News Startup TheBetterIndia Raises INR 1 Cr. From Intellecap Impact Investment

TheBetterIndia, a Bangalore-based website has announced an investment of INR 1 Cr from Intellecap Impact Investment Network (I3N or I-cube-N). Raveen Sastry, founder of NudgeSpot and a co-founder of fashion and lifestyle portal Myntra also participated in this round of funding.

Commenting on the investment decision, Sastry said, “Today, The Better India has more than 100 writers contributing from all over India, a highly engaged community on Facebook and Twitter. The company is disrupting news reading behaviour, and very smartly leveraging media and technology to monetize this in different ways.”

Launched in June 2008 by Dhimant Parekh, an Indian School of Business graduate and serial entrepreneur and his bete-noire Anuradha Parekh, The Better India publishes narratives of/about unsung heroes, change makers, innovations, educators, women empowerment, history, arts & culture, social development, etc.

TheBetterIndia claims of having over half million visitors on its website every month and over 100 writers across the country

Speaking on the future growth prospects of the company, Dhimant said,”“We are seeing excellent traction for our content from readers across India, US, UK, Singapore and the Middle East. We are quickly scaling up traffic, plan to raise our next round of funding in 12 months, and look forward to creating a long-term strategic partnership with a large media or publishing house.”

Last year in September, Intellecap tied-up with TiE Ahmedabad to launch an online incubation platform StartupWave.

Couple of startups in content business in India raised funding, these include, Newshunt, raised INR 120 Cr. in Series C round led by New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital, ScoopWhoop raised INR 10 Cr. from Bharti Softbank at an INR 40 Cr. valuation, and News In Shorts raised INR 25 Cr. from Tiger Global & Existing investors. Recently, Media conglomerate News Corp acquired the VCCircle Network.