"EDITION 9"

Published: 6/5/2020

“EDITION 9”

RIP Good Times? LOL, far from it. With the recent IPOs in the US that didn’t perform great & the WeWork (& OYO) news, the global startup ecosystem has been a bi on edge and some think we might on the verge of a repeat of 2008. But the scene in India is far from it. Most of the leading firms have all raised record funds in the last 12 months, and it seems like there is at least one mega-round ($100M+) each month. Yesterday was a bit different - We had two (Swiggy & Unacademy)! As well as WhatFix (B2B SaaS) raising a $32M Series C and Dunzo raising ~$11M in debt from Alteria Capital, for a total of over $250M+ being announced in a single day! More so, Blume Ventures (an early-stage firm) also announced the final close of their $102M oversubscribed Fund III. Lots to unpack here, but some highlights:

  • https://tcrn.ch/39RVqfM (TechCrunch): Unacademy, an online education platform has raised $110M from the likes of General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital & Facebook (note- this is Facebook’s second direct investment in an Indian startup after Meesho). Just a couple of weeks ago, Gaurav (one of the founders) announced that that Unacademy’s subscription business, launched a year ago, had hit $30M in ARR, which is a huge jump from their FY19 revenue of $1.7M. I’ve always heard the two things that always sell in India are cricket & education and companies like Unacademy & BYJUs are a living example of that. Also on a personal note, I love how the team has gone about building their brand with sponsoring the show, Kota Factory, (s/o Karthik Reddy, Managing Partner Blume, for the recommendation) and their anthem “Let’s Crack It” - Naezy (song is super cringe fyi). Hats off to Gaurav & the team.
  • http://bit.ly/2HAIOxo (ET): Whatfix, a B2B SaaS company, providing products to enterprise companies to help with employee onboarding & training has raised $32M in a Series C round from the likes of Sequoia & Eight Road Ventures. The company was initially funded by GSF (where I got my start in the Startup Industry too!) back in 2014 and has been able to build a phenomenal product & sales org in India. With the capital, I assume they will follow the Indian SaaS playbook used by many to open up an office in the US and run their sales ops out of there to unlock the next magnitude of growth.

    • Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated

    More tomorrow :) BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/MohapatraHemant/status/1230181288033701889 Unacademy Anthem (if you’re into that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ejQDKE4w8