Dailyhunt, Glance, Nykaa: Startups that became unicorns this year

The year 2020 won't just be remembered for all the wrong reasons. For some startups it would be a memorable one. They entered the unicorn club with massive funding from investors across the globe. India has seen a record number of unicorns (startups valued at $1 billion or more) in 2020. Companies such as Dailyhunt and Glance have recently entered the unicorn club.

 

Unacademy

Bengaluru based edtech firm joined the unicorn club in September. The edtech firm raised around Rs 1,125 crore in a funding round led by Softbank besides other investors including Facebook. The firm has a network of over 18,000 educators and some 3,00,000 plus paid subscribers.

Pine Labs

Pine Labs, a point-of-sale and merchant commerce solution provider became the first unicorn from India after a deal with New York-based financial services major Mastercard. Incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs' key investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal, and Sofina.

FirstCry

Baby products marketplace FirstCry raised $296 million (Rs 2,120 crore) from SoftBank Vision Fund. in 2019, SoftBank had committed to investing $395.7  million (Rs 2,824 crore) in FirstCry.

Zenoti

Hyderabad-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm has raised $160 million as part of its Series D round led by private equity firm Advent International, through Advent Tech and affiliate Sunley House Capital, at a valuation of more than $1 billion. It also saw participation from existing investors Tiger Global and Steadview Partners. With this, Zenoti is now the fifth SaaS-based Indian startup to become a unicorn.

Nykaa

The fashion e-tailer, started by Falguni Nayar in 2012, Nykaa entered the unicorn club with its fresh Rs 100 crore ($13 million) funding from existing backer Steadview Capital. The recent investments took Nykaa's total fund tally to over $100 million.

Postman

The software company, founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane, is headquartered in San Francisco. The company is a leading platform for an application programming interface (API) development. It secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners, global venture capital and private equity firm in June.

 Zerodha

Founded by Nikhil Kamath and Nithin Kamath back in 2010, the Bengaluru-based start-up witnessed massive growth during the pandemic. GoldenPi, a trading platform, raised Rs 3.5 crore from the Bengaluru-based company in June this year, through Rainmatter capital. The duo founders are also the newcomers in the recently-released Forbes' list of India's 100 richest 2020.

Razorpay

Payment startup Razorpay's valuation doubled twice to $1 billion with latest $100 million fund-raise, co-led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

Cars24

Cars24 raised $200 million in a Series E round led by DST Global in November this year, which also saw participation from its existing investors Exor Seeds, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Unbound.
With the latest funding round, Cars24 valuation soared past a billion dollars, making it the latest startup in the country to join unicorn club.
The startup had also raised investments from Indian cricketer MS Dhoni.

Dailyhunt

News and content aggregator Dailyhunt became India's first tech unicorn focused on vernacular content after raising $100 million funding from Google, Microsoft, and Falcon Edge's Alpha Wave Incubation at a unicorn valuation.

Glance

The world's leading lock-screen platform owned by Bengaluru-based mobile ad network InMobi Group Glnance raised $145 million from technology (tech) giant Google and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital, an existing investor in the company.