Ratan Tata invests in Firstcry.com and other top startup news of the day

Round up of the major headlines that dominated the Startup sector, nationally and internationally.

India’s venture capitalists have a new benefactor—the government. Last Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the central government would create a fund of funds that would invest in private venture capital funds. Part of a bunch of measures that constitute the action plan for the government’s Start-up India initiative, the fund of funds’ proposed Rs.10,000 crore (about $1.5 billion) corpus will be deployed in tranches of Rs.2,500 crore over a period of four years.

Chennai-based angel network The Chennai Angels has announced it has invested Rs 3.5 crore ($500,000 million) in home automation company Silvan Innovation Labs, a company providing technology-enabled security and entertainment amenities at homes.

Going by the observations of the Delhi High Court in the arrest of a senior official of travel portal makemytrip.com, the taxman’s tendency to be coercive doesn’t seem to have reduced. Last fortnight, the official was arrested for allegedly not paying Rs 75 crore of service tax.

Uber India Systems, a local unit of the taxi aggregator, has made a marginal profit in both the years it's been present in the country. Startups generally burn through cash in the initial years as they acquire scale and customers.

Top industrialist Ratan Tata has invested in baby care eCommerce platform FirstCry, continuing the slew of investments he has made in various startups globally.

EasyPolicy, online ecommerce company in the insurance web aggregation space has raised Rs 15 crore from Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer and other investors.

Online real estate classifieds company Housing.com said it had received Rs 100 crore ($14.7 million) in fresh funding from its largest investor, SoftBank Group Corp.

ShabdaNagari, a Hindi social networking portal, has raised Rs 1.2 crore in angel investment from Kanpur Angels and a clutch of other investors.

CREO, a Bangalore based consumer technology company has raised $ 3 million funding from Sequoia India, Beenext Ventures and India Quotient.