Dailyhunt is closing $60 Mn round from Goldman Sachs VC arm

Vernacular news aggregation platform Dailyhunt is about to close $60 million round from Goldman Sachs venture capital arm Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.

The Sequoia-backed startup had recently raised a little over $3 million from Omidyar Network, Sequoia Capital and the Renu Sehgal Trust. It was the follow-up of Series E round that was started in September last year.

Launched in 2009, Dailyhunt is among very few Indian news aggregation players that entered into the international market such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and some African countries.

Available in 14 languages including English, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Gujarati, Dailyhunt claims to have crossed 160 million app installs offering 100,000 news articles from more than 1,000 publication partners on daily basis.

Besides, it also offers original video content in Hindi and Telugu and a free live television streaming service in nine languages through strategic partnerships with Vuclip and YuppTV.

As per the latest available data, the startup has over 112 million monthly active users via Android, IOS & Windows platforms and mobile web.

It has deployed machine learning and deep learning technologies to provide real-time, personalised content and notifications to users.

Previously known as Newshunt, Dailyhunt was floated by Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni in 2009. Verse Innovation had bought the company in 2012 and then rebranded it as DailyHunt in August 2015.

For the financial year ending on March 31, 2017, the company reported a 5 per cent decrease in its revenue to Rs 126.23 crore.  Meanwhile, the losses of the company also soared to Rs 159.45 crore, a 28.6 per cent increase from Rs 124.02 crore from the previous fiscal.

The Bengaluru-based startup competes with the likes of UCNews, InShorts, NewsDog, Viral Shorts and is backed by prominent investors including Matrix Partners India, Sequoia, Omidyar Network, Falcon Edge and Bytedance.

The development was reported by Mint.