<ul><li>The Good Glamm Group is a combination of three brands <keyword id="3030142" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="myglamm" source="Orion">MyGlamm</keyword>, <keyword id="3128172" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="popxo" source="Orion">POPxo</keyword> and <keyword id="2796305" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="babychakra" source="Orion">BabyChakra</keyword>.</li><li>The Series D round was led by investors Prosus Ventures (Naspers), Warburg Pincus.</li><li>The Good Glamm Group has acquired four startups to date and up to four more will be announced by December 2021.</li></ul>The Good Glamm Group — the parent company of direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty brand MyGlamm — has entered the unicorn club, after raising $150 million funding in its Series D round. A unicorn, in startup parlance, is a company valued at or over a billion dollars. About $140 million was raised as primary capital. The remaining $10 million was raised as secondary capital leading to the partial exit of Chiratae Ventures, MyGlamm’s founder Darpan Sanghvi told Business Insider. Several undisclosed high networth individuals (HNI) have also exited the company. The Series D round was led by investors Prosus Ventures (Naspers), Warburg Pincus along with the participation from Alteria Capital. Existing investors such as L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Amazon, Ascent Capital and the Mankekar Family Office also participated in the round. The Good Glamm Group is a culmination of three brands MyGlamm, digital media/e-commerce platform POPxo and online parenting startup BabyChakra. The three companies and their founders — Darpan Sanghvi (MyGlamm), Priyanka Gill (POPxo) and Naiyya Saggi (BabyChakra) — have created this entity to set up a house of brands and further enhance each other’s presence in the beauty and personal care space. The group entity has also acquired well-known<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/with-scoopwhoop-and-popxo-on-its-side-heres-what-myglamm-intends-to-do/articleshow/87177789.cms"> digital media brand ScoopWhoop and The Moms Co</a>, which offers mom and baby care products. Each of the acquired companies continue to operate independently. The Good Glamm Group has acquired four startups to date and up to<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/myglamm-has-set-aside-100-million-to-acquire-6-beauty-and-personal-care-brands-under-new-entity/articleshow/86559530.cms"> four more will be announced by December 2021</a>. The company has spent about ₹2,000 crore in these acquisitions. “We are done with most of our acquisitions, there may be one or two more white spaces, which may opportunistically come along our way for the next 6-12 months,” Sanghvi added. <table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;" class="redcator-table-advance"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Company </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Metrics/Users </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">MyGlamm </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Adding 350 new customers on a monthly basis; 30,000 retail touch points </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">MomsCo </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">1,500 retail touch points </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">BabyChakra </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">20 million months, 10,000 doctors </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">PopXo </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">88 million users </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">ScoopWhoop </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">100 million users </td></tr></tbody><tbody></tbody><tbody></tbody></table>Source: Good Glamm Group The Good Glamm Group will be utilising its latest funding to invest in product development, support data science and technology research, increase offline expansion, fund working capital requirements. A part of the fund would also be used to expand the content creation capabilities and digital reach of POPxo, Plixxo, BabyChakra and <keyword id="2088138" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="scoopwhoop" source="Orion">ScoopWhoop</keyword>. The Group will also continue to make investments in more <keyword id="12188627" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="beauty-and-personal-care-brands" source="Orion">beauty and personal care brands</keyword>. “This fund that we have raised is primarily to solidify all the value engines of the group,” Sanghvi said, adding that this will help the core business of the group to grow. He further elaborated that the Good Glamm Group would be looking to further expand its distributions through online as well as offline channels. The company is also setting up a new research and development (R&amp;D) lab in Mumbai. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/rbi-removes-ban-on-diners-club-international-while-restriction-on-mastercard-american-express-continues/articleshow/87607080.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">RBI removes ban on Diners Club International while restriction on Mastercard, American Express continues</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/profit-margin-of-britannia-declines-in-q2-of-fy-2022/articleshow/87600806.cms">Britannia is unable to improve its profit despite a price increase — what’s next</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/news/after-tata-motors-tvs-motor-may-raise-money-to-run-ev-business/articleshow/87602948.cms">After Tata Motors, TVS Motor may raise money to run EV business</a>

ScoopWhoop and MyGlamm’s parent, which is backed by Amazon, is now valued over a billion dollars

<ul><li><keyword id="3480589" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Meesho">Meesho</keyword> is a marketplace for resellers, and connects them with customers via social media channels like WhatsApp and <keyword id="6354576" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="facebook">Facebook</keyword>.</li><li>While <keyword id="3749718" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="softbank-vision-fund">SoftBank Vision Fund</keyword> 2 led the round, it also saw participation from Meesho’s existing investors Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment.</li><li>The social commerce platform will be hiring across verticals — technology, product, and business, among others.</li></ul>Social commerce platform Meesho, which was the first Indian startup in which Facebook picked up an equity stake, has raised $300 million from <keyword id="163404" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Softbank">SoftBank</keyword> Vision Fund 2. With the funding, Meesho is the latest unicorn in India with a valuation of $2.1 billion. The round also saw participation from Meesho’s existing investors Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment. Meesho is a marketplace for resellers and connects them with customers via social media channels like WhatsApp and Facebook. In the last one year, Meesho claims to have helped 13 million entrepreneurs through its platform. “We are focused on expanding our vision — from helping aspiring women entrepreneurs to creating Meesho as a single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses in India to succeed online. In the last one year, we have seen tremendous growth across small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to move their businesses online. And with our new vision we will enable 100 million small businesses to start, succeed and lead their operations online with Meesho as their partner in their journey,” said Vidit Aatrey, founder and chief executive officer of Meesho in a statement. With the latest funds, the social commerce platform will be hiring across verticals — technology, product, and business, among others. “By using the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Meesho has created a platform for many small business owners to sell to the next cohort of internet users,” said Munish Varma, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers in a statement. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/heres-a-look-at-what-is-allowed-and-what-is-not-allowed-during-the-maharashtra-lockdown-again/articleshow/81907207.cms">Here’s a look at what is allowed and what is not during the weekend lockdown and night curfew in Maharashtra</a>

Facebook-backed Meesho raises $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 – valuation jumps to over $2 billion

