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<ul><li>Edtech company Byju's is now <keyword id="3658" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="India">India</keyword>'s most valuable unicorn startup with a valuation of $16.5 billion, surpassing fintech company <keyword id="6357120" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="paytm">Paytm</keyword>'s $16 billion valuation.</li><li>Byju's is the 11th most valuable startup in the world.</li><li>The total number of unicorns worldwide is 708 with a valuation of $ 2319 billion. Chinese company Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is the most valuable startup in the world with a valuation of $140 billion.</li></ul>Edtech company Byju's is now India's most valuable unicorn startup with a valuation of $16.5 billion, surpassing fintech company Paytm's $16 billion valuation. As per CB Insights data, as of June 2021, Byju's is the 11th most valuable startup in the world. The total number of unicorns worldwide is 708 with a valuation of $ 2319 billion. Chinese company Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is the most valuable startup in the world with a valuation of $140 billion. Byju's investors include Tencent Holdings, Lightspeed India Partners and Sequoia Capital India. It has recently raised $350 million from UBS, private equity giant Blackstone, Abu Dhabi state fund ADQ, Phoenix Rising and video conference firm Zoom's founder Eric Yuan. One97 Communications, the parent company of Byju's, has a valuation of $16 billion with investors like Intel Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Alibaba Group. A unicorn company, or unicorn startup, is a private company with a valuation over $1 billion. As of June 2021, there are more than 700 unicorns around the world. Popular former unicorns include Airbnb, Facebook and <keyword id="6355629" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="google">Google</keyword>. The variants include a decacorn, valued at over $10 billion, and a hectocorn, valued at over $100 billion, CB Insights said. Oyo Rooms is valued at $9 billion with investors like SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed India Partners. The National Stock Exchange is valued at $6.5 billion with investors including TA Associates, SoftBank Group and GS Growth. Ola Cabs is valued at $6.3 billion and has investors like Accel Partners, SoftBank Group and Sequoia Capital. Zomato is valued at $5.4 billion with investors including Sequoia Capital and VY Capital. Another food delivery chain, Swiggy, is vaued at $5 billion and its investors include Accel India, SAIF Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. Internet software company Dream11 is valued at $5 billion with investors including Kaalari Capital, Tencent Holdings and Steadview Capital. Logistics company Udaan is valued at $ 3.1 billion and has investors including DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and <keyword id="10387" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword> ScaleUp. Fintech company Razorpay is valued at $3 billion with investors like Y Combinator, Tiger Global Management and Matrix Partners India. Fintech company Pine Labs is also valued at $3 billion with investors namely MasterCard, Temasek and PayPal Ventures. Logistics company Delivery is another firm that is valued at $3 billion with investors including Times Internet, Nexus Venture Partners and SoftBank Group. Policybazaar is valued at $2.4 billion, Renew Power at $2.28 billion, fintech company CRED at $2.2 billion, consumer company FirstCry at $2.1 billion, software company Meesho at $2.1 billion, while <keyword id="3358959" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="ShareChat">Sharechat</keyword> is also valued at $2.1 billion. Edtech copany Unacademy is valued at $2 billion, ecommerce company Urban Company is valued at $2.1 billion, BillDesk at $1.9 billion and DigitInsurance at the same number. Lenskart is valued at $1.5 billion, Five Star Business Finance at $1.4 billion, Rivigo at $1.07 billion, Snapdeal at $1 billion as also Inmobi, Ola Electric, Cars 24, Daily Hunt, Infra Market and Groww. (Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in) --IANS san/arm

Byju's most valuable startup in India and 11th in the world with a valuation of $16.5 billion

