We've not even crossed halfway into 2021 and India already has its 15th unicorn.
SaaS startup BrowserStack has secured $200 million in Series B funding at a $4 billion valuation, becoming the year's second SaaS unicorn after Chargebee, which achieved the feat in April.
The funding round was led by BOND, with participation from Insight Partners and existing investor Accel, which had invested $50 million in a Series A round in 2018.
Ritesh Arora, Co-founder and CEO of BrowserStack, told YourStory,
"This funding will allow us to explore the different ways in which we can bring new products to market — via acquisitions, acqui-hires, and by investing more heavily in our product and engineering teams."
Founded in 2011 by Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal, BrowserStack has been a category leader in software testing on the cloud and counts over 50,000 customers and more than 4 million developer signups, catering to giants such as Microsoft, Twitter, and Barclays.
Six months into 2021, the number of Indian startups reaching the coveted $1 billion valuation has already surpassed the 2020 tally, as well as excelling an earlier NASSCOM projection that had stated that India will have 50 unicorns before 2021 ends.
Read all about how the Indian startup ecosystem is battling the second wave of COVID-19 here.
Here are some useful tools to help you find the nearest vaccine centres in real-time.
You can also share a tribute to COVID-19 warriors, saviours, and survivors here.
The Interview
Coming from a small town in Andhra Pradesh, Dr Shrilakshmi Desiraju did not get the kind of exposure that most entrepreneurs get. She co-founded pharmaceutical research and development startup Triphase that is dedicated to research on probiotics and its inter-related areas
In a conversation with YourStory, Dr Shrilakshmi Desiraju talks about her journey of being a pioneer in the probiotics space and building a startup, as well as creating innovative, unique products in the biotech spectrum from Mysuru.
Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap
Using AI and ML to help digital businesses improve user retention
Having years of experience, Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas, and Suresh Kondamudi realised that an app's user experience can only be achieved if it is able to show the right content to the right user, on the right channel, and at the right time.
They built CleverTap to help digital businesses significantly improve user retention by building valuable, long-term relationships with customers. Today, leading brands such as Zomato, Dream 11, and Nykaa use CleverTap to create dynamic mobile experiences. Read more.
Founders of CleverTap
Startup Spotlight
How vernacular audio streaming startup Pocket FM grew over 5x in two quarters
Since the start of the pandemic, India has witnessed a boom in audio content consumption, with audio apps growing by 3-4x in terms of DAUs.
Riding on this shift brought by increased digital penetration, low-cost mobile data, and the growing availability of on-demand audio content in local languages, vernacular audio streaming startup Pocket FM crossed one crore installs and two billion listening minutes. Read more.
News & Updates
- Google Pay said it has expanded its network of bank partners offering card tokenisation on the Google Pay app and has added lenders, including SBI, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank, and HSBC India to the feature.
- Flipkart announced it opened a new fulfilment centre in West Bengal, measuring over 2.2 lakh square feet, which will create over 3,500 direct jobs as the company ramps up its reach across the Eastern part of India.
- Twitter has lost its 'safe harbour' protection in India over non-compliance with IT rules and failure to appoint key personnel mandated under the new guidelines, despite repeated reminders, and it will now be liable for action under the Indian Penal Code for third party unlawful content, sources said.
- India will revisit the dosage interval for the Covishield vaccine and take appropriate action based on emerging data, NK Arora, chairperson of the working group of immunisation advisory body NTAGI, said.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“Our focus will always be to build products that solve deep problems for developers and help them build amazing experiences for their users.”
— Ritesh Arora, Co-founder and CEO, BrowserStack
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Link : https://yourstory.com/2021/06/india-15th-unicorn-2021-browserstack-pocketfm-clevertap
Author :- Team YS ( )
June 17, 2021 at 06:00AM
YourStory