News aggregator startup Dailyhunt has secured $3 Mn (INR 21.75 Cr) in the ongoing Series F funding round. Stonebridge Capital was the sole investor in this round. It is still not clear whether the Bengaluru based startup will formally close the Series F round following the latest funding.
As per the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by digital platform Inc42, Dailyhunt allotted preference and also equity shares to Stonebridge’s two subsidiary entities – Stonebridge and Stonebridge Offshore Holdings.
The news aggregator startup, which aggregates and offers daily news through its mobile app, has been on a fundraising spree recently. It raised $15.15 Mn in Series E round, a round that spanned from December 2018 to January 2019. Some of the high-profile investors that participated in this round were Sequoia Capital, Matrix and Falcon Edge. There were also reports that Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba was in talks to invest but it seems that these talks have fallen apart.
Dailyhunt was also recently in news for reportedly acquiring image translator firm ImageTranslate and another startup LocalPlay
India’s News aggregators market
Thanks to the increasing penetration of smartphones & internet in recent years, India’s news aggregators market has been on an upswing. India’s millennial population has started craving for quick breaking news due to their busy lifestyle and today they increasingly rely on news aggregator apps to fulfill their appetite for breaking news.
Dailyhunt, with 22 million users and 30 billion page views per month, is the clear market leader in this segment. The other competitors who are aggressively vying for the market share are Tik Tok, Sharechat, UCNews, Helo and NewsDog. NewsDog had last year secured investment from Chinese internet giant Tencent, in another apparent sign about India’s booming news aggregators market.
However, India’s news aggregator startups are also facing huge challenge as level of engagement among Indian consumers continues to be very low as compared to the global average. For instance, Indian visitors on average spend nearly 150 minutes on news aggregator app, which is far low when compared with Chinese visitors who spends roughly 500 minutes on the app.
The low engagement level obviously results in low advertising revenue as well as low overall profit for news aggregator startups.