Home-grown regional language social media platform <keyword id="3358959" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="ShareChat">ShareChat</keyword> on Wednesday announced that it had to let go of 101 of its employees, or about a fourth of the company's total workforce, due to the COVID-19-induced uncertainties in the advertising market. The Bengaluru-based company's cost-saving measures were announced in an email to employees by Ankush Sachdeva, Cofounder and CEO of the five-year-old firm which competes against the likes of Facebook and TikTok. "... today with the market uncertainties due to COVID-19, we are compelled to take a relook at our business. We have had to make a few decisions that would allow us to become leaner and position the company better for the future," Sachdeva said in the email. A ShareChat spokesperson later confirmed the decision to lay off 101 employees. "The global pandemic along with various local market uncertainties have had an impact on our business plans. This has pushed us towards certain tough decisions including a revised leaner structure while we continue to grow," the spokesperson said in a statement. "We've had to let go of 101 of our employees who've been part of our start-up journey. This was not an easy decision to make." ShareChat said it will provide a comprehensive severance package and extend assistance to the impacted associates with their outplacement support. The Twitter-backed firm started monetisation through advertisements only last year. But the COVID-19 brought uncertainties to the ad market. "We have to focus on our core product and feed recommendation driven growth levers while scaling back on the others. We need to go back to our fundamentals in terms of only picking bets that move the needle for growth," Sachdeva said. "We believe the Ad Market would remain unpredictable this year. We are streamlining our revenue teams to these new expectations yet will keep working towards building the necessary technology infrastructure," he said. In another big change, which is in line with Twitter's decision to allow some employees to work from home forever, ShareChat said that it would be partially remote at all times in the future. "We have adapted well to the remote working environment. Hence, we have relooked at the requirement of physical office spaces. We would be partially remote at all times in the future," Sachdeva said in the email. ShareChat, which has over 60 million monthly active users, raised $100 million in a new round of funding in last August. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ms-dhoni-backed-khatabook-adds-to-its-line-up-of-star-investors-sequoia-and-tencent-get-more-stake-in-indias-largest-small-business-app/articleshow/75842295.cms">MS Dhoni-backed Khatabook adds to its line-up of star investors ⁠— Sequoia and Tencent get more stake in India's largest small business app</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/faisal-siddiquis-tiktok-acid-attack-video-is-adding-to-the-growing-list-of-problems-for-the-platform-in-india/articleshow/75800571.cms">Faizal Siddiqui’s TikTok acid attack video is adding to the growing list of problems for the platform in India</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/tiktok-gogole-play-ratings-fall-to-1-3-stars-after-4-million-comments/articleshow/75842653.cms">Tiktok got 4 million comments on Google Play Store dragging down its rating to 1.3⁠ — but it may not disappear yet</a>

ShareChat sacks 101 employees due to  'market uncertainties' amid COVID-19

<ul><li>ShareChat has raised a total of $224 million, with the latest Series D funding of $100 million from Twitter</li><li>The platform is now looking at starting its monetization journey and is reaching out to brands that could advertise on its platform</li><li>The platform’s aim is to get every Indian on to the internet, to a social network of its choice where they can converse in a language they are comfortable in</li></ul>It’s been four years since ShareChat, India’s homegrown regional social networking platform came into being. The platform came into the limelight after it raised $100 million funding in Series-D from Twitter, bringing the total raised in funding to $224 million. The company that was founded in 2015 by CEO Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, currently has a strong user base of 60 million. It hasn’t been making any money till now, because according to Sunil Kamat, Chief Business Officer, ShareChat, the platform was in the growth-hack mode. As the platform is now starting its monetization journey, it is not only reaching out to brands to partner with them but also planning a major hiring spree. It plans to expand its team from its current strength of 250 to 400 within the next three to four months. While they haven’t put a target figure to where they want to be in the next few years, Kamath shares that for them, the priority is to get more and more people onto the internet and present them with a platform where they are comfortable conversing and sharing their opinions. Edited excerpts: Q) It’s been four years since ShareChat started its journey. How has it been so far? We came into being four years ago, before the data revolution happened. Our journey has been pretty impactful till now. Our co-founders saw a gap in the social media landscape early on and saw a large opportunity for a regional social platform, and that’s where it all began. It's good to be early in the space and we are glad to be at the forefront of change because a lot of people are now trying to mimic our platform. It's a good feeling. Q) How big is the team right now, and how do you plan to scale it up? We will be hiring a lot of talent for the company across various units. Our strength is currently at 250, which we plan to scale up to 400 in the next four months. Q) You say you aren’t chasing targets right now. What are you in it for then? One thing that India has been missing is the ability to get everybody on board. For us, it’s about getting every Indian user to be on a social network of his choice and to make him comfortable with his language. What motivates us is the thought of bringing every Indian user to the Internet and thereby help improve his quality of life over a period of time. Q) What has your revenue model been so far? Our revenue model will be ad-based. Till now, we have been completely focused on growth. However, we are not in this for the short-tem. Our aim is to become one of the largest social networks in India, which means we will be heavily acquisition-based. Now that we have acquired users, it's good to open up to partners, to reach the audience. It's good for our audience too, as they have brands coming on board that they can interact with brands. We will end up building our own journey because it's always been that way for us. We never had parallel system to look up to. But people tend to replicate ShareChat’s journey which is overwhelming. Q) While you’ve been in existence for four years, you haven’t spoken about the platform too much. How have you been reaching out to your audience? Our audience belongs to the Tier II, III and IV markets, so we come up with a lot of regional communication. It's about who you want to communicate to. If I wanted to attract the investor community, I would talk to the mainline media. We are doing a lot of work in the regional side; we work with a network where we get access to regional print, television. However, now that we are starting to monetize the platform, you will see a lot more of us. We were in this growth hack mode all these years and didn’t have too much to talk about. We were just putting our heads together, getting the product fitment right, the initial engagement metrics in place and then scaling up with the acquisition of consumers and audience retention. That journey continues. Now we are aiming at accelerating the reach for the platform, getting people to know about ShareChat and build monetization opportunities for the platform, to see how we can get brands to engage with audiences because it’s a fairly new audience for them as well. Q) You have seen good growth in terms of your consumer base. What have you done right? As a platform, we are very data and insights driven. Since we are a User Generated Content platform, our consumers create content for other users to consume. So, a lot of our learning comes from our users. We see people behaving in a certain manner and modify our platform according to the needs of our consumers. We have a comment section on the platform where we observed people started asking for each other’s numbers and other details. Seeing this, we enabled a chat feature. We also observe the kind of content people are consuming on the platform. Sometimes, a nicely edited content might necessarily not do as well as another piece of normal content that people connect better with. So, these are the insights which we pick up. We unlearn and learn again and that's what keeps us going. Q) Going ahead, what will be your marketing strategy? A lot of our marketing will be focused on driving engagement for consumer on content. We will focus on encouraging consumers to use our camera feature. On the other side, we want to build monetization through brands and marketing channels. Q) Have you seen a lot of interest from marketers? We are still at a very early stage because we are just starting that journey now. I have met top FMCG brands and had amazing conversations. They are the ones who are giving us ideas about how they can use the platform. This is probably the first time that brands will have the ability to put up ads in 14-15 languages on a single platform. It's a challenge and an opportunity at the same time because I don't think digital agencies are equipped to run campaigns in more than a few languages. Q) Are you planning to expand to more languages? As a country, we have 22 official languages. We would love to evaluate a language on the basis of what it brings to the table, whether there’s a significant upside of that language. We have also done dialects like Rajasthani, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri because we are a very visual platform in terms of content. We recently brought in Urdu too. We are currently building a team of people who would be well-versed in these languages too, to be able to help consumers. We have teams for various languages and each of them has learning of their own language. What works in 'A' might not work in 'B' but could work in 'C'. So, they work independently, but there is a lot of common understanding of engaging content. Q) With this new round of funding coming in, what will your key focus areas be? The new round of funding hasn’t changed things much at our end. It's more of a financial transaction at this stage but with every round you raise, you become more responsible, towards your shareholders, and investors. So, we really have to make sure that we have very good stories.

