Glance and Dailyhunt get together to turn unicorns

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By Ashish Mitra --
Wednesday, 23 Dec, 2020

Two companies namely Glance and Dailyhunt have come together to turn unicorns (startups valued at $1 billion or more) being created in 2020 taking the year’s total to 11. Last year, nine ventures became unicorns and in the year before the number was eight.

The year began with marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital warning of the possibility of a ‘black swan’ like event due to the pandemic. But the large amounts of money that central banks globally have been releasing to revive their economies have done the opposite.

InMobi Group’s Glance, that provides dynamic content on the lock screens of Android phones has announced that it has raised $145 million from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital, an investment fund of Peter Thiel who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies.

A source close to the company told TOI that the funding values Glance at over $1 billion. This also puts Naveen Tewari, who founded InMobi in 2007 and Glance in 2019, among the few who have created more than one unicorn. InMobi, a mobile advertising platform, turned a unicorn when SoftBank invested $200 million in the company in 2011.

Dailyhunt, a local language-based news and content platform has said that it has raised $100 million in new capital from Microsoft, Google, Falcon Edge’s investment unit Alpha Wave and other investors at a valuation of over
$1 billion.

Dailyhunt’s parent firm Verse Innovation said it will use the new capital to scale up its recently launched short-video app Josh, implement AI and ML solutions and grow its content creator ecosystem.

Glance and Dailyhunt get together to turn unicorns. Two companies namely Glance and Dailyhunt have come together to turn unicorns (startups valued at $1 billion or more) being created in 2020 taking the year’s total to 11. Last year, nine ventures became unicorns and in the year before the number was eight.

The year began with marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital warning of the possibility of a ‘black swan’ like event due to the pandemic. But the large amounts of money that central banks globally have been releasing to revive their economies have done the opposite.

InMobi Group’s Glance, that provides dynamic content on the lock screens of Android phones has announced that it has raised $145 million from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital, an investment fund of Peter Thiel who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies.

A source close to the company told TOI that the funding values Glance at over $1 billion. This also puts Naveen Tewari, who founded InMobi in 2007 and Glance in 2019, among the few who have created more than one unicorn. InMobi, a mobile advertising platform, turned a unicorn when SoftBank invested $200 million in the company in 2011.

Dailyhunt, a local language-based news and content platform has said that it has raised $100 million in new capital from Microsoft, Google, Falcon Edge’s investment unit Alpha Wave and other investors at a valuation of over 
$1 billion.

Dailyhunt’s parent firm Verse Innovation said it will use the new capital to scale up its recently launched short-video app Josh, implement AI and ML solutions and grow its content creator ecosystem.