<ul><li><keyword id="3480589" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="meesho" source="Orion">Meesho</keyword> has raised $570 million, doubling its valuation to $4.9 billion from $2.1 billion reported in April. </li><li>It aims to reach 100 million monthly transacting users by December 2022, growing over seven-times from the current 15 million.</li><li>Meesho will also invest a part of this capital in its grocery delivery marketplace Farmiso, which was launched earlier this year.</li></ul>Social commerce platform Meesho has raised $570 million in a round led by Fidelity Management and Facebook cofounder-owned B Capital. The company has doubled its valuation to $4.9 billion from $2.1 billion<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/facebook-backed-meesho-raises-300-million-from-softbank-vision-fund-2-valuation-jumps-to-over-2-billion/articleshow/81907721.cms"> reported in April</a> this year. The company plans to use this capital to double down on its research and development (R&amp;D) teams and acquire more users. It aims to reach 100 million monthly transacting users by December 2022, growing over seven-times from the current 15 million. For this, it will deploy the capital to grow its technology and product team and increase its selection to include over 50 million products. Meesho among the biggest bets of this year The year 2021 has been a record-breaking year for Indian startups so far. The new age companies are now hitting the public market, cracking the biggest funding deals and more companies being valued at over a billion dollars. According to business intelligence firm Tracxn, Indian startups have raised $23 billion in 2021 till September 1. This is significantly higher than the $13 million raised by the industry all through 2020. Here are some of the biggest funding rounds of 2021 so far: <table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;" class="redcator-table-advance"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Startup </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Funding </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Valuation </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Investors </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Swiggy </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$800 million </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$5 billion </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Falcon Edge Capital, Goldman Sachs, Think Capital and others </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Eruditus </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$650 million </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$3.2 billion </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Accel, SoftBank, Leeds Illuminate, Prosus and others </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">ShareChat </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$647 million </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$2.88 billion </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Tiger Global Management, Mirae-Naver Asia Growth fund </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Meesho </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$570 million </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$4.9 billion </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Fidelity Management, B Capital </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Ola </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$500 million </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$6 billion+ </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Temasek, Warburg Pincus, others </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Byju’s </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$490 millon </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$16.87 billion </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">UBS, Blackstone, ADQ, Asmaan Ventures </td></tr></tbody><tbody></tbody><tbody></tbody><tbody></tbody><tbody></tbody><tbody></tbody></table> Walmart-owned ecommerce biggie Flipkart too raised <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/flipkart-raises-3-6-billion-at-a-valuation-of-over-37-billion/articleshow/84338594.cms">$3.6 billion this year</a>, at a valuation of $37 billion, but the company is way past the startup tag to be a part of this list. Meesho plans to expand its grocery vertical Meesho will also invest a part of this capital in its grocery delivery marketplace Farmiso, which was launched earlier this year. The company also plans to hire aggressively for this specific vertical. The six-year-old startup runs a three-sided marketplace with suppliers, resellers and customers at the crux of it. Resellers buy unbranded fashion products from suppliers and later, sell it to the customers via social media platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. It also has a direct sales channel. The latest round witnessed participation from new investors such as Footpath Ventures, Trifecta Capital and Good Capital. Even existing investors Prosus Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Facebook infused an undisclosed amount in the social commerce startup. DealShare — next in line to enter the unicorn club? Meesho was founded by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in 2015 and is currently the biggest social commerce platform in the country. It competes with Tiger Global-backed DealShare, Accel-backed Glowroad and Elevation Capital-backed CityMall. DealShare is expected to be the next social commerce startup to enter the unicorn club, a startup with a valuation of over a billion dollars. According to an Entrackr <a href="https://entrackr.com/2021/08/exclusive-dealshare-in-talks-to-raise-a-new-round-at-over-1-bn-valuation/">report</a>, the company is in talks with new and existing investors to raise a fresh round at over $1 billion valuation. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/the-amazon-bribery-case-in-india-is-getting-murkier-and-the-lack-of-transparency-is-not-helping/articleshow/86553927.cms">The murky case of bribery, allegedly on behalf of Amazon, has many unanswered questions </a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/one-in-every-ten-feature-phone-user-in-india-uses-lava-and-it-is-now-going-to-the-public-to-raise-money/articleshow/86635642.cms">One in every ten feature phone user in India uses Lava, and it is now going to the public to raise money</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/indian-overseas-bank-shares-jump-as-rbi-allows-it-to-give-loans-without-restrictions/articleshow/86635420.cms">Indian Overseas Bank lost six years and half its business to clean up its bad loans but the market is cheering</a>

Meesho raises more than half a billion dollars in the fourth biggest funding round this year

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Stack Overflow, an online community for software coders, has seen traffic fall since GPT-4 came out.</li><li>Some AI models that compete against Stack Overflow were partly trained on the company's data. </li></ul><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-gpt4-worse-on-some-tasks-chatgpt-2023-7">OpenAI</a> released the world's most-powerful AI model in March. A few weeks later, Stack Overflow CEO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-ceo-prashanth-chandrasekar-2019-10">Prashanth Chandrasekar</a> spotted a worrying trend. Online traffic to the Q&amp;A website for software coders had <a href="https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow" target="_blank" rel="noopener">begun to slip</a>. In April, traffic was down about 13% from 2022, the company's data showed. For 15 years, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-developer-survey-14-most-loved-programming-languages-2020-5">Stack Overflow</a> has been the online community where software engineers go to ask questions and get tips from fellow coders. Now, though, they can just ask OpenAI's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-gpt4-ai-model-got-lazier-dumber-chatgpt-2023-7">GPT-4</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-chat-gpt-2023-1">ChatGPT</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-openai-codex-developer-jobs-2023-2">Codex</a>, or <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/codex-github-copilot-chatgpt-openai-productivity-2023-3">GitHub Copilot</a> for help. So there's less need to visit Stack Overflow. What's even more galling is that many of these new models were partly trained on Stack Overflow's information, which is freely available online and has been packaged up into a <a href="https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/stackoverflow/stackoverflow">handy AI training dataset</a>. "Some of them are very explicit about calling out Stack Overflow as a primary source," Chandrasekar told Insider in a recent interview. Welcome to the future of the internet in an AI world. Online communities, like Stack Overflow and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-wikipedia">Wikipedia</a>, thrived as hubs for experts and curious browsers to come together and share information freely. Now, these digital meeting places are being pillaged by big tech companies prowling for human data to train their large language models.The new products emerging from this <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/generative-ai-threat-to-saas-companies-software-as-a-service-2023-5">generative AI</a> boom are putting the future of these online forums in doubt. The chatbots answer questions clearly, automatically, and often pleasantly — so humans don't need to deal with other humans to get information. "<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1683891096563208192?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Death by LLM</a>," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk">Elon Musk</a> called it recently. How Stack Overflow responds, and tries to survive, has broad ramifications for thousands of other businesses that make money by posting and hosting information online for free. It also reveals a looming problem at the heart of the AI revolution: With less incentive for people to go online and answer questions, the rich, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07367" target="_blank" rel="noopener">human data that AI needs for training will whither</a> and the quality of these models could degrade.<h2>'This phenomenal community resource'</h2><div type="image" title="Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar is shown speaking on stage" height="3878" width="5170" msid="102398468" hostid="261" sizebytes="415718"></div>Years ago, when Chandrasekar was a young developer, he would write and debug code late at night. Early on, there was no one to lean on when he hit a roadblock, an experience that left "a lot scars," he recalled. "This is the reason why Stack Overflow in many ways became so popular," Chandrasekar explained. "You don't have to spend an inordinate amount of hours into the night trying to figure things out. You have this phenomenal community resource, and that can only be appreciated by people who have experienced that."With more than 200 million monthly visits from desktop computers alone, the service thrived. The startup <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2020/07/28/stack-overflow-qa-website-raises-85-million-series-e/?sh=30b6717a5752">raised over $130 million</a> from marquee Silicon Valley investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. In 2021, Prosus, a major backer of Chinese tech giant Tencent, <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/06/02/prosus-acquires-stack-overflow/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bought Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion</a>. <h2>The rise of GPT models</h2><div type="image" title="Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and an illustration of GPT-4." height="1080" width="1440" msid="102398470" hostid="261" sizebytes="62206"></div>Right around that time, a new type of AI model was gaining traction. It combining two existing ideas in the AI field: transformers and unsupervised pre-training. The result was a generative pre-trained transformer, or GPT. OpenAI released GPT-3 in 2020 and made it available to everyone in November 2021.A year later, it also launched ChatGPT, a stunningly popular chatbot built on the underlying GPT-3 model. GPT-4, considered the most capable AI model to date, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gpt-4-openai-model-api-details-2023-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">came out in March.</a> These models are surprisingly helpful when answering software coding questions.There are also specific AI-powered coding services now, including OpenAI's Codex and GitHub Copilot. The latest version of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/codex-github-copilot-chatgpt-openai-productivity-2023-3">GitHub Copilot</a>, powered by GPT-4, was released in March. This update added powerful chat features, so coders can ask the the model to explain software code, and show it errors and get suggested fixes. This new technology is already helping engineers churn out more software faster. So it's not surprising that coders are relying less on Stack Overflow."I used to go to stackoverflow everyday before chatGPT was a thing," developer Nasim Uddin <a href="https://twitter.com/nasimuddin01/status/1684287726177378306?s=46&amp;t=qXeQ5wkxERk2ASthsfwBVQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote on Twitter recently</a>. "But nowadays I never have to go to stackoverflow." <h2>Stack Overflow wants to be paid for its training data </h2>Stack Overflow is responding in two main ways. One is to start charging the tech companies that have been using its data for free to train competing AI services. "We are entering this new era," Chandrasekar said. "People who are leveraging our data for LLM purposes, we took a position several months ago that they should engage with us.""We should be able to be paid for that data," he added. "The large companies have proactively reached out to us, and we're effectively engaged in those conversations at the moment."Chandrasekar declined to name any of these companies. However, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/github-ceo-nat-friedman-most-valuable-social-network-2020-1">Nat Friedman</a>, the CEO of Github through 2021, expects tech companies to pay for training data in the future. "When StackOverflow is fully dead (due to long congenital illness, self-inflicted wounds, and the finishing blow from AI), where will AI labs get their training data?" he <a href="https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1684303687894839296?s=20">wrote on Twitter recently</a>. "They can just buy it!"<h2>Billions, not millions</h2><div type="image" title="GitHub CEO Nat Friedman" height="750" width="1000" msid="102398471" hostid="261" sizebytes="40836"></div>Friedman even did some back-of-the-envelope math on potential deals like this: Assuming 10,000 "quality" answers per week, and $250 per answer, that works out to $130 million a year. "Even at multiples of this estimate, quite affordable for large AI labs and big tech companies who are already spending much more than this on data," Friedman added. This has huge implications for a host of other online businesses that have seen their information scraped and used for AI model training. Publishers, for instance, want to be paid billions of dollars for their online content, <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/07/23/2023/publishers-want-billions-not-millions-from-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to</a> Semafor. (Axel Springer, the owner of Insider, is part of a coalition that's forming to push for payments and legislative action, Semafor also reported). If Github, owned by Microsoft, is prepared to pay for training data, then this could become standard industry practice, meaning Google, OpenAI, Meta, Amazon and other industry giants hand over large payments to providers of human content. Indeed, OpenAI has already <a href="https://apnews.com/article/openai-chatgpt-associated-press-ap-f86f84c5bcc2f3b98074b38521f5f75a">signed a content licensing agreement</a> with The Associated Press.<h2>If you can't beat them, join them</h2><div type="image" title="Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar is shown on stage introducing a new product called Overflow AI" height="1287" width="1716" msid="102398472" hostid="261" sizebytes="104444"></div>Stack Overflow's second strategy is to develop its own AI models, trained not only on its public data but masses of proprietary information, too. The company's data is mostly arranged in a Q&amp;A format, from coders asking questions online and getting different answers that are then voted on by other members of the community. It claims to have 58 million questions and answers. This is well-suited to training AI models and chatbots, according to Chandrasekar. The questions are like prompts, which the models need to make associative connections. The answers provide statistical next-word connections and vector-based ones that let them figure out synonyms and other more magical-seeming capabilities. Upvotes and downvotes tell the models to give certain sets of words higher statistical priority, or to de-prioritize other text. The first fruits of this labor appeared on July 27, when Stack Overflow announced <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/07/27/announcing-overflowai/">OverflowAI</a>, which uses generative AI to automatically answer people's coding questions. The new system, which is in an early test version, taps into the company's existing 58 million Q&amp;A data corpus to create an instant summarized answer. Chandrasekar says the new technology will likely be nicer when answering questions. In the past, when less-experienced users asked basic questions that had already been solved by the Stack Overflow community, some experts could be rude when answering and that made people nervous about engaging on the platform. Now, Chandrasekar hopes more people will come to Stack Overflow to ask questions without fear. <h2>Avoiding Model Collapse</h2>A bigger challenge is where Stack Overflow will get answers to future coding questions. It's new AI service is designed to answer questions automatically, so why would human experts keep coming back to this online community to provide their own input and ideas?This issue goes beyond the survival of Stack Overflow. All AI models need a steady flow of quality human data to train on. Without that, they will be left to rely on machine-generated content, and researchers have already found that this leads to worse performance. There's an ominous name for this now: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-cant-identify-ai-generated-text-bad-for-internet-models-2023-7">Model Collapse</a>. "That's a very real thing, which is why you absolutely need really solid high quality sources of truth like Stack Overflow forever," Chandrasekar said. "If you don't have that, then you're gonna run into that situation."<h2>Incentive mechanics</h2>So how will Stack Overflow keep human software experts coming back to its online community?Chandrasekar said Stack Overflow is not going to pay experts for their contributions. He argues this misunderstands why developers and other tech experts share their knowledge online for free. It's about showcasing their expertise, getting validation from peers, and improving software for everyone, the CEO explained. So, Stack Overflow is planning to take some of the money it gets from tech companies paying for its training data, and reinvest that in new "mechanisms" to incentivize human coding experts to continue answering questions. Those are a work in progress, but the CEO said there are many levers to pull. Firstly, automated answers from the new OverflowAI system include citations and references back to the most accurate and useful human answers.Stack Overflow is also working on new ways to measure the impact of a human's answer on the platform. As more AI-generated answers show up, experts will get new forms credit for their contributions, and that should keep them coming back to the site."We're working on the incentive mechanics of how to make sure those folks get credit, even when a generative AI answer is delivered to, let's say, a novice programmer who was able to solve their immediate problem," the CEO explained. "We are thinking through the details of that incentive system at the moment as we test this with our users over the next couple of months."Time is of the essence. As you read this, GPT-4 and its powerful AI brethren are busying answering thousands of coding questions -- far away from Stack Overflow.

