Digital media startup Inc42 raises pre-Series A funding from Unicorn, Aarin & others

Ideope Media Pvt. Ltd, which operates media portal Inc42.com, has secured an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round of funding led by Unicorn India Ventures and Aarin Capital.

The round also saw participation from a bunch of other investors that include Freecharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, InMobi founders Mohit Saxena and Amit Gupta, Everest Flavours Ltd CEO and promoter director Anand Ladsariya, 3One4 Capital's Pranav Pai, Singapore Angel Network, Singapore based M&S Partners Pte Ltd, Provogue founder Salil Chaturvedi, Atom Technologies founder Dewang Neralla, Hive Technologies' Arihant Patni, Artha Ventures' Anirudh Damani, Venture Catalysts' co-founder Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Amigobulls and Newshunt founder Chandu Sohoni.

"We believe that whenever any sector grows and becomes mainstream, the B2B media around that develops. With the growth and interest in startups, Inc42 is well poised for growth," said Bhaskar Majumdar, managing partner, Unicorn India Ventures, in a statement.

Vaibhav Agarwal, co-founder and CEO, Inc42 said the funds raised will be used to build the technology arm of the company.

Founded in January 2014 by Agarwal, Pooja Sareen and Utkarsh Agarwal, Inc 42 is a tech media company that covers and reports on the Indian startup ecosystem. Besides, it also conducts events for startups that include Pulse42 and StartupPulse. Headquartered in Delhi, Inc42 currently has a headcount of 20 employees.

In January 2015, Inc 42 raised seed funding from Innov8 founder Dr. Ritesh Malik, Nikunj Jain, Singapore Angel Network, Dewang Neralla, Unicorn India Fund, Paynear founder Prabhu Ram and other undisclosed investors.

Inc42's content business and some of its products compete with VCCircle and Techcircle.in's offerings. VCCircle Network—whose business lines include subscription data products, events, training programmes and operates the above two news websites focused on the startup ecosystem as well as business at large in India—was acquired by News Corp in March last year.