StartupCentral

Gurgaon-based online health store HealthKart has raised $5.2 million (Rs 27 crore) as part of a Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Networks, reports VCCircle. The company had earlier raised over $1 million from KAE Capital and Sequoia in seed funds.

Founded in March 2011, the startup was reportedly in the market to raise $10 million, chiefly to expand its portfolio and launch an online magazine. It started business with products in categories such as diabetes, home medical and baby products and intends to expand into elderly care, nutrition, personal care chronic care, vision and skin care. The company takes orders online, over telephone and via email. Orders that exceed Rs 500 are eligible for free delivery and the company also offers customers the cash-on-delivery option.

The 11-month old ecommerce startup, founded by IIT Delhi alumni Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari, also retails services such as health-checkups, fitness packages at gyms and spa treatment packages. The leadership team, apart from Tandon and Maheshwari, includes Animesh Jain, founder of online gifting startup iTasveer, who now heads marketing for HealthKart.

[media-credit name="Snigdha Sengupta" align="alignnone" width="199"][/media-credit]D.Light Design, a startup which makes solar-powered LED lanterns for developing world consumers, has won the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy 2010. The Cayman Islands registered company won £40,000 as the Gold Award winner this year. D.Light’s lamps enable users to replace kerosene lamps that tend to be more expensive and hazardous to health. The company’s lamps (the ‘kiran’ in photo) are priced between Rs 500 and Rs 1,600 and can provide light  up to 12 hours on a full charge.

“The judges were particularly impressed with their highly effective marketing strategy which has put solar lighting within reach of over a million people in 32 countries…” said Sarah Butler-Sloss, founder-director of the Ashden Awards. The awards were instituted in 2001 to encourage the greater use of local sustainable energy to address climate change and alleviate poverty. So far, they have rewarded 140 winners globally. The total prize money this year, shared by five winners, including D.Light, was £140,000. Read the full story

Yesterday, Mumbai-based online classifieds startup Quikr announced a Rs 20 crore Series B round of funding from Omidyar Network and existing investor Matrix Partners — see the press release here. The company had raised an undisclosed sum from Matrix in February last year. Online auction major eBay is also an investor in the firm. Incidentally, Quikr was earlier known as Kijiji and was a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. The company, which started life as Kijiji in 2005, claims 1.5 million users per month and derives its revenues primarily through advertising. New media entrepreneur Pranay Chulet recently signed up as the company’s new CEO.

Omidyar Network is an interesting investor to bring on board. Quikr is the firm’s first consumer Internet investment in India. Started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (in photo) and his wife Pam in 2004, the firm is into philanthropic investments and has committed $293 million in various such businesses till date. This includes $136 million invested in for-profit ventures and $157 million as grants in not-for-profit ventures. It has been a fairly active investor in India over the past few years. Here’s a list of its other India and India-related investments: Read the full story