Death by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI world

<ul><li><keyword id="12188628" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="good-glamm-group" source="Orion">Good Glamm Group</keyword> has decided to house its <keyword id="2540701" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="influencer-marketing" source="Orion">influencer marketing</keyword> platforms under the <keyword id="12879521" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="good-creator-co" source="Orion">Good Creator Co</keyword> banner.</li><li>The new entity includes Popxo’s <keyword id="4726279" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="plixxo" source="Orion">Plixxo</keyword>, <keyword id="2064012" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="missmalini" source="Orion">MissMalini</keyword>, Vidooly and Winkl, which have a revenue run rate of ₹75 crore.</li><li>The Good Glamm Group is a culmination of <keyword id="3030142" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="myglamm" source="Orion">MyGlamm</keyword>, POPxo and BabyChakra.</li></ul>The Good Glamm Group — the parent company of direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty brand MyGlamm, <keyword id="2088138" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="scoopwhoop" source="Orion">ScoopWhoop</keyword> and Popxo— has now decided to invest ₹200 crore in its influencer management and marketing businesses, which will now be housed under a new entity Good Creator Co. The company already owns influence analytics platforms like Popxo’s Plixxo and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/after-acquiring-scoopwhoop-good-glamm-group-buys-missmalini/articleshow/88268772.cms">MissMalini</a>. It has now announced the acquisition of two more brands — influencer marketing platform Winkl and online video analytics platform Vidooly — to be a key of its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/with-scoopwhoop-and-popxo-on-its-side-heres-what-myglamm-intends-to-do/articleshow/87177789.cms">content-to-commerce strategy</a>. The Good Glamm Group noted that Plixxo and Winkl have 250,000 influencers and reach out to 70+ million users on a monthly basis. The Good Creator Co aims to make ₹250 crore by end of this year The Good Creator Co will offer content creators and influencers access to the brand campaigns, extensive monetization opportunities, as well as affiliate and creator commerce programmes, celebrity talent management services and more through the app. The latest entity currently has a revenue run rate of ₹75 crore and is targeting a ₹250 crore revenue run rate by December 2022. MyGlamm’s chief executive and founder Darpan Sanghvi believes that having content businesses like these would help the direct to consumer brands housed under ‘The Good Glamm Group’ banner get access to more customers as well as get a well-established marketing mechanism. Good Glamm Group became a unicorn in 2 months The Good Glamm Group — <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/myglamm-has-set-aside-100-million-to-acquire-6-beauty-and-personal-care-brands-under-new-entity/articleshow/86559530.cms">which came into existence only in September 2021</a> — is a culmination of three brands MyGlamm, POPxo and online parenting startup BabyChakra. The parent entity is also led by the founders of these three companies — Darpan Sanghvi, Priyanka Gill (POPxo) and Naiyya Saggi (BabyChakra). Under the Good Glamm Group umbrella are beauty and personal care brands — MyGlamm, The Moms Co, St. Botanica and Sirona as well as content platforms such as POPxo, Scoopwhoop and BabyChakra. The company was valued at<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/scoopwhoop-and-myglamms-parent-which-is-backed-by-amazon-is-now-valued-over-a-billion-dollars/articleshow/87608734.cms"> $1 billion in November 2021</a>, when it raised $150 million in funding in its Series D round. The Series D round was led by investors Prosus Ventures (Naspers), Warburg Pincus along the participation from Alteria Capital. Existing investors such as L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, <keyword id="18635" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="amazon" source="Orion">Amazon</keyword>, Ascent Capital and the Mankekar Family Office also participated in the round. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/retail/news/future-retail-and-amazon-dispute-over-reliance-industries-acquisition-delhi-high-court-dismisses-kishore-biyani-appeal/articleshow/88690181.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Future Retail’s appeal to end Singapore arbitration initiated by Amazon has been turned down</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/infoedge-and-zomatos-deepinder-goyal-invested-money-in-geniemode-10-month-old-tech-startup/articleshow/88683920.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">After Deepinder Goyal and Kunal Shah, Info Edge backs this 10-month-old tech startup</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/new-covid19-variant-ihu-and-booster-dose-of-covid-vaccine-among-five-lessons-from-third-wave-of-infections/articleshow/88689317.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">From new variant IHU to utility of booster doses ⁠— these are five lessons India can learn from the third wave of COVID-19 in other countries</a>

