Three more Indian startups join the Unicorn Club - Groww, PharmEasy and ShareChat

Three months into 2021 we have already seen 9 startups join the Unicorn club. CRED turned a unicorn this week, Social commerce startup Meesho entered the unicorn club after investors led by SoftBank infused $300 million into the company. Before this, insurtech startup Digit Insurance, SaaS startup InnovAccer, B2B commerce company Infra.Market and NBFC Five Star Business Finance turned into unicorns.

API Holdings - PharmEasy

API Holdings Pvt is one of India's largest digital pharmacies, it owns the e-pharmacy brand PharmEasy. The company has announced on Wednesday that it has raised $350 million from Prosus Ventures and TPG Growth LLC. API Holdings said it has already received $323 million in funding and will close the investment of $27 million soon. The company now values close to $1.5 billion and joins the unicorn club with Meesho and CRED.

Seventh Unicorn in 2021, the company aims to use the funds to expand its pharmacy network. It also aims to add more teleconsultations to link up customers with the 60,000 brick-and-mortar pharmacies and 4,000 doctors it already has on its books. Existing investors including Temasek Holdings Pte and CDPQ participated in the Series E round.

Groww

Groww is the eighth startup that joins Meesho, Cred and PharmEasy's parent firm to turn into a Unicorn this week.  It competes with the likes of Zerodha, Upstox and Paytm Money that offer financial and broking services online.

Tiger Global led the round with the participation of existing investors — Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, YC Continuity and Propel Venture Partners. “The new capital will help us invest in new products, acquire talent and continue building our financial education platforms,” states Lalit Keshre, CEO and Co-founder, Groww .

ShareChat

ShareChat is the ninth to join the rapidly growing list of unicorns in the country this year. The pandemic has driven investor-interest in technology firms. Thus, only as the new financial year began, startups have seen a huge amount of funding in consumer-focus products.

Again, Tiger Global led a $502 million Series E round. It also saw participation from Snap, Twitter and Lightspeed Venture Partners. According to the company, it has reached a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion. This is more than three-fold jump in the company’s valuation from $630 million during its pre-Series E round in September 2020. The fresh capital will be deployed to grow the company’s user base.