On-demand logistics startup Porter has raised funds from friends and family in a round which has catapulted it in the unicorn club of India, MoneyControl reported on Thursday.
In the round, around 15-20 individuals bought shares worth Rs 25 crore from the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) pool at a valuation of $1 billion, the report said.
Porter declined to comment to a request for comment by DealStreetAsia.
Porter has doubled its valuation from the $500 million it commanded during its 2021 fundraising, when it raised $100 million in a Series E funding round led by Tiger Global Management and Vitruvian Partners.
Founded by Pranav Goel and Uttam Digga in 2014, Porter is logistics company offering a variety of intracity and intercity delivery services. Porter is present in more than 20 cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Ahmedabad.
Porter is the third startup to have breached a valuation of $1 billion this year after Perfios, a fintech startup that collects data to help financial institutions make lending decisions, raised $80 million in a new funding round by Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG), the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Separately, in January, Krutrim, an AI startup established by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, became the first unicorn of 2024 after raising $50 million in its first funding round at a valuation of $1 billion.
Even as India has added three startups to its unicorn club in 2024, compared with just two in the whole of 2023, it’s a far cry from the heady years of 2021-22.
Unicorn creation has been declining sharply year-on-year, with 24 private startups topping the billion-dollar mark in 2022, down from the record 45 in 2021, triggered by a slew of factors including monetary policy tightening worldwide, rising inflation, and global economic slowdown.
With valuations stabilising, the frenzy to enter the unicorn club also seems to have mellowed.