Amazon-backed Good Glamm Group acquires 2 more startups, intends to invest ₹200 crore to boost influencer marketing

<ul><li><keyword id="3143174" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="PharmEasy">PharmEasy</keyword>’s funding news comes in right after social e-commerce startup <keyword id="3480589" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Meesho">Meesho</keyword> and <keyword id="1763236" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="CRED">cred</keyword>it card payment rewards company CRED announced their <keyword id="6362476" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="investments">investments</keyword> and big valuations.</li><li>PharmEasy’s parent company API Holdings has raised $350 million from Prosus Ventures, TPG Growth.</li><li>The startup, which was founded in 2014, recently acquired Medlife.</li></ul>It’s turning out to be an exciting week for tech <keyword id="6362513" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="startups">startups</keyword> in India, and mind you - there are three more days to go. For the third consecutive day, a new <keyword id="152045" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Unicorn">unicorn</keyword> is reported from India as PharmEasy, the online pharmacy delivery startup, raised new funds at a <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/funding/pharmeasy-parent-enters-unicorn-club-at-1-5-billion-valuation/articleshow/81937326.cms">billion</a> dollar valuation. PharmEasy’s funding news comes in right after social e-commerce startup Meesho and credit card payment rewards company CRED announced their fundraises and big valuations. <table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;"></colgroup></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Date </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Startup </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Valuation </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Monday, April 5 </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Meesho </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$2.1 billion </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Tuesday, April 6 </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">CRED </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$2.2 billion </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Wednesday, April 7 </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">PharmEasy </td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">$1.5 billion </td></tr></tbody></table>*Reported valuation for PharmEasy PharmEasy’s parent company API Holdings has raised $350 million from new investors Prosus Ventures and TPG Growth. Its existing investors Temasek, CDPQ, LGT Lightrock, Eight Roads and Think Investments, too, participated in the round. According to an <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/funding/pharmeasy-parent-enters-unicorn-club-at-1-5-billion-valuation/articleshow/81937326.cms">ET report</a>, the round would also have secondary transactions. “I am particularly proud that we have been able to not only provide consumers with much faster and easier access to the healthcare products and services they need, but that we have been able to do so by empowering and digitising 60,000 small pharmacy stores that provide such an essential service to the Indian public,” said Siddharth Shah, chief executive officer of API Holdings. With the latest funding, the company aims to reach to over 100,000 pharmacies in the next 12 months. The online pharmacy’s funding comes at a time when the space is heating up with the bigwigs entering the arena. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance had recently acquired NetMeds, Amazon had launched its own pharmacy vertical, while Tata Group is in talks to acquire 1mg. Pharmeasy, too, has not been lagging behind in the acquisition race. The startup, which was founded in 2014, acquired Medlife in March 2021. Ananth Narayanan, the chief executive of Medlife, who formerly was at the helm of fashion e-commerce portal Myntra, took to LinkedIn to announce the news. “Late 2020, Prashant and I decided to merge Medlife with API which would help create the largest e-heath player in the market. The API team has a terrific track record of growth, with a great list of investors and terrific founders. The overlap in customers was low. Joining hands could lead to a lot more capital coming into the market leader who could then help build out the industry,” he <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6782849974444158977/">wrote.</a> SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/facebook-backed-meesho-raises-300-million-from-softbank-vision-fund-2-valuation-jumps-to-over-2-billion/articleshow/81907721.cms">Facebook-backed Meesho raises $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 – valuation jumps to over $2 billion</a>

For the third consecutive day, a new unicorn is born from India as PharmEasy joins the billion dollar club

Feminine hygiene startup <keyword id="7326219" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sirona" source="Orion">Sirona</keyword> on Tuesday said it has raised ₹100 crore in funding from <keyword id="12352571" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="good-glamm" source="Orion">Good Glamm</keyword> Group. The round also saw secondary buyout with early investors including seed and angel investors taking an exit, a statement said. Sirona - which makes products like PeeBuddy and menstrual cups - said it aims to hit the ₹500 crore revenue mark in three years. In April, Sirona had raised USD 3 million in series A funding round, co-led by NB Ventures and IAN Fund. The company said almost one million women use Sirona Menstrual Cups, and over 3 million units of PeeBuddy and over 4 lakh Sirona Feminine Pain Relief Patches have been sold. “We had multiple term sheets from VCs and other strategic investors but the combination of money and immediate value which the Good Glam Group offered was unparalleled. We have been profitable for the last 3 years and are growing steadily," <keyword id="9138019" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sirona-hygiene" source="Orion">Sirona Hygiene</keyword> founder and CEO Deep Bajaj said. He added that the partnership with The Good Glamm group, given their edge in terms of content and offline access will help the company scale faster while staying profitable. "We hope to soon hit the ₹100 crore revenue mark. Aspirations are to see Sirona at leading stores, solving more feminine hygiene problems faced by Indian women from puberty to menopause and become the first start-up in our category to hit ₹500 crore revenue, hopefully within 3 years," he added. The Good Glamm Group comprises a portfolio of beauty and personal care brands that are powered by a proprietary digital ecosystem of content, community and creator assets. Brands that come under the Good Glamm Group umbrella include <keyword id="3030142" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="myglamm" source="Orion">MyGlamm</keyword>, POPxo, BabyChakra, The Moms Co, ScoopWhoop and St Botanica. “Feminine hygiene segment, especially given the taboo around the category, is a tough one to pull off but needs far more intervention to make life simpler for Indian women. And we believe our ecosystem of content and creators will greatly increase the education of and adoption of Sirona's innovative hygiene products," Good Glamm Group founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi said. He added that Sirona has made its mark by creating a new category of modern intimate and menstrual hygiene solutions, something the company valued and decided to come in as a strategic investor at this stage. This digital reach, combined with 30,000-plus offline retail points of sale of the Group's flagship beauty brand, MyGlamm, offers Sirona an unprecedented opportunity to scale both online and offline, the statement said. Good Glamm Group had recently raised USD 150 million in a funding round led by Prosus (formerly Naspers) to enter the unicorn club (companies with valuation of USD 1 billion). It counts Warburg Pincus, L'Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel, Amazon, and Ascent Capital among its investors. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/snapdeal-ipo-paper-reveals-that-it-is-going-offline/articleshow/88408081.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Snapdeal IPO papers reveal the e-tailer’s offline aspirations for budget fashion</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/mapmyindia-ipo-makes-a-positive-stock-market-debut/articleshow/88403594.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">MapmyIndia debuts below expectation but IPO investors still make a sweet 53% return on listing</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/zepto-raised-100-million-at-570-valuation-to-deliver-product-in-10-minutes/articleshow/88394937.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Two teenage Stanford dropouts have made their startup worth half a billion in 7 months</a>

