Tiger Global has found a great market in India and the country’s startup scene, investing in billion dollar companies like Zomato and Byju’s, and most notably-Flipkart. However, Lee Fixel’s departure in 2019 certainly left a void, especially after the historic Flipkart-Walmart deal in 2018 which was valued at $16 billion and to this date, remains a record. Now, it looks like the tech genius is back, and has led a $35 million round in news aggregator app Inshorts, a platform that aggregates news stories together from various media sources, for people in a hurry.
According to ET, the capital was raised from SIG Global, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Addition-Fixel’s own $1.2 billion fund which was started earlier this year in the US. This is not the first time that Fixel has backed the startup. In 2015, he wrote a $4 million cheque to Inshorts, which has certainly helped the platform grow at an exponential rate. InShorts is clocking nearly $13 million in revenue with $5 million of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.
Inshorts CEO Azhar Iqubal notes that his company will use the money to expand its recently launched app–Public, a location based social network allowing people to record and share happenings around them through short videos. Launching an app like this, amid concerns of ‘fake news’ promulgating on social media is a tough sell, but that’s a topic for another day.
When Fixel left Tiger Global back in 2019, his role was assumed by Scott Shleifer, who has went on to lead some hugely successful investment rounds in startups like Zomato and Byju’s, which are already on top of their game. Nonetheless, the return of Fixel in the Indian market is a good sign for the country’s burgeoning startup scene, which is still reeling back from the catastrophe of a global pandemic.
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