Dailyhunt raises Rs 180 Cr; valuation gets close to Rs 4,200 Cr

Vernacular-focused news aggregator Dailyhunt has raised Rs 180 crore from existing investors Bytedance, Falcon Edge, Goldman Sachs and Advent Management. The funding round for the Bengaluru-based firm has come after its talks with SoftBank did not go through last year. 

According to regulatory filings, the company has allotted 1.38 lakh Series G1 convertible preference shares to raise Rs 179.6 crore. Leading the round, Falcon Edge has invested Rs 72 crore while Bytedance Limited, Goldman Sachs Asia and Advent Management Belgium have picked up stake for Rs 36 crore each.

Dailyhunt is a news aggregation app available across many vernacular languages such as Marathi, Gujrati, Nepali amongst others. Besides India, it operates in countries including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and some African countries.

This Series G round seems to be an ongoing one and Dailyhunt could raise more capital in the coming weeks. The proceeds will help the firm to expand its offerings at a time when users are spending more time on news and information due to lockdown.

While the company has reportedly been in talks with US-based Alpine Capital for a fresh round, Entrackr’s sources say that the conversation is at an early stage.

Prior to this, Dailyhunt was in talks with SoftBank to close a round of over $150 million. However, after the WeWork fiasco, SoftBank pulled out of several ongoing deal conversations including the ones with Dailyhunt. 

According to Entrackr’s calculation, the estimated valuation of Dailyhunt stands at around Rs 4,164 crore. This is a Rs 494 crore or 13.44% jump from August last year when it had raised around Rs 20 crore from Stone Bridge at an estimated valuation of Rs 3,670 crore.

 Founded as Newshunt in 2009, it was later rebranded as DailyHunt in mid-2015. The company had started monetising its content through digital ads over a year ago after onboarding former Facebook executive Umang Bedi.