Feminine hygiene startup Sirona raises ₹100 crore from ScoopWhoop's parent Good Glamm Group

<ul><li><keyword id="6397414" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ananth-narayanan" source="Orion">Ananth Narayanan</keyword> had led brands like Myntra and Medlife in the past, and is also a board member at Marico.</li><li><keyword id="737852" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mensa" source="Orion">Mensa</keyword> Brand is a Thrasio-style house of brand company, which will acquire local retail brands and scale them up.</li><li>While several companies have raised multi-million rounds on this model, US-based Thras.io is also set to enter India soon.</li></ul><keyword id="11353130" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mensa-brands" source="Orion">Mensa Brands</keyword>, founded only six months ago by Myntra’s former chief executive Ananth Narayanan, is the latest as well as the youngest startup to enter the unicorn club. A unicorn, in the startup purlance, is a company valued at over billion dollars. Mensa brand’s business model is based on the New York-based e-commerce player Thras.io, which acquires small merchants and brands listed on Amazon marketplace. Thras.io has acquired more than 100 third party sellers or fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) businesses and is valued at $5 billion. Big money backing Mensa Mensa Brands reached that milestone, after raising $135 million in a funding round led by Alpha Wave Ventures. Prosus Ventures (previously known as Naspers) also joined the fundraise as a new investor. Several existing investors — including Accel PArtners, Norwest Venture Partners and Tiger Global — also participated in the round. Ananth Narayanan served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Myntra for four years, between 2015 and 2019. Prior to that, he worked at management consultancy firm McKinsey for almost 16 years and rose to the position of a managing partner. Narayanan also joined epharmacy company Medlife as a cofounder and CEO in 2019, which was<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/with-reliance-buying-netmeds-and-pharmeasy-merging-with-medlife-amazon-and-flipkart-are-in-for-a-tougher-competition-than-they-would-like/articleshow/77625512.cms"> sold</a> to<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/pharmeasy-is-set-for-ipo-drhp-highlights-revenue-shareholdings-and-intentions/slidelist/87644144.cms"> initial public offering (IPO)</a>-bound PharmEasy earlier this year. He is also a board member at one of the biggest consumer products companies in India, Marico, which owns popular brands like Saffola (cooking oil) and Parachute (hair oil). A growing business model He started Mensa Brand in May this year. It is a Thrasio-style house of brand company, which will acquire local retail brands and scale them up. The business model has also garnered the interest of marquee investors in India over the last one year. While Indian players like<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/bhavna-suresh-has-closed-indias-largest-seed-round-for-her-nine-month-old-startup-10club/articleshow/83978841.cms"> 10Club</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/globalbees-has-raised-150-million-in-few-months-of-launch-to-acquire-more-businesses/articleshow/84552291.cms">GlobalBees</a> (founded by FirstCry founder Supam Maheshwari and Edelweiss' former executive Nitin Agarwal) have garnered the interest of investors, Thras.io has taken note of this trend as well. The US-based company Thras.io raised over a billion dollars last month to enter the Indian market directly. The company reported a profit of $100 million last year and now aims to boost its revenue to $1 billion for this financial year, as per a Moneycontrol<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/thrasio-raises-1-billion-in-funding-plans-india-entry-7625501.html#:~:text=The%20news%20agency%20pegged%20its,have%20%241%20billion%20in%20revenue."> report</a>. Mensa Brands is the first Indian Thras.io-style company to be valued over a billion dollars. The company has acquired a dozen brands already and now plans on closing 20 more deals soon. The company will use the fresh funding to grow its portfolio and hire across functions. “We are truly platform neutral and our brands are present across different platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho and others. We are excited to back more founders and brands and scale them further,” Narayanan said. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/policybazzar-and-sigachi-share-price-jump-in-early-trading/articleshow/87730171.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Policybazaar gets a boost after an American fund laps up 3.4 million shares and Sigachi hits upper circuit on the morning after listing</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/jpmorgan-takes-tesla-to-court-over-elon-musks-2018-tweets-demands-162-million/articleshow/87729405.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">JPMorgan takes Tesla to court over Elon Musk’s 2018 tweets ⁠— demands $162 million</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/cryptocurrency/news/inspired-by-elon-musk-investors-are-incorporating-meme-numerology-into-their-bitcoin-trading-strategies/articleshow/87721228.cms">Inspired by Elon Musk, investors are incorporating meme numerology into their bitcoin trading strategies</a>

Former Myntra CEO started Mensa Brand in May ⁠and it’s already worth a billion dollars

<ul><li><keyword id="4372171" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Eruditus">Eruditus</keyword> has raised $650 million in a funding round led by investment firms Accel and SoftBank.</li><li>It is the third highest valued edtech startup in India, after Byju’s and Unacademy.</li><li>Earlier this week, Ronnie Screwvala’s upGrad entered the <keyword id="152045" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Unicorn">unicorn</keyword> club after raising $185 million.</li></ul>Mumbai-based Eruditus has raised $650 million in a funding round led by investment firms Accel and SoftBank. This round has valued Eruditus at $3.2 billion, making it the third highest valued edtech startup in India. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board also<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/11/india-eruditus-valued-at-3-2-billion-in-650-million-fundraise/"> participated </a>in the new round. Prior to this, the company had raised <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/eruditus-closes-113m-series-d-co-led-by-leeds-illuminate-and-prosus-ventures-1029549472">$113 million</a> in Series D round led by Leeds Illuminate and Prosus Ventures. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a non-profit organisation headed by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, has also participated in the round that valued Eruditus at $700 million. Founded in 2010 by Chaitanya Kalipatnapu and Ashwin Damera, Eruditus works with universities globally to offer six to eight months-long executive-level courses to students present across 80 countries. These courses cost anything between $5,000 to $40,000, and are available for on-campus, off-campus and online modes. Some of the universities it has tied up with include Columbia, Harvard Business School, INSEAD, Tuck at Dartmouth, Wharton, UC Berkeley and London Business School. This is SoftBank’s second major bet in India’s edtech sector. The Japanese conglomerate has also invested in Bengaluru-based Unacademy, which is the second highest valued edtech startup after Byju’s. Unacademy raised $440 million, earlier this month, in a funding round led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings. The Gaurav Munjal-led startup is currently valued at $3.4 billion, and counts General Atlantic and Tiger Global as investors. Apart from that, Ronnie Screwvala-led higher education platform upGrad entered the unicorn club earlier this week, after raising <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/ronnie-screwvalas-upgrad-is-indias-newest-entry-into-the-unicorn-club-as-it-closes-a-185-million-funding-round/articleshow/85175717.cms">$185 million</a> from Temasek, IFC (International Finance Corporation, a sister organisation of the World Bank) and IIFL. The company is now valued at $1.2 billion. A unicorn is a startup valued at or above $1 billion. Out of all the edtech startups in India, Byju’s is the only decacorn (valued at above $10 billion) with a valuation of $16.5 billion. It is also the highest valued edtech startup in the world and the most valued startup in India. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/dailyhunt-josh-parent-verse-innovation-raises-over-450-million-doubles-valuation/articleshow/85262790.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Dailyhunt, Josh parent VerSe Innovation raises over $450 million, doubles valuation</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/stellaris-venture-partners-closes-fund-2-to-make-bets-in-existing-portfolio-new-startups/articleshow/85261404.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Mamaearth and MFine-backer Stellaris Venture Partners closes second fund to make bigger bets in existing portfolio and up to 30 new startups</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/careers/news/lenskart-aims-to-hire-over-2000-employees-to-ramp-up-its-operations/articleshow/85235059.cms">Lenskart aims to hire over 2000 employees to ramp up its operations</a>

