led by Sequoia Surge. This forms the part of the company’s seed capital financing round. The round was led by Sequoia Surge who made the maximum investment of Rs 12.7 crore followed by ON Mauritius who brought Rs 8.18 crore, other names who invested their capital are AL Trust, Nikhil Jaisinghami, RK Ramamurthi, and Anand Ladsariya. DrinkPrime has made an allotment of 64,613 pre series A compulsorily convertible preference shares, to all its investors who are mentioned above at Rs 3,336 per share, as per regulatory filings.

DrinkPrime is a part of the 15 startups, which were selected by Sequoia Surge for its third cohort in India and Southeast Asia. The startup was founded in the year 2017 by Vijender Reddy Muthyala and Manas Ranjan Hota. The company is into manufacturing of smart water purifier through a combination of internet of things (IoT) and water purification technologies , it connects purifiers to the cloud and keeps a check on the water quality . There are three subscription plans associated with it and it does not call  for any  investment in advance.

After the allotment process Surge will be in a position to control 18.43%  stake whereas Omidyar will handle 10.6% ownership in DrinkPrime, 1.37% equity will go to AL Trust whereas the other investors will be left with 1.25%..

As per estimates , DrinkPrime’s latest allotment of shares had a valuation of around Rs 85 crore. Collective shares of promoters Reddy and Manas Hota’s came down from 56.2% to 41.68% post transaction . The start-up in its round of seed funding has received an investment of around Rs 6 crore in the two previous tranches from its list of investors which included Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, and Ankit Agarwal in the last 12 months .

Leaving aside the fresh allotment of preference shares , Surge and Omidyar have also succeeded to acquire shares from early investors like Ganesh Subramaniam and Kapila Venkata Ramakrishna Rao. Ganesh and Rao had earlier invested in 4,213 and 2,808 preference shares respectively, the investment for the same was done at DrinkPrime’s maiden funding round where the cost of each share amounted to Rs. 712 per share .

Both Surge and ON Mauritius are into  a SPA( shares purchase agreement) with the two individuals . The purchase of their shares took place in the secondary transaction. The details of exits still remain undisclosed and they could earn at least 3X returns on their respective initial capital invested.