Bangalore-based news startup, DailyHunt recently raised Rs 220 crore in its Series G funding round from investors like ByteDance, Sofina Group, Falcon Edge, Advent Management and Goldman Sachs. It has only been 2 weeks since its last funding and the startup again received $35.6 million from Lupa India which is supported by James Murdoch, the media Giant.
This amount was raised as part of Series G funding round with issuance of shares at price of Rs. 12,995.84 per share. This is the second investment by Lupa in India as four months ago, they also backed an e-learning firm, Harappa Education. DailyHunt was formerly called NewsHunt when it was incepted by ex Nokia employees Chandrashekhar Sohoni and Umesh Kulkarni in 2009. It was in 2012 that Virendra Gupta, founder of Verse acquired the startup and changed it to DailyHunt.
DailyHunt has been the news provider for millions of its users from last 8 years. It has also acquired a few companies like OneIndia in 2016 and LocalPlay in 2019. The Startup is trying to boost its presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities by acquiring hyperlocal platforms. DailyHunt is planning to move into video reporting as it believes multimedia will become primary source of information. Presently, they have 500 hyperlocal channels on its video platform.
The app is available in vernacular language making it more accessible to smaller areas of the country. DailyHunt has expanded its operations in other countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and a few African countries. They also plan to revive content commerce and with their acquisitions of platforms like LocalPlay, they are strategising on driving local advertisement. The current state of DailyHunt seems promising and it will be interesting to see what opportunities the company brings with its plans.