Eruditus is India’s fourth edtech unicorn, valued at $3.2 billion

<ul><li>The Series A round was led by Matrix Partners India, with partnership from Prime Venture Partners and others.</li><li><keyword id="8064711" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="oto" source="Orion">OTO</keyword> currently has its presence in 5 cities and plans to enter additional 15 cities with this funding round.</li><li><keyword id="11989989" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="oto-offers" source="Orion">OTO offers</keyword> a leasing-like financing model for two-wheeler purchases, at 30% lower EMIs than traditional businesses.</li></ul>Two-wheeler financing and buying platform OTO has raised $6 million in a funding round led by Matrix Partners to grow its user base in India. The company has currently marked its presence in five cities — Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, and Mysore. It plans to use this funding to launch its services in 15 new cities, including Delhi, Nashik, Indore And Vijayawada. It also plans to double its team size by March 2022 and hire aggressively across verticals like technology, product, marketing and operations. OTO’s Series A round also witnessed participation from existing and new investors like Prime Venture Partners, 9 Unicorns and Better Capital. Angel investors like OfBusiness’ Asish Mohapatra, Livspace’s Ramakant Sharma, Cred’s Kunal Shah, GrowthStory.in’s K Ganesh and BharatPe’s Ashneer Grover and Suhail Sameer also participated in the round. Founded in 2018 by Sumit Chhazed and Harsh Saruparia, OTO offers a leasing-like financing model for two-wheeler purchases. The company allows customers to buy a vehicle at an upfront payment like any other loan and pay an additional equated monthly instalment (EMI) on a monthly basis. The company claims that its EMIs are 30% lower than traditional options. At the end of the leasing tenure, the customers have the option to either retain, return or upgrade their vehicles. Co-founder Chhazed told Business Insider if a customer buys a two-wheeler worth ₹40,000 from another financing solution, the EMI should be somewhere around ₹3800 monthly for a period of two years. OTO, on the other hand, would provide the vehicle at ₹2500 EMI for a period of two years. At the end of the tenure the customer can choose to return the vehicle and pay nothing. They can also choose to pay the rest of the amount in installments and retain the vehicle or upgrade it. Chhazed explained that newage customers like to upgrade or change their vehicle every two-three years, therefore returning the vehicle is a handy option for them. Besides this, many two wheelers buyers are individuals who have moved to other cities for better opportunities. OTO partners with several non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to provide more financing options to the customers. It also offers full auto lifecycle management ranging between credit underwriting to insurance, maintenance, and eventual resale of the vehicle. “In the world’s largest 2-wheeler market (India), the consumer’s preference is changing – buying online, stretching their budget for quality and upgrading faster. OTO caters to this new consumer with a new model of buying, financing and ownership,” Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director at Matrix India, told Business Insider. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/prosus-buys-indian-payment-gateway-firm-billdesk-in-one-of-the-countrys-biggest-fintech-deals-ever/articleshow/85790849.cms">Prosus buys payment gateway firm BillDesk in one of India's biggest fintech deals ever</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/news/tesla-inches-closer-to-its-india-debut-as-four-models-approved/articleshow/85792404.cms">Tesla inches closer to its India debut as four models approved</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/the-floods-in-assam-have-so-far-affected-21-districts-with-950-villages-affected-in-total/articleshow/85792970.cms">Pictures of devastation due to Assam floods that has killed two and displaced people in nearly a thousand villages in 21 districts</a>

Two-wheeler financing company OTO raises $6 million to offer services in 15 Indian cities

<ul><li>Several investors believe that <keyword id="8681398" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="urban-company" source="Orion">Urban Company</keyword> has managed to build a moat around its business, which has given a competitive advantage to the company.</li><li>The experts believe that the entry of other big players in the on-demand service can only be fueled by the entry of deep-pocketed players like Reliance or Amazon.</li><li>Interestingly, Amazon already entered this segment six years ago with its investment in home repair service Housejoy.</li></ul>Whether it’s Ola-Uber in the cab-hailing world or Zomato-Swiggy in the food delivery arena, the existence of competition is something taken for granted, especially when you’re running a so-called lucrative business. Then, there is Urban Company that has been enjoying its high status and multi-billion dollar valuation without having to worry about any competitor who may threaten to take away customers or the power to price the product at will. The on-demand home and beauty service startup — valued at a whopping<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/urban-company-raises-255-million-at-over-2-billion-valuation-eyes-global-expansion/articleshow/83167168.cms"> $2.1 billion</a> in June 2021 — has spent the last seven years expanding to<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/urban-company-on-lookout-for-15000-service-professionals-in-50-cities-in-india/articleshow/85447261.cms"> five international markets</a>. Yet the company still has not found a rival of the same size or scale in its home market — India, which is also the largest source of its revenue. This does raise a lot of questions such as if the sector is not lucrative enough or whether Urban Company has found a holy grail into people’s pockets that others find hard to crack. Business Insider spoke to several analysts, industry experts and investors, all had one thing to point out — Urban Company has found its moat. A moat, which you must have heard about in history books or fairy tales, is the preliminary source of defence to protect what one has built. In business parlance, it means competitive advantage over other players. What moats has Urban Company built for itself? <div type="image" title="Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?" msid="85835712" hostid="261"></div> Founded by Abhiraj Bhal, Raghav Chandra and Varun Khaitan in 2014 , Urban Company is an aggregator that allows service professionals to list on its platform and enables them to connect with customers. The company charges a 20% commission off each order these service professionals fulfil. <div type="image" title="Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?" msid="85835695" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Services offered by Urban Company&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> Ankur Bansal, co-founder of an investment firm BlackSoil, says that surviving the<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impending-meltdown-2016-indian-rift-valleyand-how-do-ranganathan/"> 2016 meltdown</a> was a big enough milestone in the journey of Urban Company as it was the time when several companies were coming up in e-commerce and home delivery space. More than 1,000 startups <a href="https://www.techinasia.com/insights-from-25-failed-startups-in-india-2016">shut down</a> in India that year as investors tightened their pockets. He also emphasised that Urban Company has focused on providing standardised services, “which is very difficult to replicate when you are dealing with such a large network of people.” This has led to a very customer-centric business, with good repeat order. The ability to survive 2016 amidst tough competition and lack of funding to eventually becoming a category leader with big fundraises has acted like a moat for the company, Bansal told Business Insider. These points have allowed the company to raise close to $440 million to date from marquee investors like Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investment Group and Prosus Ventures in the not-so-distant past. “They are bringing a certain amount of quality and customer service at the centre of what they are doing. Maybe that’s what allowed them to differentiate themselves and after a certain scale VCs [venture capitalists] look at these things as a one horse kind of a game,” Kabir Kochhar, partner at Anthill, told Business Insider. Does this mean the company will be the single big player in its play? The experts are still split over how the market would look and who are going to be the next big players competing against Urban Company. Based on the inputs from industry experts, there are four possible outcomes here: <div type="image" title="Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?" msid="85857636" hostid="261"></div> Out of the above mentioned scenarios, two and three are the most likely to happen. Many may not know this, but Amazon already made an entry in this segment six years ago with its investment in Housejoy, which specifically focused on home services like house repairs, cleaning, fumigation and more. Housejoy has also been trying to revamp its offering since February 2021. It expanded to on-demand beauty services in some of its cities including Bengaluru in association with salon chain Naturals. The Bengaluru-based startup, founded around the same time as Urban Company, has raised about $30 million to date and raised its last round in 2018. Again, the key to Urban Company lies in the investors’ willingness to fuel its competitor “[If] Somebody like Reliance and Amazon decides that they want to get into it and invest a very huge amount of capital to build on to it, then they can because the market is extremely large. It’s not like Urban Company has captured the market, it’ll be a very small percentage. There is always room for competition, but to do it practically, is not always that easy,” Bansal of BlackSoil said. <div type="image" title="Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?" msid="85835658" hostid="261"></div> Devendra Agrawal, founder and chief executive (CEO) of investment bank Dexter Capital, told Business Insider that the market Urban Company caters to may not be easy to crack for a larger player organically. Inorganic medium — investments, mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A), etc — is the only way to make a segway in this play. “Unfortunately, there are not too many high quality players of scale, which are in this segment so it may actually mean that Urban Company becomes one large player in this segment,” he noted. Meanwhile, Kochhar of Anthill Ventures told Business Insider, “I don’t think that Urban Company will be a market leader in all these different kinds of services. I can see the verticalisation happening better also. Maybe there is someone who does better home services or sub sections like plumbing, house repair.” Regardless, the players in the segment are hopeful about setting up their marker here. “We are confident that with time ahead, this [on-demand home and beauty service] will become a huge industry because everyone wants comfort and convenience,” said Mayank Arya, co-founder of Yes Madam, another startup working in the segment. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/investment/news/doge-meme-nft-is-being-auctioned-off-in-17-billion-pieces/articleshow/85833023.cms">The most expensive meme NFT ever sold will be auctioned off in 17 billion pieces tonight</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/icici-bank-becomes-the-sixth-valuable-firm-after-ril-tcs-hdfc-bank-infosys-and-hul-in-india/articleshow/85828220.cms">ICICI Bank becomes the sixth valuable firm in India with over ₹5 trillion mcap after RIL, TCS, HDFC Bank, Infosys, and HUL</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/minimum-broadband-speed-in-india-increased-to-2mbps-from-512kbps/articleshow/85828322.cms">TRAI suggests government to pay for half of your broadband bill, increases minimum broadband speed to 2 Mbps</a>

Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?

