At least six start-ups joined the unicorn club during the first week of April by reaching a valuation of more than $1 billion. On Thursday, Mohalla Tech— the parent company behind social media platforms such as Moj and ShareChat, and Gupshup-a smart-messaging platform provider — became the latest to earn the title. Other start-ups in the club include investment platform Groww, PharmEasy’s parent firm API Holdings, , social e-commerce firm Meesho and credit card payment platform CRED.
Mohalla Tech, on Thursday, announced raising $502 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tiger Global, valuing the firm at over $2.1 billion. The funding round also saw participation from Snap Inc, Twitter and India Quotient, amongst others. The new round will be utilised for doubling down on tech initiatives, supporting user growth, and improving platform safety features, the company said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Gupshup announced raising $100 million from Tiger Global, ten years after it first raised funds. This investment values Gupshup at $1.4 billion and will be followed by a ‘second close with significant additional funds raised from more investors, to be announced later.’
Gupshup said it will use this investment to rapidly scale product and go-to-market initiatives worldwide in order to accelerate the transformation of business-to-consumer interactions with conversational experiences delivered over messaging channels.
Gupshup company said it has grown rapidly over the last few years, exiting 2020 with an annual revenue run rate of approximately $150 million. Beerud Sheth, Gupshup Co-founder and CEO said, “Gupshup’s mission is to build the tools that help businesses better engage customers through mobile messaging and conversational experiences.”
ShareChat, CEO and Co-founder, Ankush Sachdeva said that with the infusion of capital, the company will continue to aggressively grow its user base, build a world-class organisation in India and the US and further strengthen its creator community, AI-powered recommendation engine and platform health.
ShareChat, the social networking platform that allows users to access and post content in their native language, has 160 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, Moj — the short video app that was launched soon after the government banned 59 Chinese applications, including TikTok — has over 120 million monthly active users, as per data shared by the c company.
