3rd unicorn in 7 days: Mindtickle enters billion-dollar club

It's raining unicorns! Three Indian startups have entered the coveted billion-dollar club in the last seven days.

AI-based sales enablement startup Mindtickle became India’s latest unicorn after it raised $100 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. 

This latest round of funding has more than doubled Mindtickle's valuation to $1.2 billion, making it the 20th Indian startup to turn unicorn this year.

Earlier this week, fintech startup BharatPe raised $370 million in a Series E round led by Tiger Global at a post-money valuation of $2.85 billion. Gurugram-based B2B startup OfBusiness entered the unicorn club last weekend after raising a $160 million round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2.

The funding momentum in the Indian startup ecosystem has surpassed all expectations. In July alone, the Indian startup ecosystem raised almost $10 billion (including a mega round of $3.6 billion raised by Flipkart), and added three new unicorns to its cap. This was almost equal to the total funding raised in the first six months of 2021, and more than the entire amount raised in 2020.

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

According to a KPMG report, the Indian ecommerce sector is expected to cross $300 billion by 2030. 

Abhijit Kamra, Director - Global Trade, Amazon India; Sandeep Juneja, VP, Sales and Marketing, DHL Express and Nimisha Dhanda, Co-founder, D'Moksha Homes, share their insights about how brands and startups can explore export opportunities, the challenges they face in their journey, and how Amazon Global Selling Propel can offer them the right platform to cater to a global clientele.

Editor’s Pick: App Fridays

According to a report by mobile data and analytics provider App Annie, as many as 71,000 new fitness and health apps were launched in 2020.

One such app is the AI-powered yoga app Zyoga, which offers curated and tailor-made fitness content, powered by real-time motion tracking technology. Read more. 

Startup Spotlight

A professional networking platform for CXOs

Serial entrepreneurs Dipti Tandon and Abhishek Sharma got together to start CoffeeMug.ai as a professional networking platform that would help people make meaningful connections in offline setups.

But the pandemic forced it to change course. Now, it uses AI to fulfil hiring, investment, and network building needs of CXOs, founders, VCs, and other business leaders — virtually. Read more.

News & Updates

• Zomato has incorporated a new entity Zomato Payments Private Limited (ZPPL). It said the objective of incorporating the wholly-owned subsidiary is to carry on the business of providing payment aggregator and gateway services following the RBI guidelines. 

• After the recent funding of Freightify (earlier FreightBro), Co-founders V Anand Babu and Mohammed Zakkiria have exited the company to set up ZAR Partners, a $3 million LogTech innovation fund to back startups in the space.

• Swiggy will cover deliveries of over eight lakh kms everyday through electric vehicles by 2025. The company Thursday announced the commencement of trials that will increase the deployment of EVs in its delivery fleet.

• As many as 52,732 startups have benefited from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) startup recognition initiative as on July 21, 2021, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

• Giving further impetus to its D&I initiatives, Tata Steel’s West Bokaro Division announced that it has on boarded 16 women Heavy Earth Moving Machinery (HEMM) operators in all shifts under its flagship programme - Women@Mines.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“Revenue leaders understand that sales readiness is a mission-critical component of their strategy to consistently meet or exceed their goals.”

— Krishna Depura, CEO and Co-founder, Mindtickle

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