Vedantu to Nykaa; 5 Startups That Raised Amid COVID-19
The new normal in today’s world is with the least physical contact, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything is unpredictable similarly, seeing the change in consumer behavior is natural. Fighting with odds, many Indian startups continued to raise funds in tough times.
That's true, the pandemic has unquestionably changed the funding scene in India, but truly has created many new possibilities for those startups that can adapt to the current environment. There are some startups that have already shown a trend- defying growth, which created a benchmark and ray of hope to many startups.
In current time two situations were going on in the startup ecosystem, one where a handful of startup able to raise funds, and the other hands a few startups is still struggling. Hence, we are going to list a few startups which successfully raised millions of funds and blooming in their sector.
Vedantu
The ed-tech sector has come into the spotlight since the lockdown started. Vedantu is one of the online class venture, founded in 2014 by Pulkit Jain, Anand Prakash, and Vamsi Krishna. They provide online tutoring classes from class 1st to 12th and even for medical and engineering exams.
As per this ed-tech startup has raised $100 million and valuing the company at 600 million. The startup owner claimed they have recorded growth of 220% in the period of lockdown, with 2 million students subscribed.
InCred
Mumbai based NBFC InCred, founded in 2016 by Bhupinder Singh, which started with operations with consumer lending then expanded into small business lending in 2017. As per the company stated, they have a loan book over Rs 2,000 crore.
As per the latest reports of April 2019, the digital lending platform has successfully raised Rs 600 crore in led by the Dutch development finance institution FMO.
Dunzo
Dunzo is a hyperlocal delivery app founded in 2015 by Kabeer Biswas currently, Dunzo has a firm place in the hyperlocal delivery space their services available in eight cities Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurugram, Pune, and Jaipur. Initially, they started with delivering individual sources, but with time they expanded in categories like groceries, fruits, and vegetables, fish and meat, etc.
In the current scenario, Dunzo has raised $28 million, and their funding round led by Google and Lightstone Fund. If we speak about an existing investor in the company is Google, and it was their first investment in an Indian start-up in 2017.
Nykaa
Mumbai - based e-commerce platform of fashion and beauty, founded by Falguni Nayar in 2012. They have played an instrumental purpose in shaping the beauty and lifestyle industry through its curated product in The Indian market in a great price range.
As per the latest reports in may Nykaa raised Rs 66.64 crore from their primary investor Steadview Capital. Later on, this round of investment company became valued at $1.2 billion, therefore, entering the startup unicorn club.
Unacademy
Another Ed-tech platform Unacademy founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini in the year of 2015. The platform was built for educators and new-age learners by focusing on producing educational videos and providing interactive classes to students. During the outbreak of pandemic and complete lockdown, they bulged with 20,000 Free Live Classes on their platform.
Recently, Unacdemy entered the Unicorn club by raising $150 million by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank valuing it at $1.45 billion, in just six months. Which got to them the second Ed-tech startup in the country after Byju's.
In the gloomy sky, these startups' growth acted as the silver lining as in these difficult times, not only these, but many more startups from Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore, and other cities were able to raise funds through hard work. We believe after reading the article you find motivation and see the silver lining in these puzzling times.