News and local language content platform Dailyhunt has raised additional $35 million (Rs 267 crore) in its ongoing Series G funding round led by James Murdoch-led Lupa India, barely within two weeks after mopping up about $23.5 million from existing investors.
According to the company’s latest filings sourced by business signals platform Paper.vc, Lupa India Systems Holdings LLC has subscribed to 10 Series G equity shares and 205,523 Series G3 preference e shares of Verse Innovation Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates Dailyhunt, in exchange for the aforesaid investment.
The Bengaluru-headquartered news aggregator had raised about $23.5 million in Series G funding from existing investors, including Bytedance, Falcon Edge, Goldman Sachs and Advent Management, this website reported on April 20. Falcon Edge had led that round by contributing about Rs 71.85 crore while Bytedance, Goldman Sachs Asia and Advent Management Belgium had pumped in Rs 35.92 crore each.
Dailyhunt had raised about $3 million from Cayman Islands-based Stonebridge in August last year, taking its total Series F funding round to $25 million.
Last year, DealStreetAsia had reported that the private equity firm Carlyle had evinced interest to buy an equity stake in the news aggregator. The platform was reportedly also in talks to raise about $150 million from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
Founded in 2007, Dailyhunt’s machine learning and deep learning technology enables smart curation of content and tracks user preferences to deliver real-time, personalised content and notifications. It claims to offer 250,000+ new news and content artifacts every-day in 14 languages licensed from over 1000+ publication partners. The group has 252+ million monthly active users and 51+ million daily active users, according to its LinkedIn profile.
Its other investors include Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network.
Dailyhunt had also acquired LocalPlay, a hyperlocal video content and news content application, in June last year. The acquisition was a part of the startup’s aggressive strategy of attracting new users residing in tier II, III and IV Indian towns and villages.
Meanwhile, Lupa Systems is a private investment vehicle with presence in New York and Mumbai.
The firm made its first investment in India in online learning institution Harappa Education earlier this year. Since its launch, Lupa Systems has invested in Tribeca Enterprises and The Void, among others.