<ul><li>The Chinese government is forcing the $100 billion private tutoring and online <keyword id="6361862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="education-sector">education sector</keyword> to go non-profit.</li><li>The move is also said to be in line with Chinese president’s Xi Jinping’s top priority at the moment — boosting the declining birth rate in <keyword id="1334" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="China">China</keyword>.</li><li>India may turn out to be a possible beneficiary of China’s latest regulation on the <keyword id="1464841" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Edtech">edtech</keyword> industry.</li></ul>The government of China has pulled the rug from the edtech industry, with its latest regulation. The country is now forcing its $100 billion private tutoring and online education sector to go non-profit. To make matters worse, the Chinese government has also deprived the edtech companies from going public, taking foreign capital or issuing stocks if already public. This has shut all doors for these companies to make any form of capital and for investors to get their desired exits. Investors like Warburg Pincus, Temasek, General Insurance Corporation (GIC), Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Tiger Global and many others have been affected by this decision, apart from the edtech startups that are operational in the country. Top Chinese edtech startups and their investors: <table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Chinese edtech firms </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Investors </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Yuanfudao </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">DST, CPE, Temasek, Trustbridge </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Huohua Siwei </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Trustbridge, GSR, GGV, Tencent, Carlyle, Sequoia China </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Zuoyebang </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Sequoia China, SoftBank Vision Fund, FountainVest, Tiger Global </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Zhangmen </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Shunwei Capital, Warburg Pincus, CMC Capital </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Knowbox </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">TAL Education Group, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Alibaba Group </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">iTutorGroup </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Alibaba Capital Partners, Qiming Venture Partners </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Huike </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">China Oceanwide, Qianhe Capital, Fosun RZ Capital </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Hujiang </td><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Minsheng Investment Group, Baidu </td></tr></tbody></table> According to a Bloomberg<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-23/from-tiger-to-temasek-investors-scarred-by-china-edtech-assault"> report</a>, the nationwide crackdown on edtech actually stems out of a deeper backlash against the new-age educational businesses. The excessive tutoring not only torments youth, but also burdens parents with expensive fees, the report added. The edtech segment has also been accused of causing social inequalities. Edtech is allegedly triggering a social inequality among urban and rural citizens of China by providing additional coaching to those who can afford it. This especially has a greater impact in tutoring students for China’s university entrance exam, gaokao, according to media reports. The nine-hour-long test actually determines whether a student will attend an undergraduate institution or not. The test results will also determine the college a student can attend. Since there are no other alternatives in China, gaokao has turned out to be a really high stakes exam. Therefore, it is <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2097512/gaokao-how-one-exam-can-set-course-students-life-china">seen</a> as one of the most brutal educational assessments in the world. According to a report by news and analysis platform Protocol, Chinese families are willing to shell out an average of 11% of their annual family expenses for their Children’s future success. This does create inequalities among those who cannot afford to pay for additional education systems. Besides this, the policy is said to be in line with Chinese president’s Xi Jingping’s top priority at the moment — boosting the declining birth rate in China. Affordable education is likely to promote people to have more than one child. China’s latest regulation on edtech: <table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Companies and institution that teach the school curriculum must go non-profit </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">These institutions cannot pursue an IPO or raise any foreign capital </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Listed companies will not be able to issue stock or raise money in stock market </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Foreign companies cannot acquire or hold shares in school tutoring companies </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">All vacation and holiday curriculum tutoring is prohibited </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Online curriculum for kids below six years of age in banned </td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-right:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-bottom:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;border-top:solid #cccccc 0.8333325pt;vertical-align:bottom;padding:2pt 2pt 2pt 2pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Companies cannot teach foreign curriculum or hire foreigners </td></tr></tbody></table> This is not the first time that the Chinese government has shown interest in the nation's edtech industry. On March 31 this year, China’s Minister of Education Chen Baosheng <a href="http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A06/s3321/202104/t20210401_523901.html">announced</a> that the education department should limit the timings for online learning to ensure that primary and secondary school students get enough sleep. The ministry added that all live online broadcasting training activities should end no later than 9 p.m. Chinese crackdown a boon for Indian edtech? China is the largest education market in the world, which has attracted venture capital, from all over the globe, over the last few years. Out of the 28 edtech unicorns in the world, eight are from China as per a market intelligence firm Holon IQ <a href="https://www.holoniq.com/edtech-unicorns/">report</a>. A unicorn, in startup parlance, is a private firm valued at or more than $1 billion. Online education has been booming around the world especially during the global pandemic. According to a weforum<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/"> report</a>, about 1.2 billion students across 186 countries were out of school in 2020 due to COVID-19 and related restrictions. The global investment in edtech will grow from $18.66 billion in 2019 to $350 billion by 2025, the report added. If China shuts its doors to global capital looking for opportunities in the edtech space, it is possible that money may seek out opportunities in countries like India with a large population of students and early career professionals. 81.3% of India’s population is under the age of 45, according to Census of India <a href="https://censusindia.gov.in/census_and_you/age_structure_and_marital_status.aspx">2011</a>. Though India has only two edtech unicorns at the moment — BYJU’s and Unacademy — the sector has been gaining a lot of momentum over the last one year. BYJU’s is currently the biggest edtech startup in the world in terms of valuation, at an estimated $16.5 billion. The Bengaluru-based company has raised $2.7 billion in the last decade, from marquee investors like Prosus, General Atlantic, Tencent, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Tiger Global, Silver Lake and more. Besides this, the Indian government’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/education/news/india-revamps-its-education-policy-after-34-years-scraps-mphil-proposes-vocational-courses-from-class-6-ug-colleges-to-become-autonomous/articleshow/77241851.cms">National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020</a> that promotes digital and remote learning is going to further boost the segment in India. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/subscribe-to-glenmark-life-sciences-ipo-because-of-clean-regulatory-history-and-good-track-record-as-per-analysts/articleshow/84748115.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">One may subscribe to Glenmark Life Sciences IPO because of clean regulatory history, strong promoter backing and good track record, say analysts</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/yes-bank-shares-surge-5-after-it-reports-strong-profit-growth/articleshow/84751116.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">YES Bank shares surge 5% as investors see a ray of hope after bank reported four fold growth in profit</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/a-man-used-ai-to-bring-back-his-deceased-fianc-but-the-creators-of-the-tech-warn-it-could-be-dangerous-and-used-to-spread-misinformation-/articleshow/84717296.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">A man used AI to bring back his deceased fiancé. But the creators of the tech warn it could be dangerous and used to spread misinformation.</a>

The Chinese government believes online education is bad for students, parents and the society

