Dailyhunt Secures $6.39 Mn In Series E From Falcon Edge

Bengaluru-based news and ebooks mobile app Dailyhunt has raised $6.39 Mn (INR 45.49 Cr) in extended Series E round from New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge.

According to the documents filed with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Falcon Edge invested through its unit FO Mauritius III Ltd for 48,842 Preference shares allotted at a premium of INR 9,305.68.

The development was first reported by VCCircle which estimated that the company was valued at $335 Mn (INR 2,371 Cr at current exchange rates) pre-money, which is close to its valuation from its Series D investment round pegged at around $330 Mn (INR 2,230 Cr) then.

An email query sent to Dailyhunt didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

Dailyhunt: Expanding The Horizons Of Content

Launched in 2009 by former Nokia employees Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni, NewsHunt was acquired by Verse in 2012. In August 2015 NewsHunt rebranded itself as DailyHunt.

Dailyhunt is a News and local language content application with over 155 Mn app installs offering 100K news articles in 14 languages licensed from over 800 publication partners every day. The group has 50+ Mn users spending over six billion minutes on the app every month.

The company has raised a series of investments from investors like Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, Matrix Partners, Omidyar Network, and Darby Overseas Investments.

Recently reports surfaced that Chinese conglomerate Alibaba was looking to acquire a 10-12% minority stake in Dailyhunt at a proposed valuation of $500 Mn.

Here’s a quick look at the latest happenings at Dailyhunt:

• In January, the company launched its news-in-brief app, Newzly, for android users
• Dailyhunt has also launched other products such as its progressive web app Dailyhunt Lite (November 2017)
• It has also partnered with Vuclip and YuppTV to offer original videos and Live TV on its platform
• The company claims to have an annual revenue rate of about $15 Mn (INR 100 Cr)
• It aims to capture 6%-7% of the $4 Bn digital advertising market in the next four years

 Media And Entertainment: Content Is The New Battalion

In the content space, global players like Tencent have been making several bets on social media platforms.  Further, we have Xiaomi which has continued its bet on content aggregators with ShareChat and Samosa Labs.

Other Chinese players looking to cash in on digital content have entered India’s app-based media and entertainment (M&E) industry include Alibaba Group-owned UC News which made its entry in India in June 2016.

We also have several Indian startups like Inshorts, PIPES, the GSF backed Newsbytes, Way2News, and The Quint among others.

A report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said that the Indian media and entertainment (M&E) industry would nearly double in size to $123 Bn (INR 8 Tn)  by 2022, clocking 11-12% CAGR between 2016 and 2022.

India’s M&E sector is poised to touch $45.1 Bn by 2021, expanding at a CAGR of over 10.5%, a PwC report revealed, adding that the segment has undergone substantial progress since 2016 when its valuation stood at $27.3 Bn.