Indian news app Dailyhunt raises $25m

Other participants in the round include new investor Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone, as well as existing backers Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Falcon Edge Capital and Omidyar Network.

Dailyhunt - originally known as Newshunt - was started by several former Nokia executives in 2009, and they sold to Indian mobile internet operator Ver Se Innovation three years later. The company was rebranded Dailyhunt last August.

The mobile app offers a wide range of content, including news, e-books, magazines, comics and videos in 15 Indian languages, with more than 35,000 items published daily. It claims to have over 28 million monthly active users, and generate in excess of 4.5 billion page views every month.

AVCJ Research's records show Dailyhunt raised a $4 million round from Matrix in 2009, and a further $18 million from Sequoia and Omidyar in 2014. Last year, Falcon Edge provided $20 million alongside other existing investors.

The company plans to expand its user base, with monthly active users on the platform expected to increase to 150-200 million over the next four years, according to a report in The Economic Times linked to from Dailyhunt's Twitter account.

Beijing-headquartered ByteDance operates content platforms Jinri Toutiao in China and TopBuzz in the US and Brazil. Jinri Toutiao, a personalized news app, previously received backing from SIG China and Yuri Milner. In June 2014, it closed a $100 million Series C round from Sequoia Capital and Chinese microblog operator Weibo.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Expansion
• Media
• Consumer
• India
• TMT
• Venture
• Growth capital
• Sequoia Capital
• Matrix Partners
• China