<ul><li><keyword id="830092" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Zomato">Zomato</keyword> raised $5 million in funding from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust. </li><li>Meanwhile, today <keyword id="6358977" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="swiggy">Swiggy</keyword> also announced that it raised an additional $43 million as a part of its ongoing Series I round. </li><li>Zomato’s latest funds take its valuation to $3.25 billion, according to reports. However, it still falls short of Swiggy’s $3.6 billion valuation. </li></ul>Even as most <keyword id="6362513" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="startups">startups</keyword> are facing the heat of depressed funding, two unicorns raised funds today. Foodtech unicorn Zomato raised $5 million from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust. The fund is managed by British investment manager Baillie Gifford, who had earlier invested in Flipkart. But not far behind is its rival Swiggy. Today, Swiggy announced that it has raised an additional $43 million as part of its ongoing Series I round. The size of the round now stands at $156 million. Along with existing investor Tencent, new investors Ark Impact, Korea Investment Partners, Samsung Ventures and Mirae Asset Capital Markets participated in this round. “We are humbled by the faith shown by our investors year-on-year and welcome the new investors on board. Our focus remains to execute on our vision while building a sustainable path to profitability,” said Rahul Bothra, CFO, Swiggy in a statement. Zomato’s latest funds take its valuation to $3.25 billion, according to <a href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/india-zomato-fundraising-183164/">reports</a>. However, it still falls short of Swiggy’s $3.6 billion valuation. Interestingly, Zomato's total fundraise so far stands at $900 million, whereas Swiggy has raised the twice amount with $1.6 billion. The food war Both Zomato and Swiggy have raised fresh funds this year. In January, Zomato had raised $150 million from Ant Financial. In February, Swiggy had raised $113 million from led by existing investor Prosus N.V. along with participation from Meituan Dianping and Wellington Management Company. The companies haven’t closed the rounds. While Zomato is raising $600 million as announced by its founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal had said at an event in December 2019, details of Swiggy’s Series I round are not known. In January 2020, Zomato acquired UberEats in an all stock deal. The deal which gave Uber a 9.9% stake in Zomato, resulted in its market share rising to 55%, sources told Business Insider. However, another source told Business Insider that Swiggy continues to hold a bigger share of the revenue at 60%. See Also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/zomato-rolls-out-its-grocery-delivery-service-zomato-market/articleshow/74992299.cms">Zomato rolls out its grocery delivery service – Zomato Market</a>

Zomato and Swiggy both raise funds – but Swiggy leads with a higher valuation

<ul><li>A recent report on the online <keyword id="6376068" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="food-delivery">food delivery</keyword> space in India indicates that Amazon along with COVID-19 is going to hurt the profitability plans of <keyword id="830092" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Zomato">Zomato</keyword> and <keyword id="6358977" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="swiggy">Swiggy</keyword>. </li><li>Both Zomato and Swiggy are already dealing with the wrath of the coronavirus pandemic.</li><li>Founders of both the companies in blog posts had mentioned that the food tech unicorns will now be leaner and much more focussed organisations.</li></ul>India’s food delivery fight enters a new round, and the battle for profitability is going to get tougher. Global e-commerce giant Amazon in May rolled out its food delivery vertical in India. Currently, under a pilot mode in Bengaluru, Amazon Food is in a ring where Zomato (armed with UberEats acquisition) and Swiggy are already fighting it out, and spending a considerable chunk of money while at it. And they are all fighting for a market which is set to double in the next five years – from $3.6 billion in FY20 to $8.6 billion by FY25, despite the coronavirus pandemic, as per a report by JM Financial dated August 10. But Amazon’s entry in the food delivery segment is also at a time when Zomato and Swiggy are at the receiving end of the wrath of the coronavirus pandemic – both the companies have laid off hundreds, and are currently witnessing a slow recovery post lockdown. The JM Financial report on the online food delivery space in India shows that Amazon, along with COVID-19, is going to hurt the profitability plans of Zomato and Swiggy. “We believe the entry of a cash-rich player such as Amazon has the potential to impact the path to sustainable profitability of both the incumbents over the medium-to-long term,” said the report. Can Zomato and Swiggy afford to fight Amazon? Both Zomato and Swiggy have been cutting marketing costs. Founders of both the companies in blog posts had mentioned that the food tech unicorns will now be leaner and much more focussed organisations while reducing costs – from real estate to marketing and advertising. And it is not just the companies, but the investors too who have been vouching for the reduced marketing spends of the startups to reduce burn. The JM Financials report quotes two prominent investors of Zomato and Swiggy – Sanjeev Bikchandani of Info Edge, one of the earliest backers of Zomato and Larry Illg, CEO for Food and Ventures at Prosus, one of Swiggy’s biggest investors. In November 2019, Bikhchandani had mentioned during an investors' call that Zomato is cutting discounts and is cutting marketing at the bottom end on small orders to cut costs. Goyal backed this up in December, he mentioned that the company had significantly reduced its burn. And the stakes are higher at Swiggy’s end, which has also introduced several new initiatives – including the most recent, grocery delivery within 45 minutes. Swiggy’s backer Illg confirmed the cost-cutting measures and the focus on new areas on a call. “I think even in a pre-COVID environment the Swiggy team was focussed on cost savings measures including marketing spends with the objective of deploying it in some of the areas (grocery and dairy),” said Illg. According to analysts at JM Financials, this cutting down of marketing costs would also mean that the food tech companies may lower their volume growth compared to the recent past. Zomato and Swiggy are already dealing with the wrath of the pandemic The coronavirus pandemic has hit both Zomato and Swiggy’s businesses. Swiggy co-founder Sriharsha Majety had written in a <a href="https://blog.swiggy.com/2020/05/18/changes-were-making-to-adapt-to-the-times/">blog post</a>, “The core food delivery business has been severely impacted and will stay impacted over the short term, but is expected to start growing again after that.” Meanwhile, Zomato CEO <a href="https://www.zomato.com/blog/performance-report">Deepinder Goyal too spoke </a>about the short term impact on the company, predicting an earlier path to profitability. “While COVID-19 has impacted the size of our business, it has accelerated our journey to profitability. In terms of the size of the business, COVID-19 has set us back by a year or so – but a year is only a small blip when you are building a company for the next 100 years,” wrote Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal in a blog. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/markets/news/top-stock-today-hal-bhel-adani-ports-eicher-motors-central-bank-of-india-indusind-bank/articleshow/77499011.cms">Top stock movers on Dalal Street today — HAL, BHEL, Adani Ports, Eicher Motors and more</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/interglobe-aviation-indigo-shares-gained-over-9-after-the-company-decides-to-lease-back-12-of-its-aircrafts/articleshow/77500385.cms">IndiGo shares rally over 9% after the company decides to lease back 12 of its aircrafts</a>

You Searched For "Prosus Ventures" and got 14 results

ScoopWhoop and MyGlamm’s parent, which is backed by Amazon, is now valued over a billion dollars

Kritti Bhalla

Facebook-backed Meesho raises $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 – valuation jumps to over $2 billion

Sanchita Dash

Meesho raises more than half a billion dollars in the fourth biggest funding round this year

Kritti Bhalla

Death by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI world

Alistair Barr,Adam Rogers

Amazon-backed Good Glamm Group acquires 2 more startups, intends to invest ₹200 crore to boost influencer marketing

Kritti Bhalla

For the third consecutive day, a new unicorn is born from India as PharmEasy joins the billion dollar club

Sanchita Dash

Feminine hygiene startup Sirona raises ₹100 crore from ScoopWhoop's parent Good Glamm Group

PTI

Former Myntra CEO started Mensa Brand in May ⁠and it’s already worth a billion dollars

Kritti Bhalla

Eruditus is India’s fourth edtech unicorn, valued at $3.2 billion

Kritti Bhalla

Two-wheeler financing company OTO raises $6 million to offer services in 15 Indian cities

Kritti Bhalla

Uber has Ola, Zomato has Swiggy but who’s Urban Company competing with?

Kritti Bhalla

The Chinese government believes online education is bad for students, parents and the society

Kritti Bhalla

Zomato and Swiggy both raise funds – but Swiggy leads with a higher valuation

Sanchita Dash

Amazon’s entry in food delivery is a speed bump on Zomato and Swiggy’s race to profitability, says report

Sanchita Dash