Modern age startups are changing the dynamics of every industry, and it is lucid by the fact that they are given excessive amounts of funding based on their disruptive industry product. Since the technology has penetrated society, venture funding has also advanced with it.
Now, startups emphasize the product more than profits as if the product works, and the return is unimaginable. To scale the product, founders pitch their ideas to investors and get the money in different funding rounds starting from seed funding.
Here, we would talk about one such VC firm, i.e., Google Ventures.
GV is a private equity funding arm of the tech giant Google which invests millions of bucks in backing the startups which are going to disrupt the conventional industries by leveraging technology. The firm has a portfolio of more than 500 startups.
We would discuss some of those modern-age tech companies.
7 Startups funded by Google Ventures Uber:Well, Who hasn't heard of Uber. In the last 10 years, Uber has become the world's most valued cab-hailing startup. Starting as a cab provider, Uber gradually ventured into food delivery services also with its subsidiary Uber eats.
Uber took birth to solve the transportation problem by leveraging world-class technology. Now it is present in 70 countries with 110 million worldwide users.
Talking about the funding, Google Ventures invested a considerable amount of $286 million in 2013 into the new age cab service. Since then, it has given a massive return of 2000% to GV.
Dunzo:Dunzo is a Bengaluru-based logistics startup. It has set up a hyperlocal delivery system that works at distributing goods from retailers to your doorstep.
From distributing medicines, food to grocery, it has solved the logistics problems within the city. It is operational in 9 cities such as Chennai, Pune, Noida, & Gurugram, etc.. The product is for people who do not want to shop outside.
The tech giant's VC arm participated in the Series E funding round and invested $ 40 million in the logistics startup, which gave it a valuation of $121 million. Interestingly, it was Google's first investment into the Indian startup ecosystem.
Stripe:Stripe is one of the most eminent startups in the payments space. The startup is Silicon Valley-based service and financial services company. Stripe works at facilitating e-commerce websites with payment processing software.
It has come in immensely handy for small businesses and new startups. For smooth web transactions, the product gives a safeguard against fraudulent transactions. For every transaction, the startup charges a 0.30 % fee.
Stripe raised $150 million from google ventures. After raising colossal amounts of funding, it has become the most valued Silicon Valley startup, valued at $95 million. What a stellar growth it has witnessed!!
Medium:If you are familiar with blogging, then you would have heard about the infamous blogging platform Medium. Medium is a digital publishing platform whose algorithms provide readers access to different blogs.
Medium provides the opportunity for any individual to write content regarding different market niches. It has become a home to a lot of online businesses also.
It encompasses journalists, authors, writers on its platform with 170 million users.
Google Ventures, along with other venture capitalists, invested an aggregate of $57 million in Medium. The startup is progressing by leaps and bounds due to the age of digital content. Content is the king.
DocuSign:Having an uncanny product idea, Docusign is a market leader in the e-sign transaction industry. The founders realized the issue of the inability of users to do electronic signatures due to the absence of technical know-how.
With the advancement in technology, the company knew that businesses are going to have an online presence which would make the e-sign industry flourish, so they made the electronic sign software.
The startup renders its services to almost every industry and has users in 188 countries. Having a customer base of over 500k, the company secured more than $8 million from Google Ventures.
Glance:Glance is a new age Indian tech startup leveraging Artificial Intelligence to offer a personalized experience to its users. It has an innovative product that substitutes our empty lock screen with the hot news, stories, and articles.
It provides its users with AI-driven content in multiple languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc. Glance is also pouncing upon content-driven opportunities.
The growing consumption of content has led to glance having 115 million daily users.
Due to its innovative product and scaling, It has raised $145 million in investment from Google Ventures and its existing investor. The ban on TikTok has proven to be a game-changer for the startup. Interestingly, the startup is going to achieve unicorn status soon.
Dailyhunt:Daily Hunt is another Indian budding new-age startup offering news in local and regional languages to users. Realizing the cosmopolitan nature of India, Dailyhunt collects content from more than a thousand publishers and makes it available on their app in 14 languages.
Well, it has made users' lives convenient to the extent that especially young generation can also read the latest news with just one click. Dailyhunt has become the first consumer tech unicorn zeroing in on local languages.
Google Ventures has backed Dailyhunt with other VCs by investing $100 million to value it more than $1 billion.
Conclusion:It is exciting to know that our world is going into a complete technological era where people come with revolutionary products to make human life convenient.
Young founders are leveraging Artificial Intelligence-driven technology to create world-class products. But to scale the idea, startups need an astronomical amount of funding, and the startups which have become tech giants are now backing the new-age ones.
These budding startups have proven to be fruitful investment bets for Google ventures. The search engine company has diversified its investments into new-age startup landscapes like India, China, Brazil, etc.
Google has realized the enormous opportunity in developing economies, so it is backing the industry widening modern companies with big bets.
