Inc42 , a new age tech media company, has announced that it has secured Pre Series A round of funding led by Unicorn India Fund and Mohandas Pai & Ranjan Pai’s fund Aarin Capital.
Speaking about the investment, Mohandas Pai said, “We are committed to backing entrepreneurs with drive working to build unique businesses. Inc42 is seeking to build a unique asset that supports and gives much needed perspective to the technology and startup ecosystems in this region. The focus on bringing independent and industryspecific views to a larger audience is an excellent idea.”
Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn, said, “We believe that whenever any sector grows and becomes mainstream, the B2B media around that develops. With the growth and interest in startups, Inc42 is well poised for growth.”
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Besides Unicorn India and Aarin Capital, other investors that participated in the round include Pranav Pai (3One4 Capital), Singapore Angel Network, Singapore based M&S Partners Pte Limited, Salil Chaturvedi (Founders, Provogue brand), Dewang Neralla (Founder, Atom Technologies), Arihant Patni (Hive Technologies), Anirudh Damani (Artha Ventures), Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Cofounder of Venture Catalysts, Chandu Sohoni (Founder, Amigobulls and ExFounder of Newshunt), Freecharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, InMobi founders Mohit Saxena & Amit Gupta, Anand Ladsariya (CEO and promoter director of Everest Flavours Ltd.) and others.
Pranav Pai, investing on behalf of Mohandas Pai, had this to say: “Startup teams aim for hypergrowth and rapid change, and that takes a completely different framework of thinking, building, and adapting. As these teams define who they are and how they want their companies to be perceived, it takes an equally dynamic ecosystem to interface with them in this new reality. Inc42 is growing to become this kind of player, and their focus on building technology and experimenting with reporting formats will find true resonance with the startup ecosystem. By challenging ideas, pushing for progress, and diving into the details, they can become one of the strongest feedback loops to entrepreneurs and growthoriented teams. We are very happy to be part of this journey, and we are looking forward to helping to build this ecosystem.”
Inc42 was founded in January 2014 by Vaibhav Agarwal, Pooja Sareen and Utkarsh Agarwal, with an aim to foster entrepreneurship in India’s nascent startup ecosystem. Two years from launching, Inc42 has grown out to become the go to destination for everything tech and stands as a valued brand in the Indian Startup Ecosystem. The platform has brought to the fore the amazing stories of thousands of startups, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
“The funds raised will be used to build out the technology arm of the company which will help entrepreneurs make better & informed decisions and gain better visibility. We will continue to experiment and bring new formats, be it in the form of new channels, events, geographies or products, which will add real value to the startup community in India.” said Vaibhav Agarwal, CoFounder & CEO, Inc42.
Besides producing great inhouse content, Inc42 strives to showcase the expertise of thought leaders. The platform has attracted over 500 contributors and influencers including investors, founders, product managers etc. from across the globe who share their domain knowledge and expertise regularly on various topics. “We believe that besides great editorial and journalistic stories, experiential stories written by experienced founders and influencers provide the most value to founders of growing companies out to create an impact. Over this year we plan to bring in over 1000 new such domain experts on Inc42!” said Pooja Sareen, CoFounder and Editor, Inc42.
StartupPulse was another series of events which gathered a lot of interest from the startups and the investors community. Out of the 90+ startups which participated in the 6 editions StartupPulse held in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, over 70% of them have either raised funding or have got acquired through investors they met or pitched to during the events.
Inc42 has also announced the launch of a new initiative, coined as “Campus Misfits”, targeted towards student entrepreneurs and passionate young Indians to help them in the entrepreneurial journey.
“A number of announcements are due on some of our products that are already running in a closed alpha for a small selected set of users” said Utkarsh Agarwal, Cofounder and Product Head, Inc42.
Headquartered in Delhi, Inc42 is a 20 membered team, of which about 50% work on producing valuable content and the rest 50% comprise of tech, event ops and marketing. The company had raised its seed funding in January 2015 from Dr. Ritesh Malik (founder, Innov8), Nikunj Jain, Singapore Angel Network, Dewang Neralla, Unicorn India Fund, Prabhu Ram (Founder, Paynear) and few others.
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