Business
9Unicorns/Venture Catalysts unveil 2nd Cohort of DDay startups
36 unique startups to pitch before 1500 global investors
DDay 2 expects to break its earlier demo day record wherein 28 startups raised $126 mn
Mumbai, February 24th, 2022 – After a massive success of its maiden demo day, India’s leading accelerator fund 9Unicorns and early-stage investor Venture Catalysts has announced the launch of its 2nd Global Demo Day (DDay 2) on March 24, 2022.
The DDay 2 will have 36 selected early and growth stage startups present their business pitches before marquee global and domestic investors. The one-day event will kick-start with showcasing about 18 shortlisted startups, each from 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts.
The idea of the DDay is to ensure that the startups graduate as robust, scalable, and fundable ventures. Demo Days are becoming a vital part of the Indian startup ecosystem that is home to over 50000 startups and 90 Unicorns attracting massive global investments. 2021 witnessed record investments at $36 billion, as per various industry reports which speaks volumes about Indian startups’ ability to create large valuable and multi-billion dollar businesses.
The participating startups come from diverse sectors such as EV, HealthTech, Consumer Internet, Data Analytics, AI, Fintech, AgriTech, and Edtech amongst others.
“We are constantly look at ways to keep the hustle of the startup founders alive through various initiatives including the D Day. Spread over a day of pitching sessions, the DDay helps the startups raise larger rounds. Before culminating the startups at the DDay, we extensively engage with them in further developing their product, team, refining their business model, and scaling them into a high growth business. Our first demo day was a massive success and we want to break our own records with the second one,” said Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Cofounder, 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts.
The D Day, which will be conducted virtually, brings an unprecedented set of opportunities over one day, enabling greater access and interactions between the startups, global & domestic venture capital firms, family offices, Unicorn founders, angel investors and CXOs.
Over 1500 such investors are expected to be a part of the 2nd DDay, up from 900 participating investors in the maiden event that was organised in August last year. The event was immensely successful wherein 32 startups participated and 28 of them raised around $126 million. FinTech, Ecommerce and SaaS sectors attracted the maximum funding. About 45% of the participating startups were by second time or serial founders.
Some of the startups that raised bigger rounds (over > $10 mn) include Klub, a revenue based finance firm, CoutLoot, a social commerce platform, Evenflow, a Thrasio-style Ecommerce rollup and Rooter (a gaming startup) amongst others.
The team at 9Unicorns and Vcats helped the startups with the demo day prep starting right from training the founders to pitch under 60 seconds to business restructuring.
“9Unicorns, and the entire team have been super helpful in guiding us through the process of fundraise (both equity & debt), how to think about the captable structuring and hiring talent as we scale the business. The team is always a call away whenever we need them – be it being a shock absorber during the tough times or an extended family to celebrate the good ones,” said Utsav Agarwal, Cofounder of Evenflow, an e-commerce roll-up, while sharing his experience from the maiden DDay.
To this, Anurakt Jain, Cofounder of revenue based finance firm Klub said, “ We are grateful for the immense support and belief by 9Unicorms in us, since our inception. Their efforts have been instrumental in helping us become India’s leading Revenue Based Financing platform. 9Unicorns have helped build Klub beyond capital and we thank them for having their faith in us, in the past and for the times to come.”
Co-founded by Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, and Gaurav Jain, the Mumbai-based Venture Catalysts Group is the second largest early stage back by number of deals. In 2021, VCats Group closed 207 deals making it the largest player in India.