Weekly rundown: CommerceIQ, Oxyzo turn unicorns; Ola to buy Avail Finance

India's unicorn run continues its impressive pace with two start-ups touching the coveted $1 billion valuation mark this week.

One of them was Oxyzo Financial Services, which marked the first ever event of an Indian couple propelling their respective start-ups to unicorn status. 

Oxyzo, the lending arm of industrial goods procurement firm Ofbusiness, announced $200 million Series A round at $1 billion valuation. 

Also Read: CommerceIQ turns unicorn with a $115 mn fund raise led by SoftBank

The fundraise, its first large external funding round, was led by Tiger Global and AlphaWave Global, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and Creation Investments. 

Oxyzo, led by Ruchi Kalra, was spun off from Ofbusiness, which became a unicorn last year. Kalra along with her husband Asish Mohapatra are co-founders at OfBusiness. 

Retail e-commerce management platform CommerceIQ closed a $115 million Series D financing round, bringing the company's total valuation to more than $1 billion. 

The new funding follows CommerceIQ's $60 million Series C round in June 2021. The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. 

All existing institutional investors in the company - Insight Partners, Trinity Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group - participated in the round. 

Also Read: Ofbusiness's financial services arm Oxyzo turns unicorn

The company said the fresh capital will be used to expand its business and strengthen hiring globally, including in India, and to accelerate the development of its unified retail e-commerce management platform. 

Managed accommodation provider Stanza Living, online beauty brand Plum, and overseas-focused ed-tech platform Leverage Edu also raised significant funding rounds this week. 

The week witnessed two start-up acquisition deals. 

Ride-hailing giant Ola announced on Thursday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Avail Finance for an undisclosed valuation. 

Co-founded by Ola's founder Bhavish Aggarwal's brother Ankush and Tushar Mehndiratta, Avail Finance was last valued at $38.5 million according to Traxcn. 

It offers loans to the blue-collared workforce. Business Today reported that the transaction may necessitate an independent audit and subsequent board approval, under the corporate governance regulations. 

Both the brothers are directors in the company. Ola, with a 9 per cent stake in the company, has some common investors in Avail Finance including Alpha Wave Global and Matrix Partners. 

Also Read: Ola's Avail Finance acquisition may have to go through an independent audit

Therefore, the share-swap deal may need board approval and an audit since it falls under related party transactions. The company recently laid off a significant chunk of its staff and is currently operating with a small sized teach team led by Ankush Aggarwal. 

Bizongo, a B2B trade enablement platform, announced the acquisition of Mumbai based IoT and Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) solutions provider Clean Slate Technologies. 

The company plans to integrate Clean Slate's assets, goods, and people tracking features and sensors to generate data and insights about the operations of factories. 

Bizongo aims to equip over 100 Indian factories with its cloud factory solutions. In January, the company acquired Hexa, a Bengaluru-based cloud platform for college placements.