ShareChat is growing its team from 250 to 400 as it moves to monetize its 60 million user base

<ul><li>Twitter co-founder, <keyword id="194394" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Biz-Stone">Biz Stone</keyword>, announced that they will be investing in a Kerala based startup — <keyword id="6883189" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sieve">Sieve</keyword>. </li><li>Sieve is a platform for tech freelancers and agencies to provide services over the cloud. </li><li>This is Twitter’s second investment in an Indian tech startup after funding <keyword id="3358959" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="ShareChat">ShareChat</keyword>, a local language social media app, in August. </li></ul>Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, just announced that he will be investing in a startup mentored by the Kerala Startup Mission —, Sieve founded by Sanja Nediyara. This will be <keyword id="749437" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Twitter-India">Twitter India</keyword>’s second investment in an Indian technology start up within a span of two months. In August, Twitter put funding up for ShareChat, an Indian social media app for local languages. "I have used the product of Sieve as a freelancer. As an Angel, I consider the person first, and the product second. I find Sanjay as a dedicated, empathetic and extremely hardworking individual," stated Stone during a video conference at Huddle Kerala 2019. In both instances, Twitter has not disclosed the amount it has invested. What is Sieve? Sieve is a platform for tech freelancers and agencies. It provides services like infrastructure to websites, creating digital signatures or even manages invoices. As of now, Sieve only serves the US market but has plans to expand into Europe. The aim is to allow entrepreneurs to build Internet companies in the cloud. Using Sieve, freelancers from all over the world can form companies, and work from anywhere in the world. Not just Twitter Sieve’s other investor is Friends of Oorjja, an ecosystem to help individuals from the differently-abled community. Nediyara received help from mentors in the banking industry and Otis Elevators. Google also showed an interest in Nediyara’s startup when they invited him to their annual developers conference, Google I/O. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/facebook-india-head-explains-3-ways-that-indian-tech-startups-need-to-transform/articleshow/71327000.cms">Facebook India Head explains 3 ways that Indian tech startups need to transform</a>

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Byju's most valuable startup in India and 11th in the world with a valuation of $16.5 billion

IANS

ShareChat sacks 101 employees due to 'market uncertainties' amid COVID-19

Prabhjote Gill

ShareChat is growing its team from 250 to 400 as it moves to monetize its 60 million user base

Samarpita Banerjee

Twitter invests in its second Indian start up within a span of two months

Prabhjote Gill

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